By JOHNSON KANAMUGIRE

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The Ministry of Agriculture plans to implement several measures aimed at streamlining seed distribution across the country following several complaints by farmers.

Specifically, potato farmers have voiced concern over failure by the private seed distributors to supply inputs in time, creating an artificial shortage that increases their costs as well as losses due to not planting on time.

In addition, the failure to distribute improved quality potato seeds efficiently undermines ongoing plans to boost yields as it discourages uptake by farmers.

Failure by licenced private seed distributors to supply on time has also seen farmers buying the seeds through informal networks that are not subjected to rigorous quality checks.

For instance, it is estimated that the demand for quality potato seeds, which official figures put at about 37,500 tonnes per season, exceeds supply by about three-fold with the gap filled by seeds sourced informally, heightening low yields and increases risk of diseases.

As a result, Rwanda Today has learnt that farmers co-operatives and potato seed distributors recently met to communicate their grievances to the agriculture ministry, in a bid to end farmers’ plight. This issue featured prominently during President Paul Kagame’s recent citizen outreach in the North and West Provinces, which a major potato producers in the country.

It has emerged that while the Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB) adequately met the market demand for breeder seeds, the formal seed production system lacked plans to avail certified planting materials needed by the farmers from variety preferences, geographical locations and respective planting time.

“There is no one planning and co-ordinating actors along the supply chain from breeder seed to the farm. Farmers embark on cultivation not knowing where they will get seeds from, while multipliers have no clue where to sell.

So, every season farmers show up to buy seeds to find suppliers unprepared to meet their demand,” said Fabien Hagenimana, vice chancellor of Ruhengeri Institute of Higher Education.

The institution is one of the main players in seed production laboratories and a research unit that facilitates seed multipliers and area farmers to get improved planting materials.

Salomon Mbarushimana, manager at Seed Potato Fund, which acts as a bulk buyer of seeds from multipliers for sale to farmers across the country, said it was hard to gauge the current supply capacity without corroborating data held by RAB, individual private seed multipliers and other actors like the Ruhengeri Institute of Higher Education since they also supplied certified seeds directly to the farmers.

Due to market uncertainties most seed multipliers stopped producing in bulk as it requires huge capital investments as well as lengthy and cumbersome processes before releasing certified seeds.

Joseph Gafaranga, head of the farmers’ association Imbaraga said the challenges, coupled with continuous inflow of cheap informally sourced seeds had negatively impacted the uptake of improved potato seeds among farmers.