Plant starts life with a seed and ends life in producing many seeds. The seed is one of the decisive elements for growing and sustaining agricultural commodities. It is obtained from genetic deposition of the crop species and their varieties resulting from the continuous breeding, improvement and selection over time. There is high potential that a quality seed can assure good crop productivity and food security. Every farmer tends to access and grow healthy seeds that are genetically pure, with high seed vigour and good germination rate.
The timely availability of quality seeds at a reasonable price ensures good yield and thus a good economic return to farmers. The seeds play an important role in agriculture and also in carrying genetic potential of varieties. A quality seed can be described as varietally pure with a high germination rate, free from diseases, with adequate moisture content and weight. Certification process is mandatory for production and marketing of quality seed which plays an important role in increasing food productivity.
A quality seed is important to produce a good young plant and to end up in long term with a good return. Maximum profits can be obtained by combining good seeds with appropriate cultivation practices. Good seeds and young plants on one hand favor good germination, rapid emergence & vigorous growth and on other hand contribute in optimum utilization of resources used, promotes job opportunities, leads to safer and healthier food and deals with the ongoing changes in the climate. These aspects promote a good crop stand (both in protected and natural environment.
1.Food Security & Food Self-Sufficiency:
Food security means that all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life. It can be measured by calorie intake per person per day, available on a household budget. In general, the objective of food security indicators and measurements is to capture some or all of the main components of food security in terms of food availability, accessibility, and adequacy. While availability (production and supply) and utilization/ adequacy (nutritional status) are easier to estimate and therefore, more popular, accessibility (the quality to acquire the sufficient quantity and quality of food) remains largely exclusive. There are various factors affecting the food availability in a house.
Food self-sufficiency is an often- used term, but it is frequently left undefined by those who employ it. This may be because there is more than one definition of the concept. The FAO (1999) defines it in broad term, “The concept of food self-sufficiency is generally taken to mean the extent to which a country can satisfy its food needs from its own domestic production.” Food self-sufficiency focus on country’s domestic food production capacity rather than where specific foods are grown.
Dietary energy production per capita is the measurement for food self-sufficiency. Food self-sufficiency, on the other hand, is focused on the supply, or availability component of food security, and is concerned with ensuring that the country has the capacity to produce food in sufficient quantities to meet its internal needs.
- In the context of Pandemic:
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the potential vulnerability of the world’s food supply chains. The pandemic in one hand is forewarning government to boost the rules and regulation to increase new agricultural inputs and invest in Agri-tech and logistics networks whereas in other hand encouraging youth to invest their young creative mind in agriculture. The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that 265 million people globally could face acute food insecurity by the end of the year- double the figure before the pandemic. There has been a huge decline in the Nepalese economy due to this pandemic and has affected various area of business-like shortage of labour availability in key agricultural areas leading to rotting of many crop in fields. The transportation had been ceased leading to the disruption of local and international markets and supply of products, causing problems like shortages, price hiking making economically poor people in vain.
These are the additional factors that have combined with the existing challenges, such as the impact of climate change on agricultural yields, to create an acute food security challenge. Despite these countries around the globe have been proactive in trying to stabilize food supplies. India is one of the largest suppliers of foods to Nepal. The shortage in supply of vegetables and cereals (mainly rice) from India, affecting food availability dimension of food security.
During the on-going of lockdown, the harvesting of Wheat all over Nepal was only completed by 30-40% at around 13th April and at the report of beginning of May it was completed by 80-90%, but the main problem here came by the restriction on supply of those harvested wheat due to no transportation. 85 percent of traders reported that the supply of goods decreased, with 90 percent of traders reporting a decrease in transporting trucks and other vehicles. While maize sowing was going on in Nepal, reports of Fall Army Worm infestation in newly germinated maize crop in some of the districts, had created fear on farmers (WFP, 2020b). Localized hailstorms, heavy rain, landslides, floods and strong wind have affected winter crops, vegetables and fruits in some parts of Provinces-1, 2, Bagmati, Gandaki, Karnali and Far-western region.
- The deduction:
With the observation of aforementioned qualities of quality seeds, came to a certain understanding of how much is the quality of seed important for better crop stand and high input efficiency. Producing quality seeds is an effective tool to address the issues of self-sufficiency, food security and economic development. Main things that matter for a quality seed are purity, germination and moisture content. For that certified seeds are highly used which account almost purity at all. Certified seeds are of mainly four types: Nucleus seed, Breeder’s seed, Foundation Seed (I and II) and Certified Seed (I and II).
These categories of seeds when available to farmers from all aspects then it is sure to produce a quality crop under ideal management which in turns account the problems of food insecurity and food insufficiency. These seeds when made available to poor farmers via governmental agencies for sure can support poor farmers in term of money and can get high return per unit area as the genetic potentiality of the crop be fully exploited, with the increased nutrient-use efficiency.
It can be a reliable material for transforming the agriculture of Nepal, mainly in rural areas supporting farmer’s economy leading to increased GDP of country.
Author: Gaurab Neupane (B.Sc. Ag, IAAS Paklihawa campus)
