To date, following more than sixty years of restrictive legislation on the marketing of seeds at EU level, a very limited number of plant varieties and breeding materials are being placed on the market, threatening food sovereignty and security.

The erosion of cultivated biodiversity is linked to the accelerated development of an industrial food and farming system favouring intensive monoculture, patents on the living world, the concentration of means of production, the internationalisation of exchanges and loss of local specificities…

Faced with growing climatic pressures, this system must be questioned for its glaring lack of equity and capacity to adapt.

Two issues that seed diversity and autonmy can help solve!

In July 2023, the European Commission tabled two proposals for legislation that will be decisive for the future of our agri-food systems (on Plant Reproductive Material, on Plants produced by certain new genomic techniques). In this context, we are engaged in policy analysis and advocacy work, sharing voices and demands from the field in collaboration with key partners.

All the legislative information you need to understand the EU negotiations and debates on the marketing of seeds.

Our field reports from across Europe, using the seed angle to tackle issues relating to the agricultural transition.

A library of artistic resources to awaken your senses and knowledge of seeds, plants, agriculture and many more!

In this article Hannes Lorenzen speaks to Frank Adams, master gardener and co-founder of the SEED association, who has long been involved in the legislative battle waged by seed savers to gain recognition for the necessity and specific nature of their work. In the movie Seeds of Europe, he particularly mounts the bureaucratic hurdles making it increasingly difficult for small-scale seed breeders and growers to thrive. Continue reading...

Organic breeding techniques have a different relationship to time and place than genetic engineering methods; other aspects of being in a market economy and of using specialised machinery have their own relationships to time too. Here, Hannes Lorenzen talks with organic plant breeders in Christiansen organic farm, up in Schleswig-Holstein, in the far north of Germany and what they do and why they do it. Continue reading...

Seeds4All is a project run by the Agricultural and Rural Convention for 2020 (ARC2020). As a hub for policy analysis and ground research, ARC2020 documents the socioecological transition of agriculture, building bridges between the local and the European.

Seeds4All is a member of the Global Bean Network gathering a hundred of partners from all over the world. Together they implement a range of activities to increase the cultivation and consumption of legumes around the world, highlighting their benefits for agricultural transition.