According to Ministry of Agriculture Development the country has around 1.5 million hectares of land for paddy cultivation and farmers need more than 74 thousand tons of paddy seeds. While farmers manage the 55 thousand tons of seeds through local farmers´ cooperatives, additional 10,000 tons of seeds are supplied by the private seed producers.
Likewise, additional 1,000 tons of seeds are supplied by the government-owned National Seed Company, while another 1,000 tons of seeds enter in the market through formal imports from India.[break]
“Farmers invariably face a cumulative scarcity of 7,000 tons of paddy seeds every year,” Mitra Raj Duwadi, president of Seed Entrepreneurs´ Association of Nepal said.
As the concerned government authority turn blind eye to such a situation, farmers in bordering area tend to source the hybrid seed through informal traders. However, as quality of their suplies are not assured, this most of the time leave farmers at a loss.
“Farmers are very keen to use hybrid paddy seeds, but the government has neither taken any significant step to produce them locally, nor has it made any arrangement to source the hybrid seeds through formal channels," Duwadi said.
In the absence of such initiatives, he added farmers are forced to import hybrid seed illegally from India.
Though the government has registered 42 varieties of quality seeds and another 19 types of imported hybrid seeds for sales in Nepal, traders have not been able to bring in standard hybrid seeds from India in the absence clear channel for formal seed trade.
Given the situation, Duwadi urged the government to take serious initiatives to address the scarcity of paddy seeds that contributes some 20 percent in country´s agricultural gross domestic product.
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