Harmonisation of seed laws in Africa.indd - Never Ending Food

GRICULTURE, ENERGY AND LIVELIHOOD SERIES
that GM technologies have potential, but robust legal, production and distribution systems, and
that greater access of farmers to agri-chemicals and markets, are prerequisites for the eventual,
successful adoption of GM seed.
Seed production
African seed systems have generally existed outside global circuits of capitalist accumulation apart
from some enclaves or niches developed during the colonial era. The focus of these enclaves was
on commercially viable crops, especially for export as part of the colonial system of extraction.
According to the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), 80 - 90 per cent of the world’s
seed stocks are provided through what they call the ‘informal’ seed system, and Africa is no
exception. 4 More than 80 per cent of all seed in Africa is still produced and disseminated informally. 5
Consequently, Africa and the Middle East constituted just 2.7 per cent of the global commercial seed
market in 2007. 6
Farmer-controlled seed systems in Africa are integrated and locally organised. They are based on
the ways farmers themselves produce, disseminate and procure seeds through on-farm saving and
exchange with neighbours and others. 7 This is connected to food supply and distribution systems,
for example through the use of a maize harvest for a combination of food, feed and planting.
The harvesting of seed from preferred plants is the basis of crop domestication over the 10 000
years of agriculture. This has led La Via Campesina to say that ‘all industrial seeds are the product of
thousands of years of selection and breeding by our peoples’. 8 Exploitation of chance mutations and
natural selection processes were the main form of plant improvement for most of this time until the
last 80 - 100 years. The development of the science of genetics at the end of the nineteenth century
led to the rise of scientific research into the inheritance of traits in plants and crops. After 1945,
other advances in science such as in vitro technologies and mutagenisis led to the development of
‘high-yielding’ seed varieties. 9 Later genetic modification (GM) and molecular markers extended
these technologies further. About half of the yield gains since the 1940s are attributed to genetic
improvements by plant breeders, and the other half to mechanisation, irrigation and chemicals. 10
Commercial seed firms and private breeders only emerged in the 1930s. Prior to that, farmers saved
seed from their own crops and governments funded plant breeding research and development
(R&D). The development of hybrids – cross-pollinating crops, such as maize – set the seed industry
on a completely new trajectory. Hybrid seeds were developed from the 1920s for maize in the US
(of which Pioneer Hi-Bred was literally the pioneer), and later for other crops, to cross desired traits
identified in different varieties into a single plant.
Hybrid seeds
Hybrid seeds are produced from naturally out-breeding crops, from which inbred lines are produced
by repeated self-pollination. 11 F1 hybrids refer to agricultural cultivars derived from two different
parent cultivars, which are first inbred for selected characteristics (e.g. early maturity, diseaseresistance
or drought-tolerance) and then crossed with one another and evaluated for yield
potential and other desired characteristics. 12 Crosses between two unrelated parents are known
as single crosses. Those from three parents are known as three-way hybrids, and those from four
parents are double-cross hybrids. The female product of a three-way hybrid is a single-cross hybrid
and the male is an inbred line. The parents of a double-cross hybrid are both single-cross hybrids
Harmonisation of Africa’s seeds laws: a recipe for disaster 9