Seed Systems Group

Joe DeVries has been at the forefront of African agricultural development for many years.  In the 1980s he built irrigation schemes in the drought-ravaged Sahel.  In the 1990s he designed and led agricultural relief and recovery initiatives in Mozambique and other countries experiencing complex humanitarian emergencies.  He earned a PhD in plant breeding at Cornell University in 1994.  In 1997, he joined The Rockefeller Foundation, and focused on seed systems development as a long-term, sustainable solution to hunger among smallholder farmers.  In 2006, he co-founded the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, designing and  leading the Program for Africa’s Seed Systems.  By 2017, 114 private, African seed companies were producing 143,000 MT of certified seed annually, serving the needs of 15 million smallholder farmers.  In 2019, he established Seed Systems Group, which develops sustainable seed supply in countries which have so been left behind in Africa’s emerging Green Revolution.

Subsistence-level farming in Africa is unsustainable.  As rural populations grow and spread, agricultural lands are depleted and rendered incapable of providing a stable, decent existence.  Poverty and malnutrition spread throughout rural communities, and people lose faith in farming as a livelihood.  This trend is now being worsened by climate change.

It does not have to be this way.  There is a solution to low crop yields and the poverty trap of subsistence farming in Africa.  Farmers in several African countries have recently reversed decades of declining crop yields following the adoption of high-yielding, locally-adapted crop varieties produced by local seed companies. But millions of farmers have been left behind.

We build sustainable, low-cost production and delivery systems for high-yielding, climate-resilient seed of nutritious food crops in areas where this technology remains beyond the reach of smallholder farmers.  If taken to scale, it can end hunger in Africa in our lifetime.

Fifteen African countries where local farmers have no access to seed of improved, climate-resilient seed are home to 320 million people and 38 million farm families.  These countries have an average rate of child malnutrition (stunting) of 38%, and their average rate of absolute poverty is 51%.  Meanwhile, their populations are growing at 2.8% annually, meaning they are doubling every 23 years. 

Agriculture is the main source of income of the vast majority of the people living in these countries, yet they have so far been denied access to the most critical technology to help them grow more food and live better:  high-yielding seed.

African countries which are popular targets for international donor agencies, meanwhile, have largely moved on from subsistence agriculture through the adoption of improved seed.  Meanwhile, the needs of farmers living in countries like Chad, Benin, DR Congo, Madagascar, Eritrea, Guinea, and others have been ignored by the international community.

The left-behind countries of Africa suffer from negative images that are largely unfounded today.  There is a perception problem, compounded by language barriers. 

This form of negligence must now end.  It is time to take off our blinders and end hunger in ALL of Africa.

Throughout history and around the world, rapid increases in agricultural productivity have resulted from the adoption of better seed.  Improved seed works by converting sunlight, water and nutrients into harvest-able portions of the plant more efficiently.  They are resistant to pests and diseases and carry special traits such as drought tolerance and quicker growth. 

After a long delay, some African countries, too, are now experiencing an agricultural transformation as local farmers gain access to higher-yielding, climate-resilient seed.

The biggest hurdle is in linking the latest products from crops research to a functional, affordable delivery system.  Through experienced gained in 14 countries, SSG has perfected the development of seed delivery systems for poor farmers through a series of parallel, systemic investments in:  1) crop variety testing; 2) establishing local, private seed companies; 3) developing a network of input supply shops at village level; and, 4) raising the awareness of the value of improved seed through distribution of small, sample packs, electronic messages, and on-farm demos. 

The approach works by brings together science, learning, and local entrepreneurship for the benefit of poor farmers.  With proof-of-concept in 15 African countries, it is now time to extend this model to the continent's left-behind countries.

This work directly targets a significant proportion – 320 million - of the most vulnerable people on earth.  They are the poor, isolated, often-ignored people who cultivate the land in some of the least known, least-considered countries in the world. 

They are people identified in lofty speeches given by world leaders and proclamations made at summits, but who rarely figure into the funding or actions taken.  They are the people ‘at the end of the line’.  Not only are they poor and isolated, they are rural residents of countries considered to be beyond hope. 

They are far from beyond hope.  They are expert practitioners of the industry that nourishes the world – agriculture.  But they are being marginalized.

Fifty-five percent of them are women who shoulder the double burden of farming and raising of children.  SSG considers them our friends.  We speak their language – farming.  We consult with them regularly regarding which seeds to produce, and where and how to market them. 

Their most immediate need is often simply more food, but in helping them to satisfy that need, we also help them unlock their most accessible economic opportunity – the marketing of surplus foods to urban populations.

Nearly 40 million smallholder farmers live in 15 African countries where seed of improved crop varieties of locally-important food crops is unavailable at local levels.  This means they harvest less from every investment they make in their farming activities, and suffer from long periods when food for a healthy, productive life is insufficient in their households and communities.

Proof-of-concept for our approach to developing seed supply exists through its impact in 13 countries, but so far no one has extended this work into the proposed 15 countries where we now wish to work, and where governments have sought our assistance.

In 2003, after five years of leading The Rockefeller Foundation's work on crop breeding in several African countries, we had developed a number of new, highly-productive crop varieties, and needed a means of producing and marketing them at scale.  We approached one of the large, multi-national seed companies but they weren't interested.  Then it occurred to me that the principals of seed production and marketing didn't need to wait for big corporations.  They could also be taken up by local entrepreneurs and form the basis of a profitable business.  The seed would also be more affordable to a larger number of farmers.

Using Rockefeller funds, I made investments in several start-up African seed companies, and then began creating small, retail shops at village level to supply the seed locally.  The model took off, and soon more poor, smallholder farmers in Africa were able to access high-yielding seed than ever before.

The excitement around seed systems development led to the creation by the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations of AGRA in 2007, which has now successfully implemented the model in 13 countries.  My new organization is dedicated to extending the benefits of higher-yielding, resilient seed to farmers in 15 un-reached countries.

The hunger and poverty that prevails in subsistence farming systems of Africa may be considered "normal" to many people, but this is a pejorative view of the people and communities trapped by this reality.  All farmers everywhere were once limited by the same kinds of lives due to their lack of access to higher-yielding seed and related technologies.  This problem has now been addressed in most of the countries historically favored by donor agencies.  Crop yields are increasing and farmers have more income. 

So why should the world allow this situation to persist for farmers in 15 other African countries, simply because they are not considered to be "good countries", or "part of our network"? 

I have traveled deep into the farming regions of countries like Chad, Angola, Congo, Madagascar, and Eritrea and seen firsthand the barriers to a better life imposed on farm families by their lack of access to better seed, and it is an outrage.  Preferences for working in one group of countries have created an unjust imbalance in opportunity for huge numbers of people in other countries.  The leadership of these left-behind countries is now urgently requesting assistance in getting better seed to their farmers, too. 

I have dedicated my entire professional life to ending hunger in Africa.  I have lived in Africa since 1986, and have worked in all the continent's sub-regions.  I am fluent in four languages and am perhaps the most widely-traveled agricultural scientist on the continent.  My diverse professional history with the UN, humanitarian relief agencies, and some of the world's most prestigious philanthropic foundations, has given me a unique access to learning opportunities that have allowed me to understand what works and what doesn't work in the field of agricultural development. 

Through my work with The Rockefeller Foundation and then the Rockefeller/Gates/USAID-funded Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), I have been involved in developing and then overseeing over half a billion dollars in agricultural development initiatives in 13 countries.  My track record of integrity, effective people management, and success on the ground has allowed me to become a trusted collaborator of many African governments, research institutes, and international financing groups.

In a field increasing dominated by generalists, I have the scientific training and field experience needed to understand the forces that govern farmer productivity from the inside out.  My long history of working side-by-side with farmers in many countries has given me a great respect for their knowledge, intelligence, and ability to develop their own opportunities if given the basic chance to do so, and I've learned that that chance usually begins with planting a more productive variety that increases the overall efficiency of their whole farming operation. 

I have a background in management of large, multi-donor seed systems initiatives.  When I joined forces with the Gates Foundation we had a $30 million annual budget lined up before we even began operations.  Based on this history, my new team and I worked together with Cornell University and host governments to develop a 240-page business plan which we hoped would be funded by one or several major donor institutions.  Instead of leaping at the opportunity to invest in it, however, the big donors turned away.  They said they were too busy with on-going work to take on the challenges of the new countries we were proposing to work in. 

Their response was discouraging.  Then, COVID-19 hit, and even the few promising discussions we had begun with donors went silent.  For several months, it looked like SSG had been a poorly-timed idea.  At some point, however, I realized that I believed so strongly in getting improved seed to farmers in left-behind countries that I would work with even a fraction of our planned budget.  We re-initiated our conversations with donors on a reduced scale.  They showed interest, and now we have a whole sense of momentum around our mission. 

During the civil war in Mozambique we supplied seed of cowpea to villagers who were trapped behind rebel lines and had very limited food stocks.  Our hope was that they could plant the seed during the brief rainy season of September-October and survive the rest of the year off the harvest.  When we visited in late-October, however, we discovered that the seed we had sourced from Zimbabwe had failed to flower in the hotter, lowland environment of Mozambique.  The crop had failed completely.

My response to the disaster was to organize emergency food aid shipments into the village and begin research in the safe zone around our office in the provincial capital to determine which crops would grow well in that part of Mozambique.  We were given land by the governor to conduct our field trials, and over the course of the next two seasons we learned a tremendous amount about what worked and what did not.  We refined our selection of crops and crop varieties to only supply those that were well-adapted to local farming conditions.  The experience led to a new, more effective, farmer-participatory approach to crop breeding in Africa we call agro-ecology-based breeding.

For decades, the conventional wisdom regarding Africa's farmers was that they were too poor to buy higher-yielding seed and too bound by traditions to be interested in increasing their crop yields.  My conversations with many smallholder farmers allowed me to understand that Africa's farmers are just like any other group of people, with aspirations for their children's lives and their own lives that are directly tied to the productivity of their farms.  They are intensely interested in the traits of different crop varieties and are ready to experiment with many ways of becoming more productive, as long as it doesn't endanger their ability to feed their families.

Even when it came to supplying seed on the competitive market, most people believed that the only groups capable of doing it sufficiently well were multi-national corporations or South Africa-based seed companies.  I took a look at what they were doing and decided that many African entrepreneurs were capable of establishing similar companies if given adequate knowledge and training, access to high-yielding varieties, and some start-up capital.  We began by working with a few business owners, and the farmers bought all their seed.  The realization that local, African entrepreneurs could create and grow successful seed companies was hugely disruptive.  I convinced The Rockefeller Foundation and the Gates Foundation to support a team to create start-up, private, African seed companies in 13 countries.  Today there are over 100 such companies in operation, producing over 150,000 metric tons of seed annually.

SSG currently serves the farmers of Benin, Chad, Eritrea, Togo, and the semi-arid regions of Kenya by testing improved varieties and multiplying seed for their eventual use.  The total farming populations of these countries is:

Benin – 1.3 million

Chad – 2.4 million

Eritrea – 0.7 million

Togo – 1.0 million

Kenya Semi-Arid – 1.0 million

Total – 6.4 million farm families.

On average, each farm family includes 5 members.  Hence, the total number of people SSG is working to assist at present is about 32 million.  However, the goal of our interventions over a period of five years is to increase the adoption of improved seed to 30%.  This gives a total number of direct beneficiaries of our work of 9.6 million.

We estimate that within one year we will have added two more countries to our portfolio, although it is impossible to say which countries this will include.  The average farmer population of SSG countries is 2 million, hence by adding two countries we expect to be serving an additional 20 million people.  The total number of direct beneficiaries at this stage will be 15.6 million.

Within five years SSG will have begun operations in all its 15 countries, with a total population of 323 million people, including 38 million farm families, or 190 million people.  By reaching our goal of 30% adoption of improved seed among these farm families we expect to have benefitted 57 million people.

Our goal for the next year is to introduce and test improved, climate-resilient seed into seven out of our 15 target countries, and to have assisted 10 private seed entrepreneurs in these countries to build fully-integrated seed supply operations.  Our interactions with agricultural leaders in these seven countries will have allowed us to consolidate with them a vision for strengthening both the public and private sides of the seed equation.  This will mean leveraging additional government support for crops research and seed quality control, as well as advancing one or several key policy issues for encouraging additional growth of the seed sector.

Within five years our goal is to be operational in 15 countries, with active variety testing and registration activities on-going in all countries, and 60 private, African seed companies in operation and growing year-on-year.  At this stage, we will also be approaching our target of 7,500 agro-dealers and will have engaged approximately 15,000 village-based advisors who are actively promoting sustainable intensification of farming in their communities.  At a national level, government leaders will likewise be actively supporting the continued development of a public-private model for seed systems, and additional, spill-in investment will be taking place.  Downstream effects of increasing crop harvests will begin to occur at this stage, with grain traders active across the most productive areas and countries beginning to express their comparative advantage for production of food products and building stronger, more dependable trade relations with neighboring countries and export markets.  

Within any food system the barriers to achieving sustainability are varied and complex.  It is not the role of SSG to understand all of them adequately to revolve them, but rather to create the teams of people who can help countries address them in a constructive way that maximizes rapid learning, and then to convene discussions where they are presented and dealt with constructively.  We will do this by organizing discussion sessions (virtual or in-person, depending on travel policies) at a regional level, where practitioners can broadly gain an understanding for the main issues related seed systems development, and progress from there to discussions of stakeholders at national level, in a community-of-practice mode.  It is at the national level where specialists gain an appreciation for the role they play in a more productive and sustainable food system.

SSG operates on a five-year time horizon.  This is to allow people to adjust to a new paradigm wherein private sector is gaining a greater role in seed supply and food systems than it has previously occupied, and public sector is getting used to playing a more critical role for the functioning of private actors and farmers by registering new varieties and regulating seed quality.  It is also necessary for the individuals and groups involved to grow into an understanding that our job is not simply completing a development task, but to see it grow into a new national food economy involving thousands of people, new enterprises, and sometimes even new cross-border relations.

Overcoming the barriers identified above begins with testing new crop varieties in order to allow public crop scientists the opportunity to assess their performance and approve them for commercial production.  Currently, most researchers in our program area have no funding to conduct these tests.  SSG's support to this critical function will allow these assessments to be conducted at both the research station and farmer level.

Providing this financial and technical support to national crop research teams helps to gain the support from institute leaders and political leaders.  This buy-in is necessary for the next step in the process, which is investing in private, local seed companies and village-based seed suppliers.  Historically, seed production and distribution was the domain of the state in most of our program area.  Overcoming misgivings or doubts about the ability of private actors to become seed suppliers is key to improving the policy environment.

Once we have helped to establish several private, local seed companies and local seed supply shops, we work with local non-profit organizations and farmer groups to link farmers to the seed.  This involves conducting large numbers of demonstration plots and distribution of small, sample packs of improved seed, which allows farmers to plant the new seed on their own farms and learn firsthand the benefits of the new seed.  At this point, we have created demand for the seed being developed by the researchers and produced by the seed companies, and our intervention can be scaled down.

Seed Systems Group works with a rich and varied group of partners, including agricultural ministries, national agricultural research institutes, universities, private seed companies, farmer-based organizations, and non-governmental organizations.  At a continental level, we work with the African Union and the African Development Bank.  At both a regional and national level, we also work with member institutions of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), sub-regional agricultural research bodies (CORAF, ASARECA), and the African Seed Trade Association.  Our partners in strategy development are Cornell University and Sathguru Consulting of Hyderabad, India.  Our financial partners include AGRA, The Rockefeller Foundation, IDRC, and the Irish government.  We actively coordinate our work with USAID and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

Seed Systems Group’s business model is a technical and financial assistance group dedicated to strengthening the abilities of our collaborators in seed systems development in 15 left-behind countries of Africa.  Our aim is to establish functional, growing systems for supply of improved seed to smallholder farmers.  We measure our success through tangible outputs such as new crop varieties registered for production, graduates of university fellowships, tons of certified seed produced and sold, increased average grain crop yields, and increased farmer income.  We likewise track progress through passage of improved policies.  Our proxy goal for achieving food security in each country is to reach 30% adoption of improved seed nationally over the course of two, five-year phases of implementation, at which time we expect to leave behind a functioning seed system and a transformed food system, allowing SSG team members to focus on new countries with unmet food and nutrition needs.  Therefore, our exit strategy is built into everything we do. 

SSG will achieve financial stability by enlisting public and private donor agencies in our fight to end hunger in Africa.  We are currently supported by a small coalition of donors which we expect to grow to approximately 8-10 over the next five years.  Our full business plan for implementation of seed systems strategies in 15 countries is set at $100 million over five years.  We estimate that our financial needs for a second five-year phase of work will be approximately $60 million.  We are actively engaging with donor agencies who are able to support this level of expenditure. 

However, these figures are only indicative of the level of expenditure we believe is required to achieve commonly-held goals.  We are able and willing to work in an incremental manner, getting started at much smaller levels and implementing our strategies progressively, as financial resources allow it.  Moreover, our progress is not measured by the amount of resources committed to SSG, but toward the building of sustainable national seed systems.

Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa - $850,000 (May, 2019 to present)

The Rockefeller Foundation - $400,000 (May, 2019 to present)

Anonymous Donor - $150,000 (June, 2019 to present)

IDRC - $750,000 (pledged for January, 2021-December, 2023)

Irish Aid - $2 million (pledged for September, 2020-August, 2023)

Our budget for 2020 is set at $1 million to cover costs associated with the finalization of our business plan and marketing of our strategy.  This is adjustable as additional financial resources are committed.  Our full business plan for implementation of seed systems strategies in 15 countries is set at $100 million over five years (2020-2025).  We estimate that our financial needs for a second five-year phase of work will be approximately $60 million (2025-2030).

Our budget for 2020 is set at $1 million to cover costs associated with the finalization of our business plan and marketing of our strategy.  This is adjustable as additional financial resources are committed. 

Our full business plan for implementation of seed systems strategies in 15 countries is set at $100 million over five years (2020-2025).  We estimate that our financial needs for a second five-year phase of work will be approximately $60 million (2025-2030).

Nevertheless, we are aware that most of the countries we are seeking to implement our work in are unpopular with most donor agencies, and hence we are very willing to start small and grow over time.  Our lower level for commencing seed systems development strategies in any given country is approximately $600,000 over three years, plus SSG's scientific and technical assistance and oversight, which is approximately 20%, or $120,000 per country over the three-year period. 

Our budget for 2020 is set at $1 million to cover costs associated with

the finalization of our business plan and marketing of our strategy. 
This is adjustable as additional financial resources are committed.

To-date, we have raised approximately half of this amount and are actively seeking additional support to continue our work for the remainder of 2020. 

At this stage of my career I am only focusing on the work which I know from over 30 years of experience adds value to poor, smallholder African farmers' lives.  Together with a team of very dedicated agriculturalists and business development specialists, we have developed a model for sustainable improved seed adoption among poor, smallholder farmers that can work in virtually any setting, and dependably improves food security and income among large groups of rural people, and opens up new opportunities for business owners based in urban areas, too.  Having worked extensively in approximately 15 countries, my mission now is to take what we've learned to the 15 remaining agriculture-based economies of Africa.  By being selected as a recipient of the Elevate Prize, I believe I can increase the visibility of this challenge and help leverage additional resources to our work.

I am sufficiently confident in my leadership skills in an African setting to share what I've learned with others.  Agricultural and rural development in Africa is subject to fads and trends which, if not grounded in reality, can end up wasting a lot of money and ignore - or displace - a lot of local talent.  If, through the Elevate Prize, I am able to share some of those lessons with others, and help to open peoples' minds about the capabilities of African farmers, business owners, scientists, and policy makers, I would be very grateful. 

We have a model which has passed the proof-of-concept stage and is ready to be rolled out in a new set of countries where farmers still have no access to higher-yielding, climate-resilient seed.  We are a small team that needs to grow in size from our current 7 staff to a maximum of 25 staff.  We lack expertise in Monitoring and Evaluation methods and we lack opportunities for marketing of our proposals to a broader audience.  Any assistance we could receive in these fields would be greatly appreciated.

SSG is a team of crop scientists and financial and operations managers.  We are strong in the scientific, technical, and business management fields associated with seed systems, but not as strong in communications and IT.  Assistance in helping us to incorporate IT solutions into our data management systems, output tracking, and farmer outreach, would likewise be greatly appreciated.

As SSG's founders and leadership are based in Africa and have extensive experience in the proposed fields of activity, we believe we are already well-connected to partners on the continent.  However, we are eager to connect with US-based agricultural groups, including universities, multi-national seed companies, and donor agencies.  We are likewise interested in partnering with impact investors who are interested in agri-business development in Africa.