Farmers’ network appeals for traditional seeds

THE National network of small-scale farmers groups in Tanzania is appealing to the government to formalise and promote indigenous seeds, in the wake of growing concerns over some of the laboratory processed kernels.

The network (MVIWATA), is organising special exhibition to showcase and promote traditional seeds next Friday.

Damian James Sulumo is the coordinator for the farmers’ network, known locally as ‘Mtandao wa Vikundi vya Wakulima Tanzania (MVIWATA), who revealed here that a special exhibition for indigenous seeds will be staged in Karatu Township of Karatu district on the 30th of August 2019.

“We expect more than 500 participants who are going to present and display local varieties of seeds for all types of crops. There will also be hundreds of other attendants, including farmers, peasants and researchers out to learn a few things from the event in Karatu,” added
Mr Sulumo.

Speaking during journalists’ training here, Sulumo explained further that, the Karatu seeds exhibitions intend to remind Tanzanians of the benefits in using indigenous kernels for human health and soil fertility.

For his part, the coordinator of biodiversity network in Tanzania, Abdallah Ramadhan pointed out that, indigenous seeds contribute to 70 per cent of the available kernels used to produce agricultural outputs in the country.

“Yet surprisingly more efforts seem to concentrate on modern laboratory processed seeds, even though they contribute to less than 30 per cent of the national farm inputs,” he said.

According to Ramadhan, the new law which demands that all seeds should be registered and failure to which, may attract huge penalties, including 500 million/- in fines or jail terms of up to 12 years, was doing disservice to local peasants, killing indigenous seeds and threatening the entire agricultural sector in the process.

“It is not fair to promote seed companies, most of which are new and foreign owned at the expense of local growers who have been feeding the country since independence,” Abdallah alerted.

He pointed out that, modern factory churned seeds produced ‘tasteless crops,’ destroyed the local soils’ natural components, made farmers to be too dependent on additional inputs like fertilizer , pesticides and herbicides and their harvest cannot withstand weather elements during extended storage.

MVIWATA chairperson, Anna Ephata said the network is not out to fight modern seeds, but only to ensure that, indigenous seeds are not neglected because essentially they are the backbone of the country’s agricultural sector.

“Indigenous seeds should be officially recognized and formalised because they are the inputs that local farmers, especially those in rural areas, depend on to sustain their activities,” said Ephata.

Founded in 1993, MVIWATA is a national farmers’ organisation which brings together small holder farmers from all regions of Tanzania in order to have a common voice to defend economic, social, cultural and political interests of smallholder farmers.

The Network aspires to empower smallholder farmers economically and socially through capacity building and undertake lobbying and advocacy especially by strengthening their groups and networks, facilitating communication and learning so that they are capable of defending their interests.

MVIWATA was founded by 22 innovative farmers from Dodoma, Iringa, Kilimanjaro, Mbeya, Morogoro, Tanga and Rukwa regions for the purpose of creating a farmer-to-farmer exchange forum as a means of enhancing communication among smallholder farmers.
 

Source: IPP Media