East-West Seed

Access to seeds for smallholder farmers and governance and accountability
East-West Seed has a strategy for ensuring access to seeds for smallholder farmers which includes objectives for research and development and marketing and sales, as well a time-bound target for capacity building. The company’s supervisory board is responsible for overseeing the company’s access to seeds strategy implemented by its CEO and managing board. Key performance indicators related to its strategy are linked to the performance-based compensation received by the CEO and the managing board.

Stakeholder engagement
The company uses stakeholder mapping workshops and matrices to identify and select the stakeholders it engages. Such stakeholders include the Africa Seed Trade Association (AFSTA), the Horticultural Society of Nigeria and the Seed Entrepreneurs Association of Nigeria. East-West Seed’s stakeholder engagement covers topics in multiple measurement areas. The company integrates the outcomes of stakeholder engagement activities into its access to seeds strategy for smallholder farmers.

Conservation of genetic resources
East-West Seed conserves its own genetic materials and works with genebanks to share and protect the genetic diversity of food crops. The company works with the World Vegetable Center and the local Laboratory of Genetics, Horticulture and Seed Science (GBioS) in Benin on germplasm exchange for research purposes and trial evaluation.

Access to company genetic resources
East-West Seed gives access to its genetic resources by contributing its own germplasm to collaborative projects aimed at developing varieties useful to smallholder farmers. The company collaborates with the World Vegetable Center for the evaluation of advanced lines in the region through the African Vegetable Breeding Consortium (AVBC). East-West Seed shares its own commercial varieties free of cost, evaluates these under different environments and shares the results to the World Vegetable Center scientists.

Plant breeding activities in index regions and variety testing
East-West Seed has its own breeding programme in Benin and invests in building the capacity of local research staff in the region. The company runs an ‘Advanced Plant Breeding Program’ at the East-West Seed Academy, through which it aims to advance the education and training of its breeders and researchers through skills development. The company conducts variety trials in seven countries across the region, on crops from its own breeding programs and portfolio, and other breeding programmes such as those of other companies or public research institutes.

Developing improved varieties of global and local crops and breeding programme for specific traits
The company has an extensive portfolio of hybrid and open-pollinated varieties (OPVs) of vegetable crops and its breeding programme includes the development of traits particularly important for smallholder farmers, such as early maturing and improved nutritional value. The company also develops improved varieties of local crops as part of its breeding activities in the region including yardlong bean, choisam, African eggplant and amaranth.

Distribution channels
The company has distribution channels in the majority of index countries in the region. In all of those countries, it services remote areas through local field staff of distributors and field officers that East-Weed Seed directly employs. For example, in Nigeria, the company works with two distributors to reach hundreds of stores and agro-dealers throughout the northern and southern regions of the country.

Quality assurance and after-sales
The company adheres to ISTA and ISHI-Veg protocols for safeguarding the quality and safety of seeds. In monitoring its dealer network, East-West Seed advises its dealers on storage conditions. It also takes measures to prevent the distribution of counterfeit seeds, including the use of holograms and unique sealing on its packaging to prevent imitation. The company provides after-sales support by contacting farmers for feedback by phone.

Extension services
Through its corporate foundation, East-West Seed supports long-term extension activities in Nigeria, where local teams are dedicated full time to technical training. Through its East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer (EWS-KT) foundation, the company carries out technical demonstrations on all aspects of crop production, such as land preparation, seed production, transplanting, plant nutrition, pest and disease management, harvesting and post-harvest handling. It also provides training on variety selection, crop planning and farm record-keeping. The company reached approximately 12 million smallholder farmers through its extension services in the period 2018-2020, of which 18,000 were reached physically and the remaining were reached digitally through online training programs.

Next-generation farmers
The company works closely with Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria, where EWS-KT has established a permanent learning site to showcase year-round vegetable production. Since 2019, East-West Seed has been using field-based peer learning approaches with practical exposure to profitable and sustainable vegetable production practices. The company has reached about 10,000 next-generation farmers in Nigeria.

Seed production activities in index region
The company does not have seed production locations in the region. It has the opportunity to introduce seed production locations in the region and engage with local seed companies and farmer organisations, respecting social and labour rights of workers. This would contribute to the transfer of advanced technologies and strengthen both local expertise and a sustainable business climate.

Diverse portfolio
As the company has only a few varieties for the majority of crops in all index countries where it has sales, East-West Seed can diversify its portfolio by offering more varieties per crop.

Programmes for women farmers
Through its “Transforming Nigeria’s Vegetable Markets” project, the company provides training to smallholder farmers in Nigeria, including women farmers. The company could consider developing tailored programmes targeted specifically towards women smallholder farmers in the region.

Access to output markets
Through participatory baseline studies and weekly visits to local vegetable markets, the East-West Seed team supports farmers to better understand market flows, price fluctuations and quality trends. They use this data to help farmers plan according to actual needs of their markets. The company collects, analyses and shares weekly data from fresh vegetable markets and trains smallholder farmers on production planning as well as on harvesting and post-harvest handling. However, they have the opportunity to collaborate with partners up the food value chain aimed at developing the market for smallholder farmers.

Cucumber
Onion
Tomato

Cabbage
Carrot
Cauliflower
Cucumber
Eggplant
Gourd
Green bean
Lettuce
Melon
Okra
Onion
Pepper (hot)
Pepper (sweet)
Pumpkin
Squash
Tomato
Watermelon

Yardlong bean
Choisam
African eggplant
Amaranth

Download the portfolios of all companies in the 2021 index for Western and Central Africa here.

Governance and accountability
East-West Seed’s supervisory board is responsible for overseeing the company’s access to seeds strategy implemented by its CEO and managing board. Key performance indicators related to its strategy are linked to the performance-based compensation received by the CEO and managing board, the highest governance body that receives such compensation.

Stakeholder engagement
The company uses stakeholder mapping workshops and matrices to identify and select the stakeholders it engages. East-West Seed’s stakeholder engagement covers topics in multiple measurement areas. In research and development, the company works with the World Vegetable Center and the Africa Seed Trade Association (AFSTA) on the Africa Vegetable Breeding Consortium. In marketing and sales, through the work of its East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer (EWS-KT) foundation, it has created demonstration farms in collaboration with research institutions like the Hortitengeru Research Institute and Sokoine University of Agriculture. The company integrates the outcomes of stakeholder engagement activities into its access to seeds strategy for smallholder farmers.

Conservation of genetic resources and access to company genetic resources
East-West Seed conserves its own material at a company genebank and works with genebanks to share and protect the genetic diversity of food crops. East-West Seed gives access to its genetic resources by contributing its own germplasm to collaborative projects aimed at developing varieties useful to smallholder farmers. For example, East-West Seed shares its own commercial varieties free of cost, evaluates these under different environments and shares the results to WorldVeg scientists.

Plant breeding activities in index regions and variety testing
East-West Seed has its own breeding programme in Tanzania and invests in building the capacity of its local research staff in the region. The company runs an ‘Advanced Plant Breeding Program’ (APB) at the East-West Seed Academy, through which it provides its breeders and researchers with training and skills development. The company conducts variety trials in five countries across the region, on crops from its own breeding programmes and portfolio, and other breeding programmes such as those of other companies or public research institutes. For example, the company collaborates with the World Vegetable Center for the evaluation of WorldVeg advanced lines in the region through the African Vegetable Breeding Consortium (AVBC).

Developing improved varieties of global and local crops and breeding programme for specific traits
The company has an extensive portfolio of mainly hybrid varieties of vegetable crops and its breeding programme includes the development of traits particularly important for smallholder farmers, such as early maturing and improved nutritional value. The company develops an impressive portfolio of varieties of local crops as part of its breeding activities in the region, including hairy nightshade, kailaan, amaranth and kang kong.

Seed production activities in index countries
The company has seed production locations in South Africa and Tanzania and works with local seed producing companies in these countries.

Quality management in seed production in index countries
Since 2004, the company’s seed production in its main production countries has adhered to the ISO 9001 quality management system. It also has internal field quality auditors under the quality management department of each country.

Distribution channels
East-West Seed has distribution channels in the majority of index countries in the region. In addition, it services remote areas in all of those countries through local field staff of distributors, who use transportation such as motorbikes in Uganda.

Quality assurance and after-sales
The company adheres to International Seed Testing Association (ISTA) and International Seed Health Initiative (ISHI)-Veg protocols for safeguarding the quality and safety of seeds. In monitoring its dealer network, East-West Seed advises its dealers on storage conditions. The company takes measures to prevent the distribution of counterfeit seeds, including the use of holograms and traceable coatings on its packaging. East-West Seed provides after-sales support by contacting farmers for feedback by phone.

Extension services
East-West Seed supports long-term extension activities through its corporate foundation in Tanzania and Uganda, where local teams are dedicated full time to technical training. Through its EWS-KT foundation, the company carries out technical demonstrations on all aspects of crop production, such as land preparation, seed production, mulching, transplanting, plant nutrition, pest and disease management, harvesting and post-harvest handling. It also provides training on variety selection, crop planning and farm record-keeping. The company reached a total of 6,600,000 smallholder farmers through its extension services in the period 2018-2020, of which 61,000 were reached physically and the remaining were reached digitally through online training programs.

Next-generation farmers
In Uganda, EWS-KT worked with Palm Corps to train 200 youths in improved vegetable production practices, which positioned vegetables as an attractive future business opportunity. The company reports having reached 26,000 next-generation farmers in the region for the period 2018-2020.

Information and communications Technology (ICT)
The company uses social media discussion groups as the best means of scaling knowledge and connecting stakeholders. It has also invested in SMS messaging, regular radio broadcasts, podcasts, YouTube videos and mobile learning solutions. The company is using digital solutions to encourage more youths into its training programmes, it has also started training farmers on digital and mobile literacy. It has a centralised digital platform, called GrowHow, with full public access to a wide range of extension materials, such as crop production guides, technical guides, management guides and instructional videos in 33 languages. The company further runs its General Vegetable Production (GVP) programme, an online learning platform aimed at farmers, agro-input retailers and extension workers that provides them with learning materials and certified training programmes.

Social and labour rights in seed production
East-West Seed is committed to prohibiting child labour and forced labour in its own operations and carries out regular internal and external audits to monitor this. However, it could disclose whether it verifies the age of farmers and farm workers and requests intermediaries to do the same. The company is also committed to health and safety but could improve its performance by disclosing more quantitative information on this topic. East-West Seed also has the opportunity to disclose any evidence of policies or commitments related to living wage.

Diverse portfolio
As the company has only a few varieties for the majority of crops in all index countries where it has sales, it can diversify its portfolio by offering more varieties and more seed types per crop.

Programmes for women farmers
The company has the opportunity to disclose evidence of programmes that are targeted towards building the capacity of women farmers.

Cabbage
Carrot
Cauliflower
Cucumber
Eggplant
Gourd
Green bean
Lettuce
Melon
Okra
Onion
Pepper (hot)
Pepper (sweet)
Pumpkin
Squash
Tomato
Watermelon

African eggplant
Amaranth
Ethiopian mustard
Hairy nightshade
Kailan
Kangkong

Carrot
Onion
Tomato

Download the portfolios of all companies in the 2021 index for Eastern and
Southern Africa here.

Access to seeds for smallholder farmers and governance and accountability
East-West Seed has a strategy for ensuring access to seeds for smallholder farmers which includes objectives for research and development and marketing and sales, as well a time-bound target for capacity building. East-West Seed’s supervisory board is responsible for overseeing the company’s access to seeds strategy implemented by its CEO and managing board. Key performance indicators related to its strategy are linked to the performance-based compensation received by the CEO and the managing board, the highest governance body that receives such compensation.

Stakeholder engagement
The company uses stakeholder mapping workshops and matrices to identify and select the stakeholders it engages. Such stakeholders include international organisations like the International Seed Federation (ISF), and national organisations such as the Philippines Seed Industry Association and the Indonesian Horticultural Seed Company Association. East-West Seed’s stakeholder engagement covers topics in multiple measurement areas. For example, the company works with the ISF on seed health testing protocols. Additionally, East-West Seed conducts conversations on living wages and health and safety with the multi-stakeholder forum Enabling Child and Human Rights with Seed Organisations (ECHO) and offered consultation on Thailand’s plant variety protection (PVP) law. The company integrates the outcomes of stakeholder engagement activities into its access to seeds strategy for smallholder farmers.

Conservation of genetic resources
East-West Seed conserves its own material at a company genebank and works with genebanks to share and protect the genetic diversity of food crops. The company has worked with the national genebank The National Plant Genetic Resources Laboratory (NPGRL) of the Institute of Plant Breeding (IPB), over the last four years, with the aim to assist the NPGRL in reviving its old seed collection composed of local germplasm.

Access to company genetic resources
East-West Seed gives access to its genetic resources by making its varieties available to national and international genebanks without restrictive conditions, for example East-West Seed Indonesia (EWINDO) deposited germplasm to the Vegetable Genebank of Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM). The company also contributes its own germplasm to collaborative projects aimed at developing varieties useful to smallholder farmers. For example, East-West Seed Philippines provided open-pollinated varieties of eggplant freely for use in a Crop Trust project involving the phenotyping of eggplant and its wild relatives.

Plant breeding activities in index regions and variety testing
East-West Seeds has its own breeding programme in India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. The company invests in building the capacity of local research staff in the region and its breeders and other employees in index countries are provided with training and skills development through the company’s ‘Advanced Breeding Programme’ (ABP) that takes place at the East-West Seed Academy. The company conducts extensive variety trials across the region, on crops from its own breeding programmes and portfolio, and other breeding programmes such as those of other companies or public research institutes.

Local participation in breeding/variety development
The company has a system in place to inform its breeding programmes with feedback from local farmers, consumers and other stakeholders in index countries. This includes Focus Group Discussions conducted during farmer visits, and the company also gives specific attention to feedback from women farmers.

Developing improved varieties of global and local crops and breeding programme for specific traits
The company develops hybrid varieties of global vegetable crops and its breeding programme includes the development of traits particularly important for smallholder farmers, such as early maturing and improved nutritional value. The company also focuses on incorporating resistance and tolerance to regionally important pests and diseases such as downy mildew, fall army worm, and chilli vein mottle virus (ChiVMV). The company has an impressive portfolio of local crops developed with traits particularly important for smallholder farmers in region.

Seed production activities in index region and engaging smallholder farmers in seed production
East-West Seed has seed production in seven countries in the region. It works closely with smallholder farmers and it collaborates with other players in the seed industry, such as intermediaries, middlemen and farmer cooperatives. In these countries, the majority of its production growers are smallholder farmers who have less than 0.5 hectares of land. These include India, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. The company has direct contracts with smallholder farmers in these countries, which include arrangements on product prices favourable to them.

Quality management in seed production in index countries
Since 2004, the company’s seed production in its main production countries has adhered to the ISO 9001 quality management system. It also has internal field quality auditors under the quality management department of each country.

Packaging and labelling
In all index countries where it has sales, East-West Seed offers seed packages with local languages and pictograms displaying product information and instructions, and it uses track and trace systems, including barcodes, batch numbers and QR codes. The company offers seed packages in appropriate sizes for smallholder farmers in the region.

Quality assurance and after-sales
The company adheres to International Seed Testing Association (ISTA) and International Seed Health Initiative for Vegetable Crops (ISHI-Veg) protocols for safeguarding the quality and safety of seeds. In monitoring its dealer network, East-West Seed has established practices for testing potentially expired seeds returned by dealers to ensure that seeds are not sold beyond their shelf life. Furthermore, the company takes measures to prevent the distribution of counterfeit seeds, including the use of holograms and traceable coatings on its packaging. East-West Seed provides after-sales support to smallholder farmers through a complaint handling programme and procedure.

Extension services
East-West Seed supports long term extension activities through its corporate foundation in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Myanmar and the Philippines where local teams are dedicated full time to technical training. The company performs technical demonstrations on all aspects of crop production, such as pest and disease management, harvesting, land preparation, seeding production, mulching, transplanting, plant nutrition, and post-harvest handling, and provides training on variety selection, crop planning, and farm record keeping, through its foundation, East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer (EWS-KT). The company reached a total of 3,000,000 smallholder farmers through its extension services in the period 2018-2020, of which 205,000 were reached physically and the remaining were reached digitally through online training programs.

Programmes for women farmers
East-Weed Seed has made efforts to increase women participation in training to 40% in the past few years. In 2020, it approached 65,000 women smallholders in the region to participate in training, and women made up around half of the participants across index countries. Cambodia had the highest share of women participants, at 70% for technical training events with the Cambodia Horticulture Advancing Income and Nutrition (CHAIN) project, and in the Philippines, the percentage of women reached was also over half, with 60% of smallholder farmers reached through training being women.

Programmes for next-generation farmers
Through the use of digital tools and youth influencers, East-West Seed has increased the participation of next-generation farmers in training to an average 32%. The company has initiatives for young farmers in Thailand, Myanmar and the Philippines. For instance, In Myanmar, through the VegCap project, the company trained over 3,800 agricultural students. Across the region, a total of 89,538 next-generation farmers were reached by the company in 2018-2020 through these kinds of programmes.

Social and labour rights in seed production
The company is committed to prohibiting child labour and forced labour in its own operations and carries out regular internal and external audits to monitor this. However, it could disclose whether it verifies the age of farmers and requests intermediaries to do the same. The company is also committed to health and safety but could improve its performance by disclosing more quantitative information about its workers. East-West Seed does not disclose any evidence of policies or commitments related to living wage.

Maize
Gourd
Tomato

Cabbage
Carrot
Cauliflower
Cucumber
Eggplant
Gourd
Green bean
Lettuce
Melon
Okra
Onion
Pepper (hot)
Pepper (sweet)
Pumpkin
Squash
Tomato
Watermelon

Amaranth
Choisam
Kailan
Kangkong
Mungbean
Mustard
Tinda
Yardlong bean

Download the portfolios of all companies in the 2021 index for South and South-East Asia here.