In Africa, high-quality seeds can produce improved crops with enhanced nutrition, pest-resistance, and drought tolerance. However, such seeds for maize, vegetables, and cereal crops can be indistinguishable from counterfeit, or “fake” seeds. That’s creating a massive potential for fraud in seed quality that can potentially deprive farmers of access to climate-resilient seeds while putting their harvests and incomes at risk.
A group of researchers analyzed the efforts of 50 African countries to combat counterfeit seeds. They found a wide range of penalties for selling them across different governments, and concluded that a significant gap exists between government policy commitments and implementation, largely due to limited capacity.
Study lead author Ed Mabaya, a professor of global development at Cornell University in the U.S., told Mongabay, “For most smallholder farmers in Africa, planting happens once a season, often timed to the first rains. A farmer who buys counterfeit seed usually finds out only after planting, when the seed fails to germinate or the crop grows poorly. By then it is usually too late to replant, so the loss is not a slightly smaller harvest but potentially the whole season’s food and income.”
That can lead to food insecurity for the individual farmer and local markets more broadly.
Counterfeiters can dye or repackage grain and sell it as branded, certified seed, Mabaya said. “The problem arises because certified seed looks exactly like ordinary grain but sells for a much higher price, in some cases several times more for hybrid maize. That price gap creates a strong incentive for fraud.”
Counterfeit seed can also erode trust in the benefits of high-quality seeds; a farmer burned once may stop buying enhanced seed altogether, which slows the adoption of climate-adapted crop varieties. Farmers can then miss out on drought tolerance, disease resistance, and better nutrition through crops like vitamin A-fortified maize and iron-rich beans.
Mabaya said a multipronged approach is needed to combat counterfeit seeds including routine surveillance, inspection, and market sampling by regulators. Seed companies also need to report suspect products. Mabaya recommended that governments develop public awareness programs to teach farmers how to recognize certified seed, where to buy it, and how to report seeds that may be counterfeit. He said governments also need clear penalties for counterfeit seeds, which are kept up to date and enforced, so that counterfeiting carries real costs.
Travis Lybbert, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis, in the U.S., who works on seed quality issues in Africa but wasn’t involved in the recent study, agreed that seed quality in general is a major issue in much of Africa. “Counterfeit seeds are a part of this problem — in some countries they are a big part of the problem, but not in all. The paper seems to capture this reality pretty well,” he said in an email to Mongabay.
Banner image: Bean market in Kampala, Uganda. Image © 2009 CIAT/Neil Palmer via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).
