Nairobi, Kenya
August 20, 2008
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Dr.
Joe DeVries, director PASS and Jane Ininda compare bean
varieties at local market. |
Source:
AGRA Update
AGRA’s Program for Africa’s Seed
Systems is a new venture in African agriculture whose mission is
to increase income, improve food security, and reduce poverty by
promoting the development of a seed system that delivers new
crop technology to farmers in an efficient, equitable, and
sustainable manner.
PASS prioritizes getting funds to key individuals and agencies
working directly with Africa’s farmers on developing new crop
varieties, producing new seeds, and developing new delivery
systems for getting critical inputs to smallholder farmers.
PASS is funding the development of new varieties of beans,
cassava, cowpea, maize, rice, sweet potato and sorghum in 12
countries. Our crop development uses conventional breeding, and
relies upon close collaboration between plant breeders and
farmers. It pays special attention to conserving the great
diversity of Africa’s crop varieties and cropping systems, and
in many cases makes use of this biodiversity in developing new,
higher-yielding varieties.
Circulating widely and working with front-line practitioners
across a 13-country program area, in 2007, PASS
Program Officers developed 43 grants totaling US$36,801,778, all
aimed at improving crop yields under Africa’s
challenging farming conditions. Grants made by PASS in 2007 will
train 80 new African plant breeders to the PhD level and
increase yields of eight important food crops in six African
countries.
Already, PASS-funded activities have produced over 400 MT of
improved seed and trained over 400 village-level
distributors of seed in professional business practices. Equally
important, PASS activities have communicated
an exciting message to a generation of agriculturalists working
in both the public and private sectors in Africa that now is the
time to bring forward new ideas for increasing food
production—which until now have remained only dreams.
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AGRA
supports private seed companies across Africa. |
In its first year of operation,
PASS has breathed new life into Africa’s hopes for a green
revolution based on increased harvests among its millions of
hard-working small-scale farmers. PASS works along a value chain
that begins with newly-trained African crop scientists,
continues with funds for breeding new crop varieties, and
achieves impact in the lives of farmers through a vigorous
campaign of seed production and supply of agricultural inputs at
village level.
PASS makes carefully targeted grants along a “value chain” of
interdependent activities which includes:
“Education for African
Crop Improvement” (EACI), which targets funds for
education and training, especially MSc and PhD fellowships
for plant breeders and other crop scientists;
“Fund for Improvement and Adoption of African Crops”
(FIAAC), which makes targeted grants to individual
breeders and their support teams to develop and popularize
improved crop varieties of Africa’s major food crops;
“Seed Production for Africa” (SEPA), which provides
grant support and equity investments for the emergence of
private, African seed companies and other seed dissemination
activities;
“Agro-dealer Development Program” (ADP), which
provides training and credit to establish and support the
growth of private, village-based agrodealers who are a
primary conduit of seeds, and other agricultural inputs plus
knowledge directly to smallholder farmers to increase their
productivity and incomes. It builds and develops networks of
certified agro-dealers to enhance the quality, volume and
range of seeds sold. This will result in a significant
increase in adoption of improved crop varieties.
Complete newsletter:
http://www.seedquest.com/News/releases/2008/pdf/23442.pdf
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