ICARDA's Research Portfolio
International Cooperation
Foreword
Highlights of the Year
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ICARDA's Research Portfolio
Theme 5. Institutional Strengthening
  Project 5.1. Strengthening National Seed Systems in Central and West Asia and North
Africa
 

When seed reaches farmers, it is the end product of a long process. ICARDA's role does not end with the development of an improved variety. The difficult task of distributing the seed to farmers throughout the CWANA region remains, with a special need to reach the region's numerous small-scale farmers. The Center's Seed Unit collaborates with national seed programs to address seed supply constraints, providing the backstopping and human resource development for cost-efficient and effective seed systems. In 2002, Afghanistan's immediate and long-term agricultural needs for seed were addressed, by the ICARDA-led Future Harvest Consortium to Rebuild Agriculture in Afghanistan. Also, ICARDA helped promote free trade in quality seed in the region by organizing a workshop which addressed national seed policy laws and regulations.

Future Harvest Consortium: helping to restore agriculture in Afghanistan

With funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the ICARDA-led Future Harvest Consortium to Rebuild Agriculture in Afghanistan (FHCRAA) was formed in January 2002 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A program to restore Afghanistan's agricultural production systems was immediately implemented.
     The Consortium is a joint effort of the International Agricultural Research Centers of the CGIAR, other international research and development organizations, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, United States universities, several international and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in Afghanistan, and the Afghan Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MOAL).

Addressing short-term needs
An immediate, short-term need was the provision of seed, to enable Afghan farmers to sow their spring crop. Therefore, the Consortium made available a total of 3,500 tonnes of seeds of two adapted wheat varieties. Procured in Pakistan and transported to Kabul by the UN World Food Programme (WFP), and then, via local transporters, to NGOs in the interior of the country, the seed reached around 70,000 farming families in eight provinces. The International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) later provided fertilizer.
During the fall planting season, the Consortium arranged for the delivery of almost 5,000 tonnes of wheat seed. This seed was produced, under contract, by selected farmers in Afghanistan, and a rigorous quality-control program was established. Approximately 100,000 farming families received the seed. The seed production, cleaning and post-harvest operations provided cash incomes for a large number of families. Seeds of a variety of other crops (such as rice, barley, alfalfa, clover, chickpea and flax) were also procured for fall planting in 2002 and spring planting in 2003.


The first ICARDAÐled Future Harvest Consortium mission to Kabul, Afghanistan, in March. From left, Dr Tony van Gastel, Head, ICARDA Seed Unit; Mr Abdul Rahman Manan, Chief Advisor, Future Harvest Consortium; Dr Larry Paulson, Agricultural Development Officer, United States Agency for International Development (USAID); Dr Nasrat Wassimi, Executive Manager, Future Harvest Consortium; Dr Mahmoud Solh, Assistant Director General, International Cooperation, ICARDA; and Dr Ray Morton, Senior Policy Advisor, USAID.

High-quality wheat seed, provided by the Consortium, being unloaded in Afghanistan.
Cleaning seed near Kabul, a source of cash income for farm families, particularly war widows.

The war and conflict left most of the research stations in Afghanistan destroyed or abandoned (above). As part of research infrastructure rebuilding, the ICARDA-led Consortium, with financial support from USAID, was successful in 2002 in refurbishing six research stations in five provinces (Kabul, Baghlan, Kunduz, Takhar and Nangahar) in Afghanistan (bottom, refurbished research station at Darul Aman, Kabul).
Rebuilding Research Stations
In the early 1970s there were 22 agricultural research stations in Afghanistan. Most of them have been abandoned, bombed, looted or confiscated by warlords. ICARDA has been successful in refurbishing six stations in five provinces (Kabul, Baghlan, Kunduz, Takhar, and Nangahar). The refurbished agricultural stations serve as launching points for hundreds of village seed enterprises (VSEs) throughout Afghanistan. VSEs provide the means for small business development, new markets, crop improvement, technology transfer, training and educational opportunities for Afghan farmers. The stations are also essential components in the development of crop diversification.
     Seed health and testing laboratories are being re-installed along with meteorological equipment to provide accurate weather data. Training courses for Afghan men and women are ensuring that the stations have skilled and qualified staff now and for the future.
Long-term interventions
To provide the basis for long-term strategies of sustainable agricultural development, ICARDA fielded needs assessment teams in four areas: seed systems and crop improvement; livestock, forage and rangelands; soil and water; and horticulture. Probably the first scientific teams to enter Afghanistan, the general approach of these experts was first to assess the situation on the ground, through discussions with officials, donors, and international organizations. Field surveys in provinces and wrap-up meetings with all stakeholders then followed. Summaries of need assessments are available on ICARDA's website (www.icarda.cgiar.org), but the general conclusion drawn

Discussing survey questionnaires with enumerators from the Afghan Survey Unit in Peshawar.
was that all the sectors of Afghanistan's agricultural system are in urgent need of rehabilitation.
     The ICARDA Seed Unit provided technical support to the Seed Systems and Crop Improvement Needs Assessment team, including the selection of experts, design of survey questionnaires, training of enumerators and data analysis. The survey was conducted by the Afghan Survey Unit (ASU), whose enumerators have long-standing experience in carrying out agricultural surveys for many development agencies. In six provinces within the country's six agricultural regions, a total of 390 households were randomly selected and interviewed. As food security was its primary focus, the survey covered seven major food crops (irrigated wheat, rainfed wheat, barley, potato, maize, rice and chickpea).
     The survey showed that, given appropriate support, Afghan farmers could produce much of the country's food requirements. Moreover, there seems to be increasing scope for Afghan farmers to adopt new varieties: those they currently have are mostly of local origin. Given the large areas cultivated with rainfed wheat, the continuing drought and the shortage of irrigation water, it is important to intensify efforts to develop more efficient varieties of this crop. Also, seed production should focus on quality enhancement and not on quantity, since households have the capacity to meet a high proportion of their seed needs from village sources. Alternative seed systems should, therefore, be developed within communities to produce and make available high-quality seed. Since most farmers posses their own land, or can practice sharecropping, access to water resources is more important than access to land itself.
     As the foundation for broadening farmers' future production options, 53 tonnes of source seed from a large number of wheat, barley, lentil, chickpea and vetch varieties were provided to Afghanistan for evaluation and testing in cooperation with researchers and farmers. This included landraces and germplasm stored in ICARDA's genebank.
     To improve production of potato-an important cash crop for farmers in Afghanistan—the International Potato Center is running a Jalalabad-based potato multiplication program. This aims to make healthy potato planting material of improved and adapted varieties available to Afghan farmers. In addition, planting material from a number of tree crops (almond, pistachio, apricot, walnut and peach) has also been procured, and nurseries have been established in Darul Aman (near Kabul) and at the Taloqan Research station. These activities are being carried out in close cooperation with the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI).

     In order to rebuild a normal seed industry, variety maintenance of important varieties of wheat and barley and an international nursery testing program have been initiated. This program involved the planting of international nurseries, composed of 400 kg of seed-wheat (bread and durum), barley, chickpea, lentil, faba bean and forage legumes-planted in replicated yield trials. Several initiatives have been undertaken to support a decentralized seed production system. These include the multiplication of 200 Mt of seed by farmers, and arrangements with NGOs involved in the fall distribution to supervise 10-15 progressive farmers as seed producers.


Rehabilitated farm building near Taloqan in Takhar province

     A Code of Conduct has been drawn up to guide all parties involved in the provision of seed to rebuild Afghanistan's agricultural sector. As the first step, a workshop held in May brought together around 80 participants from international and Afghan institutions. As the country moves from dependence on emergency assistance to sustainable agricultural development, the Code of Conduct developed will form the basis for a much-needed national seed policy and regulatory framework for Afghanistan.
     The Consortium is also assisting the MOAL in undertaking regulatory functions related to the seed industry. Equipment has been provided for seed testing and seed-health testing, to ensure seed quality and to help enforce quarantine measures at ports of entry (Herat, Jalalabad and Kabul).
     The long conflict in Afghanistan resulted in the breakdown of educational systems, and an entire generation of young people is deprived of formal education. The Future Harvest Consortium has initiated training programs, which began with a field-based course on seed production practices for field crops, held in Kabul. More than 70 trainees were exposed to modern seed-production practices. The course supported ongoing activities to upgrade grain fields, and began the training of a new generation of farmers and researchers. The rebuilding of Afghanistan's agricultural sector has only just begun; it requires a long-term commitment.

Cooperation could lead to a common market for seed
CWANA faces the serious challenge of achieving national food security while reducing environmental degradation and depletion of its natural resource base. Seed plays a critical role in the transfer of all science-based, new agricultural technologies to farmers, and effective seed industries form the basis of any strategy to improve food production. Each country is attempting to build its own national seed program in isolation. More importantly, each national seed industry faces different regulations, standards and procedures, which often act as barriers to regional integration.

     Since the mid-1980s, there has been a strong movement towards economic liberalization; and, policy shifts related to economic development have caused many changes in the seed industry. Such changes include (1) policy and regulatory reforms, to reduce government involvement in seed production and allow the participation of the private sector and other actors; (2) globalization of the seed industry in cases where seeds are considered to be a strategic commodity for international trade; and (3) harmonization initiatives to create regional markets to attract investment in the seed sector.
     There is now a strong trend towards political and

Participants of the workshop entitled "Review of National Seed Systems and Regulations in Central and West Asia,"Karaj, Iran, 2-3 November 2002.
socioeconomic integration at the sub- and/or supra-regional levels, to promote freer movement of goods and services. Within this context, harmonization of policy laws and regulations for the freer movement of crop varieties and seed throughout Central and West Asia could lead to the establishment of a common regional market. This might, in turn, attract foreign and domestic private investment and help to create a competitive, efficient, and sustainable seed industry, allowing returns on investments in agricultural research and development to be realized.
     Dryland agricultural systems predominate in CWANA, leading to the use of similar crops, varieties and seeds. This forms a strong basis for the required regional collaboration. To help promote free trade in quality seed, ICARDA and its NARS partners organized a regional workshop entitled "Review of National Seed Systems and Regulations in Central and West Asia," held at Karaj, Iran, on 2-3 November 2002.
     The Karaj workshop explored opportunities for harmonizing seed policy laws and regulations, and was attended by senior managers and policy makers from Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan. Participants endorsed the harmonization initiative, and agreed to take the first step in the process by organizing an in-depth review of policies, laws, and regulations pertaining to the seed sector in each country. The review will be undertaken by each country and will include: (1) variety regulations (variety release and registration procedures); (2) seed regulations (certification procedures and standards); (3) seed trade regulations (seed import/export procedures); (4) phytosanitary regulations; (5) plant variety protection; and (6) regional seed policy initiatives. The reviews will be further discussed through consultative meetings among the stakeholders at national and regional levels, in order to reach a final agreement at the regional level.
     In laying foundations for the integration of agriculture in the region, which will both allow the development of a regional common market for seeds and give farmers better access to science-based crop varieties and seeds across the region, the meeting had both historical and political significance.