A Retail Market Solves a Relief Dilemma

Here's an agricultural dilemma: When farmers produce seeds for themselves and their community, they're dependent each year on successful harvests. And because they can't gamble with their families' incomes, they seldom investigate new crops, even if different crops might be more nutritive or financially rewarding.

But when farmers depend on commercial seed producers, they're at the mercy of market prices and of decisions made by outsiders regarding which vegetables farmers can plant.

Still, commercial seed producers can bring benefits to a community. They typically develop new, hardier strains of seeds, while farmers' varieties seldom vary. Moreover, farmers' storage facilities are rarely as effective at preserving healthy, insect- and contaminant-free seeds as those maintained by commercial producers.

Commercial seed producers, however, are profit-oriented and don't want competition from individual farmers. So their representatives sometimes discourage local farmers who want to sell seeds in their own communities.

But when natural or manmade disasters strike, all seed producers, both local and commercial, can fail a community. Seed stocks may be destroyed or stolen, and sudden impoverishment of buyers can make profits elusive at best for everyone. At such times, humanitarian organizations distribute seeds to desperate beneficiaries, which helps farmers survive, but it can create dependence on external aid and prevent the development of a community's self-sustainability. Moreover, in an emergency, seeds obtained quickly for emergency distribution can be of poor quality-and they may not be handed out at the optimal time for planting. In addition, commercial suppliers may send aid organizations the seeds they have in greatest quantity or that they wish to promote among potential customers (maize, perhaps), while the community receiving relief requires different varieties, perhaps species that thrive in arid climates (say, sorghum or millet).

Seed fairs resolve many of these conflicting considerations

Seed fairs are arranged for specific days and locations. Sponsors in distressed communities plan the fairs and invite both farmers and commercial seed companies to set up stalls where they will sell seeds that are appropriate for local needs. Aid beneficiaries in the community receive vouchers that they use like money to buy seeds. This lets local farmers choose the varieties and quality they prefer. Seed sellers, in turn, can redeem the vouchers for cash from the fair's sponsor. In this way, seed fairs not only promote the produce of local seed farmers, but the events also infuse cash into a community.

For a fair to be successful, the sponsor must ensure that a variety of seed species is available, and that the supply from sellers won't be too large or too small for the number of beneficiaries who receive vouchers.

Recently, Action Against Hunger held a seed fair in Lira, Uganda. The seeds on sale included pigeon peas, simsim, and sorghum among other varieties, and the fair was held in a camp for internally displaced Ugandans. Vendors were found through advertisements on notice boards and on radio inviting anyone interested to contact the fair's sponsor. In all, five vendors participated: two commercial seed companies already operating in the community and three local farmers.

Vouchers were printed in Kampala and distributed to refugees in Lira (see the 3 samples in the sidebar).

The fair achieved everything we hoped for. Inevitably, of course, there were minor glitches that future events will correct. The chief problem was the inability of vendors and farmers to buy in quantities that were priced differently from a voucher's face value. Some farmers would have preferred to buy larger quantities, others wanted to make smaller purchases.

Nonetheless, farmers could choose which seeds they wanted in terms of variety and, within restrictions, quantity. In addition, the vendors made money they could spend within the community. This, in every sense, was truly seed money to reinvigorate the local economy.