Securing Access to Seed: Social Relations and Sorghum Seed Exchange in Eastern Ethiopia

McGuire, Shawn

doi:10.1007/s10745-007-9143-4

Cited by 106 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The distribution of seed acquisition events across the main categories of social relationships over the two cropping seasons indicates that all farmers do not have the same ability to mobilize these emergency partners and to cope with climate unpredictability (Louette et al 1997, McGuire 2008. This result is supported by our ethnographic fieldwork, during which we observed that farmers belonging to households of the intermediate wealth stratum (generally young couples) were often those who were the most assisted.…”

Section: Social Inequalities In Facing Climatic Shocksmentioning

confidence: 51%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Good year, bad year: changing strategies, changing networks? A two-year study on seed acquisition in northern Cameroon

Violon¹,

Thomas²,

Garine³

2016

E&S

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

ABSTRACT. Analysis of seed exchange networks at a single point in time may reify sporadic relations into apparently fixed and longlasting ones. In northern Cameroon, where environment is not only strongly seasonal but also shows unpredictable interannual variation, farmers' social networks are flexible from year to year. When adjusting their strategies, Tupuri farmers do not systematically solicit the same partners to acquire the desired propagules. Seed acquisitions documented during a single cropping season may thus not accurately reflect the underlying larger social network that can be mobilized at the local level. To test this hypothesis, we documented, at the outset of two cropping seasons (2010 and 2011), the relationships through which seeds were acquired by the members of 16 households in a Tupuri community. In 2011, farmers faced sudden failure of the rains and had to solicit distant relatives, highlighting their ability to quickly trigger specific social relations to acquire necessary seeding material. Observing the same set of individuals during two successive years and the seed sources they solicited in each year enabled us to discriminate repeated relations from sporadic ones. Although farmers did not acquire seeds from the same individuals from one year to the next, they relied on quite similar relational categories of people. However, the worse weather conditions during the second year led to (1) a shift from red sorghum seeds to pearl millet seeds, (2) a geographical extension of the network, and (3) an increased participation of women in seed acquisitions. In critical situations, women mobilized their own kin almost exclusively. We suggest that studying the seed acquisition network over a single year provides a misrepresentation of the underlying social network. Depending on the difficulties farmers face, they may occasionally call on relationships that transcend the local relationships used each year.

show abstract

Section: Social Inequalities In Facing Climatic Shocksmentioning

confidence: 51%

“…Because of the patrilocal system, mothers and daughters can live in distant locations. In contrast, neighbors were not more frequently sought out in times of distress, but they represent a constant and basic source for all daily life exchanges (McGuire 2008).…”

Section: Cereal Substitution and Resilience Of The Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Good year, bad year: changing strategies, changing networks? A two-year study on seed acquisition in northern Cameroon

Violon¹,

Thomas²,

Garine³

2016

E&S

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Other quantitative studies report comparable conclusions: in Malawi, Uganda, Ethiopia, Burundi, Ethiopia-the very poor are tied relatively more to local markets for seed of select crops than their wealthier neighbors (David and Sperling 1999;McGuire 2008;Sperling 1994). Future research will explore further the relationships between wealth (and farm area) and seed source use.…”

Section: Who Uses Specific Channels With Focus On Local Marketsmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…Empirically, where do farmers get the planting materials they sow, season after season, for which crops, where, on what scale? Multiple descriptions of seed system use do exist in the refereed and particularly grey literature -especially from anthropologists and agricultural economists (Badstue 2006;McGuire 2008;Nagarajan et al 2007). Existing studies tend to be of two types 3 : those that focus on intensive single crop analyses and often at a single site (e.g., Christinck 2002) or relatively sweeping regional and national analyses, which look at broad household socio-economic parameters and give insight on what might be happening in select seed-related domains (e.g., Nordhagen and Pascual 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seed systems smallholder farmers use

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Seed can be an important entry point for promoting productivity, nutrition and resilience among smallholder farmers. While investments have primarily focused on strengthening the formal sector, this article documents the degree to which the informal sector remains the core for seed acquisition, especially in Africa. Conclusions drawn from a uniquely comprehensive data set, 9660 observations across six countries and covering 40 crops, show that farmers access 90.2 % of their seed from informal systems with 50.9 % of that deriving from local markets. Further, 55 % of seed is paid for by cash, indicating that smallholders are already making important investments in this arena. Targeted interventions are proposed for rendering formal and informal seed sector more smallholder-responsive and for scaling up positive impacts.

show abstract

“…In this way, customers could select disease-free planting material (Gibson et al 2000), had the benefit of judging the quality of the planting material and, by purchasing, ensured the system is sustained year after year. Bartering and mutual aid still occurred but, as with most crops (McGuire 2008), selling was the norm. A multiplier commonly supplied 1-2 bundles of vines to each of ~50 customers in 2013.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Delivering New Technologies to the Tanzanian Sweetpotato Crop Through Its Informal Seed System

Lukonge¹,

Gibson

Laizer³

et al. 2015

Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Delivering new technologies to the Tanzanian sweetpotato crop through its informal seed systemThe concept of integrated seed sector development (ISSD) to-type. Tanzania has the second biggest production (3.0 x 10 6 MT) in Africa after Nigeria (3.4 x 10 6 MT). Sweetpotato is the third largest crop by weight (FAOSTAT 2014) and the Great Lakes region is a major area of production where, as throughout Africa, the crop is especially important to smallholders (Kapinga et al. 1995). There is a very long dry season there, crops being harvested as they reach maturity and to avoid loss through desiccation and weevil damage, so most farmers have no vines to plant when the rains come. Consequently, insufficient quality planting material at the start of the rainy season is a prime constraint on production there (Kapinga et al. 1995;Namanda et al. 2011) as in many African countries Gibson et al. 2009). In the informal seed system of sweetpotato, farmers with access to wetlands or land that can be irrigated and the 'skills, talent and gumption' Promoting such changes through interventions aimed at multipliers would require fewer resources, be self-maintaining and more sustainable than interventions aimed at sweetpotato farmers in general. It would also be consistent with the ISSD approach. The purpose of this paper is to describe the range and capacity of the informal sweetpotato seed system to supply vines sustainably to large numbers of farmers in Shinyanga and Meatu districts of the Lake Zone of Tanzania and then to document how the formal sector can supply improvements to it, using small demonstration trials to introduce improved technologies such as: fertilizer to boost vine production;  modern cultivars including OFSP;  RMT including more efficient irrigation.Furthermore, the paper assesses transporting vines from an area where they are easy to grow to sell them in Shinyanga and nearby markets. This longer-distance marketing is a strategy learnt from Uganda (Rachkara et al. 2015), can supplement vines from local multipliers' farms and provide a more comprehensive service. In documenting outcomes, this paper serves as one of the first evidence-based demonstrations that the ISSD approach can deliver improvements efficiently to the informal sector. In this case, delivery of the technologies was by members of a Tanzanian government agricultural research institute, the Agricultural Research Institute (ARI)-Ukiriguru, part of the Lake Zone Agricultural Research and Development Institute (LZARDI). The work is an outcome of many years of experiences by the authors and their institutes to develop a successful strategy for interacting with the sweetpotato vine supply system in order to achieve lasting improvements.

show abstract

Securing Access to Seed: Social Relations and Sorghum Seed Exchange in Eastern Ethiopia

Cited by 106 publications

References 30 publications

Good year, bad year: changing strategies, changing networks? A two-year study on seed acquisition in northern Cameroon

Good year, bad year: changing strategies, changing networks? A two-year study on seed acquisition in northern Cameroon

Seed systems smallholder farmers use

Delivering New Technologies to the Tanzanian Sweetpotato Crop Through Its Informal Seed System

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About