India is a key vegetable seed market for East-West Seed globally

Douwe Zijp, Global CEO of East-West Seed, a global leader in the tropical vegetable seeds market, with 39 years of experience in breeding, producing, and delivering high-quality vegetable seeds, speaks on how Indian smallholder farmers can economically benefit from adopting vegetable cultivation.

East-West Seed, founded in 1982 by Dr. Simon Groot, winner of the World Food Prize 2019, focuses on developing improved vegetable varieties to help smallholder farmers increase their production and incomes.

What were the key career experiences that shaped the way you are now as a leader?

Douwe Zijp: I started my career with the Dutch Natural Gas Corporation and subsequently with AgrEvo Benelux in Germany post my degree in business economics. The experience with the former helped to identify key levers to change/challenge the performance of a business, while the latter was helpful in learning how to turn around a business. As the CEO of Bayer's vegetable seed business, Nunhems, I had the opportunity to travel to many far-flung vegetable farming areas (including India), interact with smallholder farmers to understand their unique challenges, and see first-hand the potential of vegetable farming. During my 15 years at Nunhems, I visited India and its farmers at least twice a year. Even with East-West Seed for the past five years, the opportunity to interact with employees and customers across the tropical regions of the World has really shaped my understanding of the unmet needs of the various markets and provided me with the required clarity on how to go about trying to fix them.

How important is India from a global East-West Seed standpoint?

Douwe Zijp: As the second-largest vegetable seed market in the World, India is a key market for East-West Seed. We are among the top six vegetable seed companies in India and aim to be among the top three by 2022. We began operations 17 years ago and have a sizable footprint in India with five R&D facilities, two production units, and employ over 1000 people across the country. In the next few years, we project that India will be even more important to us by contributing over 30% of our revenues and becoming the largest seed production hub for our company. After a few years of stagnating growth, India is now one of our fastest-growing affiliates since 2019 (growing faster than the market). Currently, we offer 150 varieties across 32 crops for the Indian farmers and continue to invest in expanding with R&D centers, warehouses, people, and new products.

What has East-West Seed done differently to set itself apart from its competitors?

Douwe Zijp: Vegetable farming is not just a business model for East-West Seed, and we have a unique social development approach towards farmer training. As a pure-play tropical vegetable seed company, our approach to breeding is unique in that we look at highly specific local factors and breed particular varietals with those factors in mind. We do not believe in a "one-size-fits-all" approach—we look at our work as an investment in the success of farmers in these regions, and breeding seeds that will thrive in those areas is critical to that work.

Another unique initiative is our Knowledge Transfer which gives farmers practical skills and introduces them to new technologies that would help them improve their profitability. We dedicate 1.25% of our revenues to Knowledge Transfer. In India, we have helped more than 50,000 smallholder vegetable farmers by providing and training better farming practices in vegetable farming. Globally we train around 100,000 smallholder farmers annually.

We also work closely with leading universities such as the Indian Institute of Horticultural Research & Indian Institute of Vegetable Research, collaborate with Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and Punjab Agricultural University besides Asian Vegetable Research and Development Centers (AVRDC), Taiwan.

Consequently, in recognition of our commitment and performance in providing the World's smallholder farmers access to quality seeds, we were ranked #1 in the 2019 Global Access to Seed Index.

What would you say are the essential qualities for success in your industry today?

Douwe Zijp: As Mr. Simon Groot always says, quality seeds are the starting point for a cascade of value creation. Farmers planting hybrid seeds get higher yields and better quality produce that sells for higher prices. These high-quality, attractive vegetables induce consumers to buy more of them.

Over 20 million smallholder farmers in 60 countries plant East-West Seed's 973 improved varieties of 60 vegetable crops on 28 million hectares. We should generate trust, and what I think is very, very important is to establish an emotional connection with the farmers.