Seed breeders’ battles lack of information on estimation of seed- Ojo[/i]
NASC targets improvement of seed system through demand estimation, forecasting[i]

National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC) in collaboration with Avisa, Syngenta Agra, other important partners, officially flagged off its three-day capacity building session on seed planning for industry stakeholders using the regional electronic model platform today in Abuja.

The Director General of the council, Dr. Philip Ojo Olusegun, in his opening address, revealed that the session would change the face of the seed system as lack of information especially attaining the accurate estimation of seed demands, has at times, thrown the seed enterprises and breeder seeds producing units into utmost disarray.

The event had in attendance private and public sector key stakeholders, experts who shared insights, experiences on general seed demand, planning and forecasting.

According to Ojo, seed estimation plays quite a very important role in management decision making both by the government and general seed growers, hence there are ideas which stands in as a prerequisite for making decisions in various aspects of seed supply management.

He said: “One of the key elements of a seed system is how actual demand is estimated considering factors like weather, market, farmers’ skills to maintain Seed and Sources of Seed. A Fair demand assessment is crucial for actors engaged in the system including government, producers, importers, and distributors.”

“Today we have a situation where the proportion of revealed seed demand over supply shows considerable shortage of supply, paradoxically, seed companies and dealers complain of leftovers each year.”

The DG however revealed that in order to reduce the seed supply and demand gap through accurate seed demand estimation and forecasting, the recent electronic-based tool for seed planning and demand forecasting will be practical in making projections of the potential and actual seed demands to support both the public seed sector and private seed companies’ decision making.

On seed demand forecasting, Mr. Steve van der Merwe, a facilitator from South Africa, stated that being a process of making projections of demands for products by examining past and present performance levels,  from the seed producers’ point of view demand forecasting, is a necessary tool that will not only determine the amount of seed by each crop and variety, plan production and distribution accordingly, design popularization program for their varieties but also design mechanisms that expands their market share for specific crops/varieties.