Companies offer a full range of field crops, legumes and vegetables to smallholders in the region, with maize considered the most important and all but one company offering vegetables. Companies demonstrate tailored approaches to smallholder customers by offering a mix of hybrid and open-pollinated varieties (OPVs). Smallholders often prefer the latter as they lend themselves to on-farm seed saving. Maize and sunflower are the only field crops with more hybrid varieties available than OPVs, while this is the case for just over half of vegetables. Vegetables are available in packages as small as 1g or 100 seeds, and field crops and legumes in packages from 100g, indicating companies’ consideration of smallholders-specific needs.
Integration with the World Benchmarking Alliance
The Access to Seeds Index is now part of the World Benchmarking Alliance. All indexes up to 2020 can be found here. New indexes and methodologies are published on the website of the WBA.
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