Sustainable and successful seed sector development only happens when the entrepreneurial spirit and skills of farmers and other private sector stakeholders are leveraged for innovation and collaboration. Developing and nurturing these skills is a key aim of ISSD and partners.

BENEFIT-ISSD Ethiopia facilitates learning about variety suitability and farmers’ preferences across regions. Through participatory methods, farmers lead the testing and validation of varieties, with their experiences guiding variety development and deployment. 

“We would never have got the Certificate of Competence if we had not got the training and support from ISSD” Ato Tesfaye Babiso, Chairperson – Fate Dicha SPC Lessons from the previous ISSD Ethiopia phase revealed that the local seed business (LSB) development approach (focusing on seed producer cooperatives, or SPCs) is gaining more recognition…

This (Oromo language, with English elements) newsletter presents recent activities and achievements of the regional team in the first half of 2018 across the various programme components Download the newsletter here

BENEFIT partners jointly delivered training of trainers on production, management and marketing of sesame for agricultural researchers from May 28-30, 2018 at Gebar Shire Hotel, Shire town. A total of 22 researchers from Humera and Shire Maytsebri agricultural research centers which are established on the sesame potential areas took the training of trainers organized by…

While much progress has been made through collaborative activities facilitated by ISSD Ethiopia, a multi-stakeholder session highlighted more needs to be done to strengthen the seed sector.

BENEFIT–ISSD organized a three-day training on ISSD Guiding Principles and Approaches on April 17-19, 2018, in Bishoftu town for project staff from all regional project units.

The effectiveness of other inputs like fertilizer and irrigation depend largely on using quality seed. Several lines of evidence indicate that nearly 50% of crop productivity relies on the availability and utilization of quality seed.