A Case of Wheat Seed in Saptari

It had been about two years when I rejoined Saptari in 5^th December 2013. Saptari District is one of the eastern Terai district of Nepal, which is food basket area of Nepal. Nevertheless, persistent drought since last four year has resulted this district as a food deficit district, in spite of its good soil and accessibility of other production inputs.  Saptari district is always at center of attraction in Nepal, either in case of administrative or political issues.  Some sort of disfunctioning of administrative works and low social development in last many years back , although repeatedly leaders from the districts are at ministerial position since long back are major considerable points in scenario of Saptari.

We were in crop assessment mission, which is operating twice a year by ministry of agricultural development in close collaboration with UN WFP and UN FAO. This time we had also worked together with IRRI and CYMMIT. 5^th December Morning at 10.30 AM when we reached at District Agriculture Development Office, the gate of office was covered with bicycles and motorcycles of farmers. More than thirty people were there, in front open space of the office. As we step up to Senior Agriculture Development Officer (SADO) chamber, we could feel the numbers of farmer's were increasing and their noise was louder than earlier.

With greetings and short introduction with each other, we started our discussion on mission objectives. Meanwhile a group of farmers entered the office room of SADO. A louder voice was prominent there in Maithili Language, which I could understand partly of it. The issue was with wheat seed.  However, my browsing to language power and analysis could not understand the problem as clearly as I wanted. Then SADO tried his best to convince them.  I don't know how much they convinced, however, as a result of that, they left the chamber.

After they gone, SADO was telling us "National Seed Company had given the quota of 125 Mt wheat seed to Saptari District, however, no seed has been delivered to Saptari yet. The mode of distribution was through dealers of National Seed Company, for which 21 dealers were chosen in district." Now, I was asking myself if seed has not come yet, why farmers' are assembled there. Why so hue and cry at farmer's outside DADO office. Obviously, there was reason. SADO was continuing that one dealer was distributing 100 of Kg of seed to his nearby farmers, when DADO had given quota limit of 20 Kg per farmer.  This was because NSC had quota of 125 Mt of Seed for Saptari district (which is subsidized seed) whereas another 75 MT of unsubsidized seed was also given to dealer. Therefore, in spite of bringing and selling subsidized seed, they bought and sold the unsubsidized seed. Even the information about unsubsidized seed was not provided to DADO office. The 35% of price was subsidized in wheat seed resulting Rs 36.5 per Kg, whereas remaining 75 Mt had to be paid full price of the seed.

Further Consultation with Staffs at DADO office we had a very interesting but shocking fact came later on that Indian farmers are very attracted to wheat seed of NSC, which is NL 257 variety. This means that has resulted higher yield in India. Therefore they come to Nepali dealer and pay more than Nepalese farmers can pay resulting shortage of seed to Nepali farmers.  Thus, the blaming was also for those standing in front of DADO office. According to them, they will take subsidized seed in their name and own family members and sell it to Indian farmer's at higher rate. So that, they were like middle man intended to earn from seed transaction rather than farming.

That was really shocking news to us. I was asking myself "what the hell is going on? People are not having seed to plant here in Nepal and all of us are standing with excitement to take and deliver improved subsidized seed from government of Nepal to Indian farmers. "This shows what track our agriculture taking for and how we are going to revolutionize in our agriculture sector in Nepal.

Photo1 : Farmer writing their name with address to claim wheat seed from dealer in DADO Office Premises.

Photo 2 : Common Means of transportation- bicycle of farmer's in DADO Office open space, farmer's waiting seed