A billion people go to bed hungry every day and two billion suffer from malnutrition. The global population is expected to grow by a further two billion in the coming decades, precisely in those regions that are currently considered food insecure. In these regions where agricultural systems are dominated by smallholder farmers, access to the key inputs to produce more and better food is often lacking. Quality seeds of improved varieties have enabled farmers in advanced agricultural systems to triple their yields. What is the seed industry, strategically placed as it is at the start of the food value chain, doing to help smallholder farmers in food insecure regions to achieve similar results? The Access to Seeds Index aims to shine a light on this question. It assesses and benchmarks leading global field crop and vegetable seed companies on their efforts to make their products available to small-holder farmers in four regions: Latin America, Western Africa, Eastern Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. A separate Regional Index has been compiled for Eastern Africa.