Photo credit: E. Millstein/Mercy Corps (DRC 2022)
Seed aid has long been a core part of humanitarian responses, yet most support remains short term, often missing opportunities to strengthen the local seed systems that farmers depend on far more than external assistance.
A new Mercy Corps-led ISSD Africa paper – Improving Seed Security through Market-Based Programming: Interventions, Examples & Opportunities – aims to enhance understanding of market-based seed security approaches in fragile contexts.
The paper brings together experience from humanitarian seed responses, seed system development and market systems programming, with the aim of fostering collective discussion on how to strengthen, adapt, and scale market-based seed interventions in fragile settings.
Key contents:
- An overview of seed security in fragile contexts and why conventional seed aid often falls short
- An introduction to the Market-Based Programming Framework applied to seed security, from using markets for rapid relief to supporting markets to enabling longer-term market systems change
- A look at the roles of key actors – including farmers, informal traders, private seed companies, community structures, humanitarian agencies and government
- Case examples from South Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, DRC, Nigeria and Sudan that show how different market-based seed interventions work in practice, with their strengths and limitations
- Cross-cutting lessons and practical recommendations/next steps for designing market-based seed security responses that strengthen local systems
Download the working paper below and register now to join the discussion at our December 3rd webinar.