Rice Seeds: A Study of Availability and Accessibility in Bangladesh and India

Abstract

The challenges in rice seeds availability and accessibility in India and Bangladesh can be divided into two broader categories; one is the domestic constraints which includes infrastructural, administrative, financial and other structural gaps. And second is the constraint in the cross border movements of the seeds this can be due to several reasons as listed in the study, such as standards, laboratory requirements and other such issues. Therefore, there is a need for set of initiatives to independently tackle each of these issues.The study ponders over each of the issues in-depth and comes out with a set of recommendations for both India and Bangladesh for facilitating and enhancing the bilateral trade and knowledge sharing on HYV rice seeds.Some of the key recommendations are as follows: 1. The study urges governments of both the countries to take/ensure initiatives to improve the situation of availability and accessibility of rice seeds in local markets are sustained and further strengthened in especially in areas suffering from low seed replacement rates. 2. Seed dynamics has significantly changed over the last few decades. Seed production and certification seems constrained by lack of government capacity to produce and market seeds. Facilitating the increased role of private sector in the rice seeds market is the need of this hour. 3. For enhancing the cooperation between the two countries which may help in addressing many of the factors that constraint availability, there is a need to identify specific areas of cooperation. For instance one such initiative could be mutual recognition of certificates and capacity building programmes. In the coming times India and Bangladesh needs to fasten their steps towards formalising trade in rice seeds between the two countries.