Creating impact oriented bean seed delivery systems for the poor in Mozambique: a baseline study

Abstract

In Mozambique, farmers experience severe constraints in accessing quality bean seed at planting time, because the seed industry hardly supplies seed of legume crops. To address this issue, a project on bean seed production and delivery systems was launched in the country to improve farmers’ access to seeds of improved bean varieties. This poster characterizes the existing seed systems in Mozambique with the objective of identifying how farmers acquire and disseminate bean seed. It explores problems farmers faced in seed acquisition and dissemination before project implementation. A total of 116 smallholder bean farmers were randomly sampled from six pilot sites across Tete and Zambezia Provinces. Results showed that on average farmers realised below 900 kg ha-1 from growing local varieties and using their management systems, which is far below the potential average yield of improved varieties of 1500 - 2500 kg ha-1 under optimal management conditions. The majority of households (90.1%) found it difficult to access seed of improved bean varieties because of limited sources and lack of information on the varieties. The most common means of seed acquisition was farmer to farmer (72.7%), either for free, cash or in kind – exchange for labour or other products. The majority of men (45.9%) preferred varieties with a potential market while women (46.4%) preferred high yielding varieties meeting both consumption and market qualities. Bean production was markedly affected by pests and diseases (47.5%), as well as drought, poor soils, and inadequate knowledge of bean production technologies. Farmers lacked skills and knowledge that could enable them meet expected produce standards for the markets. The majority of smallholder farmers needed basic training (45.0%) and access to improved seed and other new technologies (53.8%) to gain greater knowledge of bean production, and build more productive and sustainable bean seed systems.