Abstract
Contemporary approaches to market-oriented agricultural development focus on increasing production and economic efficiency to improve livelihoods and well-being. For seed system development, this has meant a focus on seed value chains predicated on standardized economic transactions and improved variety seeds. Building formal seed systems requires establishing and strengthening social institutions that reflect the market-oriented values of efficiency and standardization, institutions that often do not currently exist in many local and informal seed systems. This paper describes and analyzes efforts to develop formal seed systems in Sahelian West Africa over the past 10 years, and identifies the impacts for farmers of the social institutions that constitute formal seed systems. Using qualitative and spatial data and analysis, the paper characterizes farmers’ and communities’ experiences with seed access through the newly established formal seed system. The results demonstrate that the social and spatial extents of the formal and informal seed systems are extended and integrated through social institutions that reflect values inherent in both systems. The impacts of current market-oriented agricultural development projects are, therefore, more than in the past, in part because the social institutions associated with them are less singular in their vision for productive and economic efficiency.
Highlights
The contemporary dominant discourse of market-oriented agricultural development overwhelmingly champions the combinatory power of scientifically and economically efficient approaches to agricultural production, framing them as a preferable and inevitable evolution from “unimproved”, non-market-based inputs and systems (Toenniessen et al 2008; Pingali 2010)
The social institutions of informal seed systems in Sahelian West Africa emphasize sharing within families and communities, and economic arrangements that are negotiated in local marketplaces
As farmers have experienced the impacts of the new social institutions associated with the formal market-oriented seed systems established in Sahelian West Africa over the past 10 years, individuals and communities have begun to differentiate among these institutions and to engage with them in ways that fit local values, needs, and priorities
Summary
The contemporary dominant discourse of market-oriented agricultural development overwhelmingly champions the combinatory power of scientifically and economically efficient approaches to agricultural production, framing them as a preferable and inevitable evolution from “unimproved”, non-market-based inputs and systems (Toenniessen et al 2008; Pingali 2010). The intentions of market-oriented agricultural development programs, especially those led by public and non-governmental organizations, focus on improving livelihoods and food security for the poor, the emphasis on yield gaps and related inefficiencies suggests a narrow view of “progress” that often does not relate to complex and varied local realities (Pingali and Rosegrant 1995; Pradhan et al 2015) This can lead to an either (or) of current and changing agrarian systems, in which traditional and adaptive actions by farmers and communities are evaluated based on whether or not they engage with economic arrangements and technologies like the improved variety seeds that have characterized the modern, post-Green Revolution period of agricultural development. Based on diverse social priorities and values in the region, farmers and communities are engaging with new seed value chains in ways that allow for diversification and integration between their existing social institutions and the new institutions being established through market-oriented development projects
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