Draft Seeds Bill 2025 | Sowing change

In March last year, 65-year-old Kacchalapu Satyam’s life unravelled soon after he took up a contract to produce maize seeds. His crop, sown over 10 acres in Chirutapalli village of Telangana’s Mulugu district, failed. His wife, Rajamma, suffered paralysis, reportedly due to food poisoning from discarded maize tassels. His 40-year-old son, Chandra Rao, weighed down by debt, died by suicide. They were not alone. Across 1,500 acres in Telangana, 671 small tribal farmers reported similar crop failures after planting maize seeds that promised yields of four tonnes per acre but delivered barely one.

If the Union government has its way, a new law—expected to be tabled in Parliament in the monsoon session—will prevent precisely such episodes by tightening oversight of seed quality and accountability. In a country where over 45 per cent of the workforce depends on agriculture, the rules governing seeds extend well beyond the farm—carrying implications for food security, biodiversity and even public health. It is against this backdrop that the Draft Seeds Bill, 2025, seeks to replace the Seeds Act, 1966, and the Seeds (Control) Order, 1983. When these laws were framed, hybrid seeds, genetically modified varieties and seed royalties were non-existent, and the public sector dominated supply. Today, private firms account for nearly 75 per cent of seed sales, and the absence of a comprehensive registration process has created regulatory gaps.

PUSH FOR QUALITY

The new bill has been more than two decades in the making—first introduced in 2004 and revised in 2010 and 2019 before its current iteration. Its stated objective is to regulate seed quality, ensure farmers’ access to reliable inputs and protect them from losses, while also liberalising imports to promote innovation and widen access to global varieties. To “align with current requirements”, it proposes a more comprehensive regulatory architecture across the value chain. At a mid-January press conference, Union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan further outlined the government’s position: “Every farmer should get quality seeds. Good companies will be encouraged, and those who do wrong will face strict action. That is the essence of this law.”

At its core is a shift towards mandatory, testing-based registration of all seed varieties, whether developed by public or private entities, and quality certification by the government or accredited organisations. This marks a departure from the current system, where many seeds are sold as “truthfully labelled”, i.e. effectively certified by companies themselves. The bill extends accountability across the supply chain—producers, processors, dealers, distributors and nurseries must all be registered. It also introduces traceability norms, including QR codes on seed packets, to bring greater transparency and enable farmers to verify certification details and quality standards before purchase.

Penalties are significantly tightened. At present, fines are modest—Rs 500 for a first offence and Rs 1,000 or six months’ imprisonment for repeat violations. The draft proposes graded penalties, with fines rising to as much as Rs 30 lakh, along with up to three-year jail, for “major” repeat offences such as the sale of spurious or non-registered seeds.

Yet, even as the draft seeks to modernise regulation, its release in November 2025 triggered debate—from its apparent tilt towards industry at the expense of farmers to the curtailment of the role of state governments in regulating seed registration and pricing.

SEED OF DOUBT

The organised segment of India’s seed market is projected to reach Rs 35,500 crore in the 2026–27 crop year, followed by a compound annual growth rate of 4–5 per cent over the next five years, according to the analytics firm Crisil Intelligence. Yet about 55 per cent of the market remains unorganised, largely driven by farm-saved seeds—underscoring the headroom for formalisation.

It is this shift that worries some stakeholders. G.V. Ramanjaneyulu, executive director of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, Hyderabad, says that the draft reads more like a trade law geared towards “creating opportunities for industry and promoting ease of doing business”. Instead, he suggests, “a seeds law should be a rights-based framework that protects farmers’ rights and safeguards biodiversity”.

Perhaps the most contested aspect is how the bill treats farmers’ rights. While it recognises their right to grow, sow, save, use, exchange, share and sell seeds, this is restricted to varieties registered under the act. For Kavitha Kuruganti, co-convenor of the Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA-Kisan Swaraj), this narrows what has historically been a broad, community-driven practice. “The draft bill could have simply left the right as a right over any seed,” she says. Kuruganti also flags the bill’s use of the term “farmer” in the singular, which could end up treating collective entities such as farmer producer organisations, self-help groups, cooperatives and community seed banks as commercial enterprises subject to the same compliance standards as large companies. Community seed systems have sustained local agriculture for decades, enabling adaptation to micro-climates and reducing dependence on external inputs. The absence of a supportive framework raises the risk of penalising customary practices, she says.

This, even as the National Mission on Natural Farming, launched in 2024, encourages a shift towards systems that rely on traditional seeds. “Neither does the bill talk about it nor does it give any incentive to encourage farmers to grow traditional varieties,” says advocate and land laws expert Sunil Kumar.

FEDERAL IMBALANCE

Critics also point to a potential centralisation of authority. Agriculture is constitutionally a state subject, yet the draft empowers the Centre to issue binding directions to states, with its interpretation of “policy” deemed final, notes public policy expert Narasimha Reddy Donthi. Given that seed performance varies across agro-climatic conditions, this raises concerns about the dilution of state-level oversight.

Donthi cites Bt cotton, a pest-resistant genetically modified crop that was approved for commercial cultivation in India in 2002, as a case in point. The private sector has introduced hundreds of its variants, yet publicly available data on their performance across regions remains limited. Even so, says Donthi, these seeds are marketed widely, often with insufficient regard for local conditions.

Pricing is another fault line. The draft largely leaves prices to market forces, with intervention restricted to the Union government and limited to “emergent situations” such as scarcity or profiteering. Given that over 85 per cent of Indian farmers are small and marginal, input costs—including seeds—directly affect viability. In 2006, Andhra Pradesh challenged Monsanto Biotech (India) before the monopolies commission over what it described as “exorbitant” royalties on Bt cotton seeds—a case it later won. This marked a notable instance of a state government-led intervention in price regulation, a role the bill effectively eliminates.

Industry representatives, in any case, resist such controls. With over 500 companies in the market, they argue that competition itself keeps prices in check. “The seed industry is research-driven, much like the pharmaceutical sector,” says Paresh Verma, director general of the Federation of Seed Industry of India (FSII). “A research-based seed company spends an average of around 10 per cent of its revenue on R&D. If margins shrink, the first casualty is innovation, as we saw with price controls in Bt cotton.”

COMPENSATION GAP

For farmers, however, the biggest concern after a crop failure due to the use of spurious or substandard seeds is compensation—an area where the draft is silent. The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001, does provide for compensation to farmers, but only for varieties notified by the government. In Satyam’s case, four seed companies ended up paying a cumulative Rs 4 crore to 671 affected farmers in Telangana. Such outcomes, say experts, are few and far between.

At present, redressal relies largely on consumer courts. Ramanjaneyulu says that this framework rests on a flawed premise—treating farmers as consumers akin to those buying a phone or a car. Filing a case, and proving that seed quality caused a crop failure, is both technically complex and financially burdensome. Sunil Kumar suggests that the proposed law should establish dedicated tribunals at the district or state level to ensure timely and accessible redress.

According to Suman Sahai, founder of the NGO Gene Campaign, compensation must reflect the full economic loss of a failed harvest—not just the cost of seeds, but also labour, resowing and other inputs like fertilisers. In cases involving substandard seeds, she adds, penalties should be high enough—Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore—to act as a deterrent.

India’s seed ecosystem spans two overlapping worlds: a formal, innovation-driven industry and an informal, community-based system. Any regulatory framework must therefore engage with both, ensuring quality and accountability without eroding practices that sustain diversity and resilience. The bill’s effectiveness will hinge on how it balances formalisation with farmers’ autonomy—an equilibrium that remains unsettled.