Let’s Liberate Diversity! News
Right to Food Initiative accepted by the EU Commission!
👉 Explore the official ECI page
👉 Find your language version on Good Food For All’s website (with more being added)
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No one should go hungry.
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Food is a right — not a commodity.
Defend farmers’ seed rights – reach out to EU lawmakers!
EU Commission’s PRM law – a threat to seed diversity and sovereignty
The European Commission’s proposed EU law of Production and Marketing of Plant Reproductive Material is a threat to small seed producers, and to the conservation of seed diversity.
If the proposed seed law is passed, the effects of small seed producers and fruit tree nurseries across the EU will be devastating. This will have important consequences for farming and agriculture in the EU as well as agrobiodiversity, as these producers and nurseries offer a greater diversity of crops and varieties than large companies.
For more information, read more ARCHE NOAH’s recent report here: https://www.arche-noah.at/media/bureaucracy_against_biodiversity_report_may_2025_3.pdf
ARCHE NOAH Report: Bureaucracy against biodiversity
EU Agriculture Ministers meeting – reach out to your minister
The European Parliament has not yet endorsed the EC’s proposed law. On 23 and 24 June EU agriculture ministers will be meeting to discuss the proposed law. Reach out to your country’s minister and ask them to speak up for farmers’ rights and biodiversity.
- Please reach out to your minister to ask to speak up for free conservation work without seed
A leaked version of the Polish government’s position on the proposed seed law would ban farmers from informal seed exchanges.
marketing restrictions. You can use ARCHE NOAH’s briefing on good practices in the current seed marketing laws in the different EU member states when it comes to exempting conservation work from the seed marketing rules. You can the briefing attached in this post here: Good practice example for Agriculture Ministers
- Please continue to reach out to the responsible civil servants and ask them to protect conservation work from overregulation. Mention that all transfers for the aim of conservation should be put outside the scope, as many different actors are needed for successful conservation work next to conservation organisations (farmers, seed libraries, schools, individual seed savers/producers, …)
- Raise media awareness! Share this post and ARCHE NOAH’s ‘Raise Our Forks’ campaign on your social media and networks, and encourage conversations.
“RAISE OUR FORKS – FOR DIVERSITY!”
Support ARCHE NOAH’s campaign calling on EU lawmakers to protect farmers’ rights to keep, use and exchange seed material and defend seed diversity in Europe. Read and sign their petition here: https://mitmachen.arche-noah.at/en/raise-our-forks
Support ARCHE NOAH’s ‘Raise our forks for diversity’ petition. (Image credit: Arche Noah)
LLD speaks to SeedWorld about preserving seed diversity
LLD Board Member and and technical director of Rete Semi Rurali, Riccardo Bocci, recently spoke to SeedWorld about efforts to preserve seed genetic diversity in Europe.
Riccardo spoke about LLD’s work representing 22 seed banks across Europe, and the organisation’s efforts to promote the inclusion of these community seed banks in the UN’s ‘Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture’ framework. Across Europe, there is a growing interest among farmers and the public to conserve traditional seed varieties. This growing interest is the result of dedicated training and education efforts from organisations such as LLD, and through EU-funded research projects.
The article also covers similar efforts to preserve seed diversity in the USA, Africa and internationally through initiatives led by the Germany-based Crop Trust.
There is an urgent need to preserve genetic diversity in the face of the threat posed by the ongoing consolidation of the global seed sector.
Read the article here: https://www.seedworld.com/europe/2025/04/11/preserving-seed-diversity-in-europe/
How to implement UNDROP across Europe
ECVC published (with EU co-funding) a new set of policy recommendations for international and regional organisations, European policy-makers, and national and local authorities, in order to push for the implementation of UN Declaration of the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) and promote peasants’ rights.
Agrobiodiversity does of course feature in the policy brief as the right to seeds (Article 19) and the right to biological diversity (Article 20) are among the human rights specific to peasants introduced by UNDROP.
The policy brief is available for downloading.
Let’s Liberate Diversity Forum, Antibes 2024: Strengthening Global Seed Networks
From October 3rd to 5th, Antibes was home to the Let’s Liberate Diversity Forum, which took place during the International Gathering ‘Sow Your Resistance’. With 500 participants from all over the world, this landmark event brought together diverse stakeholders...
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...
Strategic Dialogue on the future of EU agriculture
This month marked the end of the Strategic Dialogue on the future of EU agriculture, an initiative first announced by President of the EU Commission Von der Leyen at her State of the Union address last year and that saw stakeholders in Europe engaged in discussions...
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.
Natural regulation of pest populations through agrobiodiversity is at the heart of this publication, which considers managing diversity in the landscape and the fields, including by increasing inter- and intraspecific diversity. It also makes reference to policy, both the EU CAP and the French National Strategic Plan.
CREDIT: This document came to our attention in the June 2024 Issue of the FAO Agroecology Knowledge Hub Digest, which we have previously written about
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