Project News

The third seminar on seed entitled "Experiment and challenges in seed demand assessment; from the view of farmers perspective" was held on 24 February, 2012 at EIAR, jointly organized by EIAR/JICA FRG II and MoA/JICA QSPP Projects. Following the last two seminars, which have discussed the access and quality of seed (refer the back issues: 2010-09-01 and 2011-03-18), the seminar provided a forum to discuss the demand assessment of seed and tried to bring about consensus among stakeholders on what were the issues and what needed to be focused.

Seminar was kicked off with the presentation on the experience in Japan and other countries in seed demand assessments by Professer Yoshiaki Nishikawa of Nagoya University of Japan. Several Ethiopian officials from Agricultural Imput and Marketing Directorate, Plant & Animal Health Regulatory Directorate and Regional Bureau of Agriculture reported the present situations of seed demand assessment in public sector and overview of the draft seed proclamation. Then, the experience in local seed market system were presented by Ethiopian Organic Seed Action and Local Seed Business Project. Participants shared the information and exchanged their ideas/opinion about what were the practical ways to build in farmer's seed demand in the seed system.