Perception of farmers and agricultural experts for farmers’ saved seed: The case of East Showa, Ethiopia

There is limited information on the perception of the performance of farmers’ saved seed (FSS) despite enormous effort to address the farmers with improved and quality seed. The paper therefore presents perception of farmers, researchers, agricultural experts on the performance of farmers’ saved seed and its underlying factors. The perceived performance of farmers' saved seed was assessed based on the survey made in East Shewa zone of Oromia Region, Ethiopia using two questionnaires responded by 65 relevant agricultural experts (Development Agents, Subject Matter Specialists, Agricultural Researchers) and 92 randomly selected farmers. The study found that of the total respondents, 52% perceived that FSS perform poor for all crops and the rest 48% perceived that the poor performance is for some crops. Similarly, perceptions about the poor performance of FSS were not statistically different between farmers and experts. In terms of the perception of the poor performance of FSS for the different crops, however, statistically significant differences were observed between farmers and experts except for teff. Concerning the estimated reduction due to the use of FSS, based on the response of those farmers who perceived the performance poorly, the estimated yield reductions are considerably high ranging from close to 6 quintals/ha for teff (26.1%) and haricot beans (27.3%) to close to 9 quintals/ha for chickpea (25.7%), 10 quintals/ha (21.3%) for wheat, and about 14 quintals/ha for maize (47.8%).