To work well and be sustainable, seed systems have to offer a range of crops and varieties of good quality seed and these products have to reach farmers, no matter how remote or poor they may be. Formal seed sector interventions alone are not delivering the crop portfolio or achieving the social and geographic breadth needed, and the paper argues for focus on informal seed channels and particularly on traders who move ‘potential seed’ (informal or local seed) even to high stress areas. This paper provides the first in-depth analysis on potential seed trader types and actions, drawing on data collected on 287 traders working in 10 African countries. The research delves into four themes: the types and hierarchies of traders; the technical ways traders manage seed using 11 core practices; the price differential of +50% of potential (local) seed over grain, and the pivotal roles which traders play in remote and crisis contexts. Traders are the backbone of smallholder seed security and need to be engaged, not ignored, in development and relief efforts. An action framework for leveraging seed trader skills is presented, with the paper addressing possible legal and donor constraints for engaging such market actors more fully.

This article explores the informal seed business, focusing on the yellow bean in Tanzania. The yellow bean is a major bean type traded, yet little is known about the seed supply that fuels it. The survey research in 2019 encompassed larger grain traders, informal seed traders, and retailers, covered major production, distribution and sale hubs, and was complemented by GIS mapping of seed and grain flows and DNA fingerprinting of yellow bean samples. Results showed that traders buy and sell grain and informal seed: it is not one business or the other, but both. Informal seed is an important moneymaker, representing between 15 and 40% of trader business in non-sowing and sowing periods, respectively. In the year monitored, 100% of the yellow bean seed was drawn from the informal sector, amounting to $US 4.35 million just among those sampled. Nevertheless, the informal and formal sectors are clearly linked, as over 60% of the beans sampled derived from modern varieties. Informal traders prove key for: sustaining the grain business, serving the core of the seed business, and moving varieties at scale. More explicit efforts are needed to link the informal sector to formal research and development partners in order to achieve even broader impacts.

Over the past decades, the number of certified organic farms have increased significantly in Uganda. One assumption is that certified organic agriculture contributes to economic, social and ecological health of agroecosystems. In the literature, however, there is thin empirical evidence to support such claims. We therefore developed health indicators and contrasted data from four Ugandan farming systems with principles and objectives of organic agriculture. We identified four health patterns (ecology-driven, economically struggling, socially-driven, and hanging in) demonstrating the impact of farm management on agroecosystem health and trade-offs between health domains. Ecological farm health is strengthened only if the conversion goes beyond ‘organic by default’. Market-oriented specialization can create lock-in situations if production strategies cannot be changed easily. Food shortages occur when additional income from certified production does not compensate for the reduced area and effort devoted to food crops. We conclude that the positive effects of organic certification on agroecosystem health cannot be taken for granted. Interventions promoting organic agriculture should acknowledge risks smallholder farmers take by converting to cash crop-oriented certified organic farming. A challenging question will be how aspects of wellbeing and social health can be translated into certification standards and thus product attributes.

Dryland legumes and cereals are a good food source in Africa's drylands. However, their production is constrained by the limited availability of improved varieties and sustainable seed supply channels. The efficiency of breeding institutions and variety registration and release processes influence crop development and availability of a wide range of varieties in the market. The entire process influences the adoption of improved varieties, crop diversity, and the overall resilience of agricultural systems. Therefore, this article investigates how national breeding programs interact with registration and release processes for varieties to improve agricultural systems’ resilience in Africa. This study adopted the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses to identify and examine previous research. A total of 63 articles were reviewed. The study found that breeding efforts have focused on staple crops, neglecting dryland legumes and cereals. Among the significant challenges highlighted are limited resources and a weak regulatory framework. Additionally, poor communication between breeders and farmers and a lack of reliable data intensifies the challenges. Despite different stakeholders being involved in seed development and dissemination, they have poor coordination, which delays the introduction of new varieties. Furthermore, variety registration and release processes remain critical barriers to crop development. Hence, to promote agricultural productivity, improve seed accessibility, and enhance agricultural resilience in Africa, it is essential to streamline early-generation seed production and variety registration processes. It is also critical to enhance collaboration among all stakeholders in the seed production system and strengthen regulatory frameworks.

Although sorghum plays a vital role in income generation, food, and nutritional security in Tanzania, access to quality seed and adoption of improved varieties remain low. Community‐based seed producers can enhance farmers' access to quality seed, yet their impact on the adoption of improved varieties and, subsequently, improving productivity has not been studied. Our empirical strategy relies on treatment effects matching, propensity score matching, inverse probability weighting, and regression adjustment. Data from 1492 farming households across the major sorghum‐producing regions of Tanzania showed that farmers were, on average, 35 km away from the main markets, relied on farm‐saved seeds and on their peers for information regarding production, seed knowledge, and markets. Adoption of improved sorghum varieties was at least 10% higher in treated than in control wards. The results suggest that if each ward had a QDS producer, adoption would increase by at least 14%. Farmers in treated wards allocated a minimum of 9% more of cultivated area to improved varieties compared to those in control wards. Productivity was higher among households using improved varieties, with gains of at least 55 kg/ha relative to non‐adopters. The average treatment effect ranged between 55 kg and 77 kg/ha. This estimate is a model‐based scaling scenario for the surveyed sorghum‐producing wards and should be interpreted as the expected gain from scaling out QDS producers' presence to comparable contexts. If the estimated area of 0.9 million ha of land under sorghum in Tanzania was grown to improved varieties, national production would increase by between 49,500 and 69,300 metric tons per season, translating to an estimated value of between USD 28.4 million and USD 39.8 million in additional revenue. These results underscore the importance of promoting decentralized seed production and distribution to broaden access to quality seed and increase the adoption of improved varieties and productivity in underserved communities. We propose evolving QDS production into an “in situ agrodealership” model that bundles quality‐declared seed with embedded advisory services and access to complementary inputs. This model complements (rather than replaces) private agrodealers by reaching last‐mile farmers through replicated producer networks across districts within existing QDS marketing rules, thereby increasing adoption and productivity at scale.