Advanta Seeds rises to #2 in Access to Seeds Index 2021 for South and South-East Asia

In the second South and South-East Asia (SSEA) Index released by Access to Seeds Index (ATSI), Advanta Seeds ranked 2nd out of thirty-one companies. It is an outstanding achievement compared to ATSI 2019, where Advanta Seeds ranked fourth out of twenty-three companies. Rising two places up despite seven more companies being evaluated demonstrated Advanta's strong commitment to sustainability.

The 2021 SSEA index was published by the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA), an ally of the ATSI Foundation. The WBA is a non-profit organization aiming to achieve the SDGs by 2030 by promoting transformational change from farm to fork. The ATSI is a highlight of the WBA Food and Agriculture Benchmark and it measures and compares the efforts of the world’s leading seed companies to enhance the productivity of smallholder farmers.

ATSI placed Advanta Seeds top of all thirty-one seed companies in three out of the six measuring areas: genetic resources and intellectual property management, seed production and capacity building. In genetic resources and intellectual property management, Advanta has the leading position as a result of its efforts to conserve genetic diversity and provide access to its genetic resources. In seed production, Advanta engages smallholder farmers, which span several countries in the region: India, Thailand and Indonesia. In addition, ATSI highlighted Advanta Seeds' diverse set of capacity building activities, which include programs explicitly targeted to women farmers.

ATSI also pointed Advanta Seeds' leading practices in research and development and breeding programs for field crops and vegetables supported, which supported the company's strong performance in this year's Index.

Advanta Seeds has a strong strategy for ensuring access to seeds for smallholder farmers with time-bound targets of reaching forty million smallholder farmers and providing seed production contracts to sixty-five thousand smallholder farmers by 2025.

“Smallholder farmers are at the heart of our business. We endeavor to meet the farmers' needs and be a part of their crop lifecycle. Based on farmers' feedback, we design our R&D objectives to deliver appropriate products and constantly engage with farmers on multiple platforms," says Prashant Belgamwar, Business Director - South Asia & International Vegetables BU.

The Advanta’s scorecard is available at: Access to Seeds Index | World Benchmarking Alliance