IN THE larger polemical issue of whether or not GM seeds are the ‘devil’s brew’ or the ‘silver bullet’, the fact that the overwhelming majority of farmers who grow wheat, rice, pulses and oilseeds continue to use farm saved seeds has been lost sight of. As a recent document of the Seeds Division of the Agriculture ministry points out, despite the implementation of the organised seed programme since the mid sixties, the seed replacement rate is still in the range of 15-20 per cent. The imperative of improving the stock of this farm saved seeds for enhancing crop production/productivity cannot be underestimated.
Therefore, if even a fraction of the resources of the Agriculture ministries at the Centre and states is devoted to the improvement of seeds at the farmer’s level, the impact will be much greater, and definitely more widespread. The only way this can happen is by training the farmers themselves on the different techniques of quality seed production and its scientific storage. This involves using the farmer’s traditional skills and knowledge as the base, and supplementing it with modern techniques.
This is the conceptual background to the Seed Village scheme, which is gaining wide acceptance across states because it has the potential of extending direct and immediate benefit to the farmers. The state governments implement this programme in collaboration with the state agriculture universities, state seed corporations, Krishi Vigyan Kendras, farmer’s co-operatives, and in some cases the command area development corporations.
The process starts by any one of the ‘implementing agencies’ identifying compact areas in which the soil is conducive and the farmers are willing and have a tradition of raising seeds. The ideal group size of farmers participating in the programme ranges from fifty to seventy. However, in exceptional cases it may go up to a hundred farmers as well. The caveat is that the state government must ensure that the project areas are clearly and separately demarkable, and that if any implementing agency is in the business of commercial seed production, it will keep the project areas under this scheme insulated from the commercial scale production activity.
The scheme envisages that the project area should receive assistance for a period of two years so that the processes and techniques are thoroughly ingrained, and they are capable of continuing the seed production independently, without any need for external assistance or intervention.
Once the Seed Villages and the willing farmers have been selected, the crop varieties normally grown in the area will be decided in consultation with the farmers, the implementing agency has the responsibility of distributing foundation/certified seeds to the selected farmers for half an acre per farmer at 50 per cent of the cost. This ensures that the farmer has a dual advantage: his costs are lowered, and the quality is assured.
The responsibility for ensuring the supply of these seeds lies principally with the National Seeds Corporation of India (NSCI), but in many cases it works in close collaboration with the state seed corporations and the state agriculture universities.
Hands-on-training:
The entire focus is on ‘hands-on-training’. The first part of the three day training programme is given at the time of sowing of the crop. On this day, the farmers are given basic orientation about the seed production techniques, isolation distance, sowing methods and other agronomic practices to be adopted for the particular crop. It is obvious that the practices for wheat will be different from those of potato, rice and mustard!
The second part of the module is organised at the ‘flowering’ stage of the crop. They are trained to identify ‘off-types’ and ‘rogues’ and weed them out from the seed plots to ensure the quality of seed production. Further inputs on relevant agronomic practices, plant protection measures and appropriate harvesting methods are also provided.
The final part of the training programme is organised after the harvest, and at the time of seed processing to impart knowledge on cleaning, grading, treating, storage and the packaging aspects of seeds. Farmers are also taught how to draw a representative seed sample and send it for seed testing at a laboratory. Many farmers also learn to test the efficacy of their seeds by observing the ‘germination pattern’.
Where the implementing agency observes that the farmers are showing a keen interest in the process, they facilitate the formation of an SHG or an FIG and encourage them to establish a seed processing unit for which technical and financial support is available. A bankable scheme with a back ended support of up to 25 per cent can be prepared and submitted to the local bank.
However, all farmers are given training and financial support for proper storage. The idea is that seed produced in these Seed Villages should be preserved till the next sowing season. In order to encourage farmers to develop storage capacity of appropriate quality, support will be provided to encourage farmers to buy or prepare their own Pusa Bin/Mud Bin/Paper pulp Bin for storage, which are superior to the traditional straw/straw-mud structures, which have been used conventionally.
The assistance to SC/ST farmers is provided at 33 per cent of the project cost, while for the others it is 25 per cent, but this does spur the farmer to go in for storage bins, which ensure that the seed that has been prepared so carefully is safe from insects, rodents and other pollutants, besides of course extending the active life of the seed.
AgriMatters hopes that this scheme takes off for many reasons: it is replicable, affordable, labour intensive, eco-friendly and is well suited to the needs of the marginal and the small farmer. Also, while the bigger farmer can afford to buy seeds produced by the larger companies, including the MNCs, for the marginal and small farmer, quality seeds ensure survival, livelihood and the realistic expectation of a better harvest! This also reduces his dependence on external inputs, and makes his agricultural operation more viable.
