Local Seed Systems Before Crisis: What the Abuja Round Table Taught Us

When insecurity cuts a road, closes a market or forces a family to leave home, does a farmer have to lose access to seed as well?

That was the question behind a national round table that Oxfam and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) convened in Abuja on 16 October 2026. As the keynote speaker put it, security challenges should not automatically become seed insecurity.

The finding that surprised us

The most striking evidence came from Bauchi State. Oxfam's Seed System and Markets Advisor, Connie Formson, and ICRISAT's Jerome Jonah presented a seed system security assessment in Ningi and Shira Local Government Areas (LGAs). For the 2024 and 2025 seasons, it found no acute seed-system stress, and 98% of seed came from informal sources in both seasons.

When farmers planted less, they pointed to limited money, land and labour, not a shortage of seed. Planting quantities rose by 77% across all crops in 2025, and in 2024 87% of farmers rated their seed quality as good, with none rating it poor.

These findings cover two LGAs and two seasons, so they should not be read as a picture of all of Bauchi State or of Nigeria. They do raise a useful challenge: before designing seed assistance, find out how farmers actually get seed and what really stops them planting.

A national dialogue among institutions

The round table brought together humanitarian, development, research and seed-sector actors. Participants included COOPI, GAIN Nigeria, Mercy Corps Nigeria, the Nigeria INGO Forum and the Delegation of the European Union to Nigeria and ECOWAS, among others. In his opening remarks, Oxfam in Nigeria's Country Director Tijani Hamzi, set out the goal: to exchange knowledge on how local seed systems support anticipatory action, resilience and seed security, and to help humanitarian and development actors work more closely together.

The day began with the Learning Tree, a group exercise in which four groups mapped the experience they bring and the questions they share. The shared questions were practical: how to move seed when supply chains are disrupted, how poor farmers can afford it, how to rebuild trust in the seed industry and how to access finance.

Lessons from practice

Mohammed Jada presented the Crop Diversity for Food Security in West Africa project, which ran from October 2022 to September 2025 with CIMMYT and ICRISAT. Through Farmer Field Schools and Participatory Variety Selection, farmers identified the varieties that suit their land and needs.

Maxwell Samaila then set out three principles for better seed aid: seed should arrive in time for the planting window, farmers should be able to choose their crops and varieties, and farmers and suppliers should be able to give feedback at several stages, not only at the end of a season.

What we took away

• Seed supply is not the only bottleneck. In Ningi and Shira, money, land and labour limited planting more than seed did.
• Informal systems carry most of the load. With 98% of seed coming from informal sources, programmes should build on these systems and link them to quality assurance, not bypass them.
• Timing, choice and feedback are practical tests for any seed intervention.
• Farmers' voices need to stay central. This was a conversation among institutions, so the evidence had to speak for farmers. The next round should include them directly.

From conversation to action

Pepijn Gerrits, Director of Programs at Oxfam Novib, called seeds more than agricultural inputs: they sustain livelihoods, support recovery and build resilient communities. He named three priorities: translate discussions and evidence into measurable action, strengthen partnerships between humanitarian and development actors, and invest in resilient local seed systems before crises escalate.