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Alliance for a Green Revolution
In Africa, Prosperity From Seeds Falls Short
October 10, 2007
The New York Times; excerpt
By Celia W. Dugger
...Developed with financing from wealthy countries and private foundations, the New Rices for Africa, or Nericas, are unpatented and freely cultivable by anyone. Yet there is a severe shortage of them in a region where both the private and agricultural sectors are woefully undeveloped.
“This is a story repeated thousands of times all over Africa,” said Joseph Devries, who heads seed development for the Rockefeller and Bill and Melinda Gates foundations’ joint effort to jump-start farm productivity in Africa.
“You have farmers who are very willing adopters of new technologies and want to raise yields,” he added, “but are not getting access to seed, fertilizer and small-scale irrigation.”
Finding a sustainable way to supply farmers with seed, he said, “is emerging as the holy grail for agricultural development.”
Here in West Africa, where rice is a staple crop, the African Development Bank is financing a $34 million program in seven countries to spur wider use of the new rice seeds. But the obstacles are daunting.
Farmers typically lack credit to buy seed and fertilizer. And the agricultural economy itself suffers from a lack of investment. Foreign aid for agriculture has plunged over the past two decades. And African governments — some, like Guinea, endowed with natural resources and cursed with corruption — have too often not spent enough of that wealth on rural development.
Decent roads to move crops to market are scarce. So are storage facilities to preserve harvests and crop insurance to protect farmers from drought, flood or bumper yields that perversely cause prices to collapse. All can wipe out the income farmers need to give seed companies reliable demand, making sale and distribution of the improved seeds a high-risk venture...Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company.
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