Authors: Bastiaan Huesken & Ngama Munduku, ÉLAN RDC, 2021
Key words: private sector, international development, DRC
Private seed companies and ÉLAN RDC have demonstrated that the commercial sale of seeds to smallholder farmers is viable.
Since 2015, private seed companies and ÉLAN RDC have sold 1,823mt of seed direct to smallholder farmers at prices between $1.20 and $4.00 per kilogramme. Humanitarian organizations do not adequately account for this reality and, as a consequence, humanitarian initiatives to provide seed to smallholder farmers often detract from the development of a sustainable seed industry. One example of this is the large volume of fake seed traded in the DRC as a result of poor procurement practices. The average price offered by NGOs in the DRC for seed in 2016 ranged from $0.60 to $0.90 per kilogramme of OPV maize seed, compared to market prices of $1.50 per kilogramme.[…]
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