Posted on September, 17, 2018 at 11:30 am
AFRICAN countries continue to face a shortage of quality seeds due to low crop production, according to a marketing manager.
Quality Basic Seed (QBS) Marketing Manager, Wycliffe Ingoi, said the situation led to low food production in quality and quantity, meaning that African countries failed to contain famine that often affected most of its people.
Mr Ingoi, whose company is based in Kenya, said demand for quality seeds stood at 156,250kg per year, saying the demand was higher than production capacity and there were few companies that engaged in such production.
“Farmers have been getting low crop yield due to lack of quality seeds, hence are forced to use poor quality seeds. We as QBS want to solve the problem, at least reduce it to some extent,” said Mr Ingoi.
He called on the governments of African countries to collaborate with companies that produce good quality seeds to boost high crop yield.
The company produces, processes, stores and sells improved seeds to other seed companies, produces improved seeds on behalf of seed companies, works with seed companies and breeders to ensure production of quality seeds and provides technical information to seed companies to support hybrid seed multiplication.
African Agriculture Technology Foundation (AATF) Information Officer, Everylne Situma, said some companies had failed to produce enough seeds due to complications in generating improved seeds. AATF is involved in agricultural technological advancement in Africa.
Ms Situma backed QBS for sticking to producing quality seeds with modern technology. AATF is an Africabased development organisation, whose mission is to avail the benefits of agricultural technologies to smallholder farmers on the continent.
Seed technologies are critical to enabling farmers to achieve high agricultural productivity, increase income and reduce poverty. However, there is low and inconsistent supply of seeds, which is critical to ensuring sustainable production of improved seeds, mainly hybrid maize seed for use by smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.
Investments of well over $1bn have been made through various global food crop improvement programmes in Africa to breed and release suitable and adaptable crop varieties, particularly maize hybrids, that offer high production opportunities to smallholder farmers.
Unfortunately, access to and subsequent benefits of these varieties are yet to be significantly realised at farmer level, thus limiting the impact of genetic gains attained by breeding programmes.
Source: Daily News