Home garden seed kits: a sustainable business model

Entrepreneurs are quick to grasp the value of packing vegetable seed in small quantities for home use.

Home garden seed kits pioneered by AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center four years ago in Jharkhand in eastern India have now stimulated entrepreneurs to supply growing demand for the kits. More than 80,000 households in Jharkhand and neighboring states now enjoy a variety of vegetables in their meals because of the seed kits. The vegetables contribute much needed vitamins and minerals to the diet, and are a tasty complement to the local staple, rice.

To date, about 13,000 seed kits have been sold throughout Jharkhand, West Bengal, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Goa, and several types have been developed for different audiences and needs. To grow a home garden, families need good quality seed of diverse crops in small amounts suited to their garden size.

In 2008, AVRDC launched a project on “Improving vegetable production and consumption for sustainable rural livelihoods in Jharkhand and Punjab, India” funded by the Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT). In rural Jharkhand, five nongovernmental organizational partners worked with AVRDC to implement home gardens for more than 5000 farmers, using seed provided by AVRDC. Farmers were trained to produce and store their own seeds, and many have been able to grow home gardens year after year as a result.

When home gardens became popular beyond the project area, demand for quality seed kits soon outstripped supply. AVRDC decided to produce kits with diverse seeds for year-round vegetable production. Krishi Gram Vikas Kendra (KGVK), one of AVRDC’s NGO partners in Jharkhand, was contracted to create 1500 kits containing seed of 20 different vegetables with a buy-back provision to reduce risk. Demand started to expand for the INR 300 (US $5) kits—which contained small seed packs mounted on a wall poster—as farmers’ groups as well as NGOs sought them out.

In October 2013, Rajesh Singh, an agriculture postgraduate, left KGVK to found the Mahatma Buddha Agriclinic and Agribusiness Centre in Gaya, Bihar. He sold home garden seed kits and also got a government contract to train 720 local women farmers to establish their own home gardens. He then began to customize the seed packs for different seasons and supply inputs. His first version had kits for the winter, summer and rainy seasons with seed packets mounted on three different leaves of a wall calendar. He supplied this along with a drip irrigation kit, seedling trays and cocopeat for INR 4000 (US $60). Although he sold 770 kits in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, the price was too expensive for most farmers.

His next version was simpler, with seed for just one season combined with two seedling trays, one kilo of cocopeat, a small garden hand tool (khurpi), neem oil for insect control and a small hand sprayer for INR 650 (US $10). He sold 1500 kits in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.

Seed was the most popular component of the kits, because small quantities of good seed of diverse vegetables are hard to obtain. So his third and most profitable version contained small seed packets of 10 vegetables for each season and sold for INR 400. He recently got an order for 3000 kits from different districts of Bihar.

The three kit types are all selling well. Each kit contains a leaflet explaining the benefits of home gardens, and instructions on how to grow healthy seedlings using nursery trays.

But there’s more….

Another former employee of KGVK, Mohit Kumar, started his own firm called Agro Vision to manufacture small agricultural hand tools including portable nets to exclude insects—another idea promoted by the AVRDC project in Jharkhand. The two entrepreneurs combined forces and products, and now sell kits that include Mr. Singh’s best-selling seed packs and Mr. Kumar’s nets to grow healthy vegetable seedlings.

The project led by AVRDC is now reaching tens of thousands of households not only in Jharkhand but well beyond the original target area because the ideas it promoted made economic sense to astute individuals who have made its impact sustainable. It shows that a good exit strategy is just as important for the success of a project as the ideas it promotes.

A seed kit prepared by AVRDC and KGVK. Small packets of vegetable seed are attached to a calendar.

A seed kit prepared by AVRDC and KGVK. Small packets of vegetable seed attached to a calendar remind gardeners when to sow.

Everything needed to start a home garden in one box.

Everything needed to start a home garden in one box.