Farm sizes and types of farms
Criteria for farms
A seed production programme organized by a seed producing agency or company requires relatively large areas of land and intensive participation of farmers.
Some criteria for farmers (farms) who participate are:
- possibilities to ensure a good isolation of seed crops
- easy to organize and supervise the programme
- acceptance to implement adequate crop production methods
- adequate crop rotation
- acceptance to implement sanitation and use of clean seed
Farm size
The given criteria for farmers (farms) can be met more easily with a limited number of large units than with a large number of small units.
These large units may be private or governmental.
STATE FARMS AND EXPERIMENTAL STATIONS
Organizations with small farmers
Small farmers are often less market oriented and they grow a large variety of crops. With these farmers it is difficult to supervise and organize the seed programme: the fields are scattered and small; difficult to isolate seed crops from infection sources; difficult to implement crop rotation and to replace the production of (high return) potato crops by other ( low return) crops.
Various organizational structures are useful to include small farmers in seed programs: