Seed unions enlist farmer cooperatives to dramatically scale wheat seed production.

A sunny November day brings hundreds of seed producers to Doyogena, a scenic highland village in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNP). The visitors form a bustling line to collect more than $90 each, on average, in profits from representatives of the Zereta Kembata Seed Multiplication and Marketing Union.

“The union collects certified seed of wheat varieties grown by more than 1,100 farmers, several hundred of whom are women, belonging to 8 farmer cooperatives,” said Yosef Balewold, the general manager of Zereta Kembata.

Pitted against a yearly onslaught of fast-evolving fungal diseases that can infect as much as $200 million worth of the crop they are growing, over 75,000 small-scale wheat farmers in Ethiopia’s 4 major wheat-growing regions gained access by late 2017 to a vital asset: over 400 tons of new, disease resistant wheat seed, much of it produced by other farmers.

Marketed in tandem with science-based recommendations for growing wheat, Ethiopia’s annual seed supply has steadily increased since 2014 through the Wheat Seed Scaling Initiative, led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

“We’re energizing and diversifying Ethiopia’s wheat seed sector, partly by involving and benefitting both formal and farmer seed producers, including women and men,” said Bekele Abeyo, a CIMMYT scientist who leads the project.

Owing to the rapid rise of new and deadly strains of stem and yellow rust, farmers must swiftly begin to sow a range of varieties bearing new resistant genes, but limited access to the seed has been a bottleneck, according to Abeyo.

In addition to assisting government-managed seed enterprises and 4 private seed producers, CIMMYT supports 10 farmer cooperative unions that purchase, pack, and sell the seed grown by numerous primary cooperatives, as well as 12 farmer seed producer associations, including 4 women’s groups, who profit from growing and selling quality seed of the new varieties.

Women seize chance to advance

The Tembo Awtena Women’s Seed Producers Association in Angacha District, SNNP, began producing wheat seed for sale in 2015, with support from the Wheat Seed Scaling Initiative.

“In 2016, with support from CIMMYT, we sold more than $7,400 worth of seed,” said Amarech Desta, Tembo Awtena chairwoman, adding that news of the association’s success had attracted 30 additional women farmers in 2017, bringing the total membership to 133.

Desalech Ashamo, an association member who is a single head of a household, received nearly $300 for the seed she grew in 2017 and used the earnings to paint her house. “A big advantage is that all our seed is sold in one lot, rather than piecemeal, so we receive a lump sum that can be used for a significant household project.”

Tembo Awtena members are especially pleased at being one of the three women’s seed production groups in the Oromia and SNNP regions to receive seed threshers through the Initiative. Association members had been threshing the wheat seed manually, a long and laborious process, according to Desta. “With the new machine, we will be able thresh in one hour what would take us three days by hand,” she said.

Partners:

The success of the Wheat Seed Scaling Initiative depends on the commitment and contributions of diverse national and global partners, including key partner Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research. The work is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Other important partners include state and district level officials in the Amhara, Oromia, SNNP, and Tigray regions. Most of the varieties come from breeding lines from CIMMYT and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA); a number of varieties were developed through the Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat project, led by Cornell University and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID).

This story is part of CIMMYT's 2017 Annual Report.