In 2018 East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer and the ISSD Plus program teamed up to see if they could effectively introduce high quality vegetable seed and necessary horticultural skills to Northern Uganda. Within two years of
starting to work together, there seems to be unusually enthusiastic uptake of the
techniques shared and quality seeds demonstrated. The question this case explores is “ How do farmers respond to the vegetable promotion activities, and why?”
Uganda has enormous horticulture potential. It’s fairly well distributed rainfall and moderate climate make it capable of producing most of the tropical and sub-tropical fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices, or even temperate fruits and vegetables in the higher altitude areas. While the natural conditions are in place, the sector can still grow significantly.
Key limiting factors include poor infrastructure, low productivity and production, quality, food
safety and traceability issue and counterfeit inputs especially seeds. Small-scale rain-fed farms dominate a dispersed sub-sector. (Agriprofocus, 2015)
Horticulture production is country-wide, with commercial activity focused in the west and
southwest. The northern region is not traditionally seen as a strong vegetable production area due to long dry seasons. Highly disruptive armed conflict from 1986 – 2009 further blocked improvements in the agricultural sector in the north. Currently no vegetable seed company or government agency invests in the vegetable sector structurally. Farmers therefore depend on their own experience and seed, and the level of knowledge and inputs provided by agro-input retailer, to produce what they can.
Both ISSD Plus and EWS-Knowledge Transfer (EWS-KT) are of the opinion that with improved production knowledge farmers can benefit more from using improved vegetable varieties adapted to local agronomic and climatic conditions. Alongside better farm practices, improved plant varieties offer smallholder farmers a greater resilience to disease and stress and increased yields. In addition, vegetables with superior post-harvest qualities are better marketable and can lead to increased market demand.
ISSD Plus aims to improve the access of vegetable producers to high quality seed and seedlings through the introduction of improved varieties and improving farmers’ skills in vegetable production. They organize various activities implemented in partnership with six Dutch seed companies. One of these is East-West Seed International.
East-West Seed supports intensive training to farmers as a precursor to commercial activities in less developed or emerging markets. To ensure that these pre-commercial training activities are most effectively geared towards benefiting smallholder farmers, the company created an independent non-profit foundation ‘East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer’. Within the company, EWSKT showcases profitable and sustainable farming practices in areas that would otherwise be of limited interest to other seed companies. In this collaboration, EWS-KT is one of two companies carrying out all jointly agreed farmer outreach activities, while ISSD Plus co-funds and manages quality assurance of the activities.
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