Resources

Our ability to scale the adoption of technologies among smallholder farmers plays a critical role in determining whether we can meet global food demands in the coming decades. The challenges facing the world’s agricultural production system are well-known.

In every country, laws, regulations and policies determine how fast a seed system can evolve; it is difficult to overemphasize how important the enabling environment is for scaling a seed system. It can be a critical factor that helps or hinders in achieving scale. The objective of this Planning for
Scale brief is to examine the legal and regulatory system and its elements in the context of how to get better seed varieties to smallholder farmers. Available experience, data, and literature are noted, where possible, and context for further examination and deeper analysis is highlighted.

Access to finance is a critical component of any strategy to scale the adoption of agricultural technologies by smallholder farmers. Growth in research, development, production, distribution and adoption of products and services for smallholder farmers are all impacted by the availability of financial services (including savings, credit and insurance services).

The production of foundation seed has long been a constraint to the growth of seed systems in most African countries. While many authors have written about foundation seed, this brief focuses particularly on the relationship between foundation seed production and scale.

Scaling the adoption of improved varieties and quality seed among smallholder farmers must include both formal and informal seed systems. While the more formal channels of a seed system remain central to scaling, evidence shows that smallholder farmers source the majority of their seed from the informal system; they plant, exchange and sell a wide range of varieties that fall outside the production and distribution functions of the formal sector.

Scaling the adoption of improved varieties of seed among smallholder farmers in a way that is sustainable over time will require investments that make seed systems more demand-driven.

Scaling up technologies that impact smallholder farmers is a long-term goal of the international development field. Improved varieties of seed, post-harvest technologies, extension information and many other products and services have enormous potential to reduce poverty if we can get them out to large numbers of people. But scale is notoriously hard to achieve in the rural markets of developing and emerging economies.