The June 2025 issue of the Agrecology FAO Agroecology Knowledge Hub’s journal has been published. This month’s issue explores, among other topics, the urgent need to transition food systems away from fossil fuels.
Agrobiodiversity and Agroecology
Cultivated Diversity – Organic seeds for tasty food
EU project LiveSeeding leaflets on cultivated diversity and organic breeding in several languages, and a bonus video of a baker that has adopted the biodiverse flour from populations in his work.
Agroecology Partnership: Opportunities for Seed Networks in Europe
The Agroecology Partnership, funded by Horizon Europe, is a transformative initiative uniting the European Commission and 72 partners across 26 countries. With a budget of €300 million, this ambitious project began on January 1, 2024, and will run until December 31,...
EU plant breeders up against patents by the multinationals
More and more plant breeding material in the EU is getting patented by multinationals giants, a development that poses costs and hurdles for those small breeders that are working to maintain agrobiodiversity, a means of resilience in the face of climate change.
How to implement UNDROP across Europe
ECVC policy brief “How to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) at the European and national level to promote peasants’ rights”
Sowing social innovations for transformative change
Research paper Native seed collector networks in Brazil: Sowing social innovations for transformative change is available as Open Access early view online. ABSTRACT To investigate whether and how Social Innovation (SI) can contribute to transformative change, we...
Moving toward 100% organic seed use in German organic agriculture
A new academic paper was published in journal Organic Farming and is available as Open Access online: Trends in use of crop cultivars from organic and conventional seed multiplication: Moving toward 100% organic seed use in German organic agriculture. ABSTRACT In...
Blue maize and red potatoes. A short cultural history of well-known and lesser-known cultivated plants
The content of this article is taken from the book: Blauer Mais und rote Kartoffel. Ein kleine Kulturgeschichte bekannten und weniger bekannter Kulturpflanzen. Published by Natur und Text, Rangsdorf, 2019. ISBN 978-3-942062-34-3. The main part of the book presents 42 food plants (from amaranth to sugar ear) and a further 25 lesser-known food plants (from achira to yam bean). The individual plant portraits are organized as follows: Domestication and distribution, botany, cultural history, art, cultivation, consumption, medicine and recipes. Examples of the use and importance of food plants in indigenous societies are illustrated in the plant portraits. Maps, illustrations and directories complete the text.
Protecting crops through plant diversity
The INRAE has recently published a free-to-download eBook by the title ‘Protecting crops through plant diversity‘ in the context of project Ecophyto 2+ meant to reduce the use of synthetic pesticides to protect public health. This book is intended for research and teaching purposes, as well as agricultural, environmentaland citizen stakeholders.
The Organic Advice Network
A new initiative was launched in the spring 2024 as part of the EU Farm to Fork Strategy and aligned to its target of achieving 25% organic farmland by 2030. The project aims to address the urgent need for skilled advisors in organic farming by creating and nurturing...
