Abstract
Seed system development in the developing world, especially in Africa, has become a political space. This article analyzes current Ethiopian seed politics in light of the historical dynamics of national and international seed system politics and developments. Drawing on multiple power analysis approaches and employing the lens of “international seed regimes,” the article characterizes the historical pattern of seed regimes in Ethiopia. While colonial territories underwent three historical seed regime patterns—the first colonial seed regime, the second post-WWII public seed regime, and the third post-1980s corporate-based neoliberal seed regime, Ethiopia has only experienced one of these. Until the 1950s, when the first US government's development assistance program—the Point 4 Program—enabled the second government-led seed regime to emerge, the farmers' seed systems remained the only seed innovation and supply system. The first colonial seed regime never took hold as the country remained uncolonized, and the government has hitherto resisted the third corporate-based neoliberal seed regime. In the current conjuncture in the contemporary Ethiopian seed regime, four different approaches to pluralistic seed system development are competing: (1) government-led formalization, (2) private-led formalization, (3) farmer-based localization, and (4) community-based integrative seed system developments. The Pluralistic Seed System Development Strategy (PSSDS) from 2013 is a uniquely diverse approach to seed system development internationally; however, it has yet to realize its equity and sustainability potential. This study shows that the agricultural modernization dependency and government-led formal seed systems development have sidelined opportunities to tap into the strength of other alternatives identified in the PSSDS. In conclusion, an integrative and inclusive seed sector is possible if the government takes leadership and removes the current political, organizational, and economic barriers for developing a truly pluralistic seed system.
Highlights
Calls for zero hunger, poverty eradication, and adaptation to climate change have increased the focus on seeds and seed system development in sub-Saharan Africa
This study is a follow-up to a thorough investigation of the performances of different seed systems in two districts in the central highlands of Ethiopia, as mentioned in the introduction section
The first colonial seed regime never took hold, and the third corporate seed regime has never been anchored in the formal seed system
Summary
Calls for zero hunger, poverty eradication, and adaptation to climate change have increased the focus on seeds and seed system development in sub-Saharan Africa. The seed regime approach can reveal how these changes occurred, who has gained and who has lost, implicating various power relations between diverse actors As part of this analysis, historicizing institutional development allows to examine how the prior history of conflict or cooperation, the incentives for actors to participate, power and resource imbalances, governance and institutional design, shared narratives, interests, and politics have shaped the Ethiopian seed system development (McCann, 2005; Mulesa and Westengen, 2020). Critical questions about the overall direction and diversity of technical and institutional innovation pathways, their distributional consequences, and the extent of democratic inclusion in decisions about the turning point in Ethiopia’s seed policy reveal that the agricultural modernization dependency ignores opportunities to tap into the strength of the farmers’ seed systems, even after their official recognition by the PSSDS in 2013 and after decades of an ineffective formal seed system
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