CEAPRED's Experiences on Vegetable Seed Production and Economic Growth

Indra Raj pandey
 

Abstract

A high yielding quality seed is the prime technical input for the growth of agriculture. Using the quality seed, 20 to 30 percent crop yield can be increased. Seed is a low volume high value non-perishable commodity. In remote hills where bulky fresh produce cannot be marketed easily, seed is one of the best established options for cash earning and income generation. Vegetable Seeds can give 3-5 times higher income as compared to alternative cereal crops. Vegetable seed is now realized as a very potential sub-sector contributing to poverty reduction and enhancing food and nutrition security where other economic opportunities are very limited.
It is an established fact that Nepal has two important resources for vegetable seed production: a) agro-climatic variability with four distinct seasons (spring, rainy, autumn and winter), three major ecological belts (mountain, hills and Terai) and several micro-climatic zones and b) large number of agro-biodiversity and genetic variability.
Despite above comparative advantages Nepal has not been able to develop vegetable seed industry as it should have been done. This may be due to several reasons including technological and policy anomalies, and administrative distortion.
In the world scenario, Gene Giants have used intellectual property laws to control the world seed supply. In less than three decades, a handful of multinational corporations have engineered a fast and furious corporate enclosure in the seed chain. The proprietary seed market (brand named seed that is subject to exclusive monopoly in the name of intellectual property) now accounts for 82% of the commercial seed market worldwide. With this advancement the Nepali indigenous vegetable varieties are endangered. Nepali cabbage and cauliflower have almost been replaced by imported hybrids. Similar is the case with tomato, sweet pepper, cucumber and radish. Multinational seed corporate are adapting the strategy that aims to control plant germplasm and maximize profits by eliminating Farmers' Rights.
Realizing this overwhelming situation CEAPRED entered into the seed production and marketing activities organizing Farmers in groups/cooperatives. During the process CEAPRED has learned and acquired a lot of experiences which this paper tries to summarize. The national requirement of vegetable seeds estimated for NFY 2070/71 is about 1960 mt. whereas the estimated domestic production is around 1200 mt. with short fall by 41 %. The short fall is met by import of open pollinated (OP) and hybrid seeds.

Published Year
2013

Volume
Proceeding Volume 8

Issue