Neither NGO or Multinational
The metal shutter-door screams everytime we slide it up. Inside the one-room office, stacks of financials and research trial reports sit alongside the tea service and our nascent seed bank. The interns settle themselves onto their high chairs and compare notes from their recent trips around Central Tanzania. Hillary analyzes receipts and types into her computer. The all-important fan drowns out the noise from the street and the tailor next door.
After nearly 10 years working in African agriculture, I am exactly where I want to be. I have seen the bare minimum implementation of the Peace Corps, the heavy-handed efforts of a USAID contractor, and the well-meaning struggles of a multinational company. Heshima Seeds has learned from all of them.
NGOs provide farmers with many services ranging from agronomic training to market information. However, they are dependent on grants and philanthropists, meaning every project is time- and resource-limited. Farmers are often shocked to find that a popular program has been cut, or that it is being re-oriented to fit new donor priorities. Institutional memory is lost as NGO workers follow newly-funded projects. This lack of long-term focus fails in seed, where researchers can spend a decade developing a new variety and where early generation seed multiplication must start three or four seasons before the finished seed reaches the farmer.
In comparison, multinationals have well-supported R&D and seed multiplication systems. However, these systems are geared specifically for commercial farmers employing machinery and chemical treatments. Multinationals in Africa only sell their products to the slender segment of (mostly white) commercial farmers or focus on the lucrative hybrid maize segment. Other crops receive minimal attention and resources. In these companies, smallholders hold an unworthy status as a corporate social responsibility talking point.
In our little office, we talk about smallholder farmers every day. We are obsessive about our seeds and our early research. We want our customers to know that we are dedicated to their livelihoods and that we aren’t going anywhere. We’re here to prove that success in the Tanzanian seed industry means both profitable business and social impact.
-Gordon Day
