An effort by US donors and multinational agribusiness Monsanto to partner with Nepal to boost local maize production with imported hybrid seeds has met civil society opposition that is calling instead for home-grown solutions. “If an organization like USAID [US Agency for International Development] wants to help us with a company like Monsanto, we would hope that they would help us to actually develop our own hybrids instead, not to import their foreign seeds,” said Hari Dahal, spokesperson for the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, at a recent parliamentary hearing on food sovereignty, as reported in local media.