Discusses how community seed banks can conserve local varieties and improve agrobiodiversity by enhancing economic sustainability through legal recognition, market integration, partnerships and financing models.
Gabriele Maneo
Community Seed Banks: access to germplasm and benefit sharing models
Manual explaining international and EU frameworks (CBD/Nagoya, ITPGRFA), practical ABS tools (SMTA/Easy-SMTA) and scenarios for how Community Seed Banks and farmers can access, share and manage germplasm.
Community Seed Banks: Documentation systems — a tool for data and information management (Manual 2)
Practical manual for Community Seed Banks on setting up documentation systems: descriptors, forms, databases, data exchange, management, software and a European case example (Pro Specie Rara).
Community Seed Banks — Establishment, management and governance (Manual 1)
Practical manual offering step‑by‑step guidance on establishing, managing and governing community seed banks in Europe, covering technical, organisational and outreach aspects.
Contribution of Community Seed Banks to farmer seed systems and food security in Northern and Central Malawi
Survey and climate-data analysis in Malawi (688 households, 1,600 plots) finds CSBs supply ~1/3 of seeds for participants, are linked to better household food security, show mixed effects on crop yields, and correlate with climate-shock exposure.
Community Seed Banks in China: Achievements, Challenges and Prospects
Systematic review of 27 community seed banks in China (2020), expanding the conceptual framework with two new functions, presenting three cases, and giving practical policy recommendations to strengthen seed systems.
Building stronger producer-consumer relationships to escape the mono-crop farming model
Examines how CSA, LSPA and PGS strengthen producer-consumer ties to support on-farm seed production, agroecological practices and cultivated biodiversity, linking seed sovereignty to food sovereignty.
Bureaucracy Against Biodiversity: How New Administrative Burdens in the EU PRM-Regulation Could Tighten Agro-Chemical Control Over Our Fields and Plates
ARCHE NOAH (May 2025) finds the proposed EU PRM Regulation would impose disproportionate administrative and testing burdens on small seed producers, risking loss of varieties and business closures; calls for exemptions and proportional rules.
Implementing the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) in light of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP)
Briefing paper showing how UNDROP strengthens and clarifies Farmers’ Rights under the ITPGRFA, affirms human-rights primacy over conflicting laws, and defines State and UN agency obligations for seed policy and governance.
Guide to EU Seed Policy 2023 – Seeding Europe
Practical guide to EU seed policy (May 2023): institutions, legal instruments, GMO and plant health rules, biodiversity, intellectual property and seed marketing, aimed at seed savers, NGOs and citizens.
