Search

Farmer-based seed multiplication is widely promoted by development practitioners, but there is limited understanding of the individual or collective motivations of farmers to engage or disengage in specialised seed production. The objective of this study is to understand the factors influencing the continuity of sweetpotato vine multiplication enterprises in the Lake Zone of Tanzania, five years after support from a project ended. A total of 81 out of 88 trained group or individual decentralised vine multipliers (DVMs) were traced to assess their vine multiplication activities. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected through telephone and field interviews. Our data showed that 40% of the 81 DVMs had sold vines in the year prior to the study and 20% had maintained the improved varieties for their own use. Some group members had continued vine sales as individuals. The DVMs’ reasons for abandoning vine multiplication included climatic and water access issues, market factors and group dynamics. The DVMs did not engage in high volumes of commercial sales. Socio-economic norms and values underpin the transactions of sweetpotato vines. These norms may undermine the emergence of commercially viable enterprises yet seem navigable for a substantial number of the DVMs. Group DVMs seem less commercially successful than individuals.

Community-driven development (CDD) programs compel communities to adopt egalitarian decision-making processes for the duration of the project. However, dominant groups use their power to orchestrate a public performance of social domination and subordinated groups combat social domination via subtle acts of resistance. Rather than conceptualizing social transformation from a holistic perspective that includes subtle acts of resistance and incremental forms of self-empowerment, CDD implementation and monitoring focusses on women's public performance in community meetings, and this approach generally fails to produce social transformation. We conducted an ethnography of an unconditional direct transfer to a village in Western Mali. We used Bourdieu's approach to investigate how rural Malian women resist domination and empower themselves in this unfettered CDD project. We observed the women strategically submit to patriarchal forms of domination during the public decision-making processes but resist male domination over their labour. Our results suggest that CDD can better achieve enduring forms of social change when it builds off local women's self-directed forms of resistance. To better capture women's resistance and self-empowerment, CDD should adopt a more holistic and open impact assessment approach, such as the Most Significant Change technique and Culturally Responsive Evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food security and seed security are closely linked, especially for poor smallholders in developing countries. The impacts of COVID-19 highlight the vulnerability of marginalized groups, and their exposure across multiple social and economic dimensions. Employing seed interventions as part of the COVID-19 recovery requires recognizing local social dynamics, or risks worsening the situation for the most disadvantaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of many initiatives to set up community or farmer-group-based seed production, there is little empirical evidence about the group functioning in producing and marketing quality seed. This article therefore aims to contribute to better understanding of the process and practice of seed potato cooperatives' formation and operation in Chencha, Ethiopia. Our study specifically focused on why and how farmer groups organize, produce and market quality seed potato. We collected primary data from two seed potato cooperatives in three phases through interviews, focus group discussions, and field assessment and store inventories on bacterial wilt incidence. We found that the support to the establishing of the two seed potato cooperatives focused more on improving the members' seed potato production capacity and less on building good governance in the seed chain. The experiences showed the tensions between prescriptive rules, collective action and individual interests which made it very hard to maintain quality seed standards and friendship at the same time. In general, the root of having weak seed cooperatives may not be the lack of intent towards building durable farmer groups. Rather, development practitioners did not take the set-up of strong farmer groups as an evolving process, which continually engages in diagnosis and responds to the emerging social as well as material challenges. The set-up of farmer-group-based seed production, therefore, needs to shift from 'standard production models' to an evolving model: an open and flexible model guided by trials, challenges and existing socio-technical and institutional realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the development of improved seeds has witnessed significant advances over the last decades, the adoption of improved seeds and varieties by smallholder farmers is variable. This suggests that research methods for studying farmers' seed demand are not yielding information that reflects the real-life decisions and behaviours of farmers in the choice and acquisition of their seeds. We suggest that research methods for analysing farmers' seed demand shape seed availability. This is supported by the theory of social life of methods. We argue that access to and attractiveness of seed are highly context-specific for a farmer, for example, influenced by his/her social position, the role of the crop or variety in the farming system, the linkage to the market, agro-ecological conditions, and that context is highly variable. We also argue that many of our research methods are weak on capturing real-life context and provide fragmented snapshot-nature understanding and biases of farmers preferences and needs for seeds. We call for more integrated understanding of seed systems as a whole and a more holistic methodological research approach that better captures the variable real-life context of farmers while providing the metrics that are needed by seed actors and policymakers to enable informed decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With 3 figures and 4 tables Abstract This study employed and compared different methods for capturing farmers' preference for common bean varieties in southern Ethiopia and tested their expressed preference using active selection of drought-tolerant genotypes. The results showed considerable variation in farmers' variety preferences, but the most important variation consistently focused on a fairly consistent set of variety traits. Different methods indicated that farmers considered earliness as the most important trait. Culinary qualities and marketability showed to be at least as important as drought tolerance. Comparing different methods in identifying farmers' preference indicated that recording farmers rating or ranking for traits in breeding may not be effective or predictive of adoption for new variety and resulting variation among farmers. Real-time participatory selection was quick, efficient and accurately revealed farmer preference. The relatively high level of coincidence of farmer selections and selections made by breeders and extensionists, combined with the relative consistent set of important traits to consider, suggest that diversity of farmers demand is not the first concern. The challenge of the common bean breeding for southern Ethiopia therefore lies in combining different mechanisms of drought tolerance with culinary attractiveness and marketability. Market in the study region shows to be fairly dynamic and as a consequence farmer preferences for grain types and colour are not static. Breeding that focuses on traditionally grown colours, shapes and sizes may therefore restrict farmers' access to novel attractive and adapted germplasm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]