Studies on Policy Option for Quality Seed Production and ... - NFPCSP

demand. Besides, the amounts of rice and maize seeds supplied by private sector are 3350 tons and3000 tons, which comprise about 1.07% and 90.91% of the total demand, respectively. The marketprice of cereal seeds (rice, wheat and maize) used in the country is 124 million USD for HYV rice, 71million USD for hybrid rice (price of 25000 ton), 26 million USD for wheat and 5 million USD formaize. It can be noted that the private sectors still are not involved with the wheat seed marketing. Withregards to rice seed in 2006, an additional 1 million hectare of land was brought under hybrid riceproduction. This required 11400 tons of seed, and of these, 1800 tons was locally supplied while therest was imported. The production, marketing and import of the entire volume of the hybrid rice seedwere undertaken by the private sector. However, hybrid rice seed accounts for less than 5% of total riceseed requirement (MoA, 2006).Mele et al. (2005) reported that poor farmers need better and more affordable access to quality seed inorder to improve their livelihood. Over three years (2001 -2004), the national NGO AgriculturalAdvisory Society (AAS) developed an innovative of decentralized quality seed production anddistribution system in Bangladesh under the PETRRA (Poverty Elimination through Rice ResearchAssistance) project, called `Farmseed’. In this regard, AAS formed a strategic network with 64 NGOsand community-based organizations (CBOs), of which 50% of them remained viable partners. From alarge number of rice varieties, the communities selected the three most suitable ones during on-farmdemonstrations. AAS started selling foundation seed of these varieties in three-kilogram bags toresource-poor farmers groups on a seasonal basis, and trained them in the field. Women’s groupsreceived training on post-harvest, while other villagers learnt about quality seed through the regularprogramme of field days and by interacting with the community seed producers. It was observed thatthe farmers-produced quality seed easily fetched some 25% higher price than common farm-saved seed.At the same time, community members’ exchanges of seed or seedlings for good consumption rice,functioned more as social glue than as a profit-making business. Once local capacity is built, thesystems showed promising signs of sustainability by recovering costs through the production and salesof foundation seed. By 2004, modern rice varieties have reached about 20000 farmers through theinvolvement a similar number of seed producers.In Bangladesh under the PETRRA project, depending on the variety and local conditions, farmersassigned between 30-70% of their field to rice seed production. Each seed-producing household usedtheir own specific strategy to produce, store, consume, sell and exchange seed or seedlings. The projectimpact assessment was conducted by Mele (2005), who reported that the farmers kept about 10-20% ofthe seed they produced, and sold or exchanged the rest within the community. From 2001 to 2004,exchange of seed increased from 5% to more than 30% in the project area.Banu et al. (2004) studied that 64% of Bangladeshi farmers used their own wheat seed year after year,or 26% purchased from other farmers in local markets. Only 10% of the seed is used to purchase from14