The world’s leading seed companies must do more to increase smallholder farmers’ access to seeds. This is the conclusion of the recently launched Access to Seeds Index, which ranks leading seed companies on their efforts to improve the productivity of smallholder farmers.

While the US-based multinational DuPont Pioneer ranks highest in a list of global seed companies for field crops, the much smaller East-West Seed leads two separate lists, one for vegetable crops and another ranking regional companies in east Africa.



Access to better seeds could triple agricultural yields, but Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta, who together control more than half (pdf) of seed sales worldwide, traditionally have a poor record of reaching smallholder farmers. A recent study showed that smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa buy the majority of their seeds at local informal markets, and only 2.4% from certified seed companies.



While the global seed industry is active in Latin America, eastern Africa, south Asia and south-east Asia, it remains inactive in almost half of countries in western Africa.

The index, which is funded by the Dutch government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is the first of its type, and aims to inform the debate on the role of seed corporations in food security. One billion people still go to bed hungry, and the bulk of the world’s population growth is expected to take place in the world’s most food-insecure regions.

The index scores companies in several areas. It looks at the strategy and tangible targets in place to reach smallholders, stakeholder engagement, and how companies deal with intellectual property rights. It also looks at efforts in research and breeding, marketing and capacity-building of farmers.

The index is based on publicly available information and a questionnaire that companies were asked to fill in. While seven of 13 regional companies in east Africa shared their data, seven out of 13 multinationals didn’t return the survey.

Praise for smaller seed companies

Ido Verhagen, executive director of the Access to Seeds Index Foundation, says leading companies in the Index view serving smallholder farmers as a business opportunity while lower-rated companies regard it as charity or corporate social responsibility.

East-West Seed, for example, relocated from the Netherlands to Asia and focused on supplying smallholders. “Profit margins are small, yet we are selling to millions of farmers... the numbers will increase with population growth and increasing demand for vegetables due to economic growth in many regions,” says European representative Maaike Groot.

The Index, however, has faced some criticism from Oxfam. While companies earn points if they share some of their plant genetic resources in a charity project they don’t get penalised for having a restrictive patenting policy and maintaining a monopoly on plant genetic materials, says Gigi Manicad, a seed expert with Oxfam Novib, the Dutch branch of Oxfam.

“Due to this flaw in the methodology, a company like [Netherlands-based] Rijk Zwaan is not valued for allowing a breeders exemption for farmers, public research institutions and small seed companies, and is ranked lower than Monsanto, which does not allow the use of patented seeds for future research and breeding,” she says.

Manicad hopes the index will include these issues in future, and have a closer look at the contribution of public breeding institutions and government policy. “The EU and other countries have signed the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. It would be interesting if the index would in future score how companies comply with this treaty.”

In response to the Index being published, DuPont Pioneer says it is committed to improving the livelihoods of at least 3 million farmers by the end of 2020. “They are a piece of the puzzle to strengthening global food security, poverty alleviation and agricultural systems in so many parts of the world,” says European spokesperson József Máté.

He believes seed technology will continue to be critical on a global scale, considering the constraints of limited amounts of arable land, shrinking natural resources and a growing population.