Let’s Liberate Diversity! News
Rural resilience: a collective adventure
ARC2020 (Agricultural and Rural Actors Working Together for Good Food, Good Farming and Better Rural Policies in the EU) released a report with the findings of their project in France:
Collective Reflections within Socio-Ecological Transition, 2020-2022”
With the “Nos Campagnes en Résilience” project, we wanted to understand the relationships between new projects and initiatives within socio-ecological transition. How do they share experiences? How have agroecological farmers and rural inhabitants organised and mobilised to prepare for new challenges? How do they broach, collectively, concepts of well-being, solidarity, and changes of practices?
The report discusses the eight factors that were observed to make socio-ecological transitions successful:
- A Collective Adventure
- Cultivating the Human Spirit, Cultivating Nature
- Earnings, Yes – But What About Wellbeing?
- The Local as Testing Ground
- Opening Up Farming
- Getting Political
- Big Visions
- The Struggle is Peaceful, Collective & Intergenerational!
which boil down to the overarching message: no one can do it alone!
It’s a long road to building a new way of imagining life in the countryside. […]
Socio-ecological transition requires collective reflection, collective work, collective building and collective wellbeing. […]
The collective is a strength: a source of ideas and creativity that allows space for the individual.
ARC2020, https://www.arc2020.eu/rural-resilience-a-collective-adventure/
ECA report: securing agricultural product supply chains during COVID-19
The European Court of Auditors (ECA) published a special report assessing the EU response to the Covid 19 crisis with regards to the agricultural product supply chains.
The report “Securing agricultural product supply chains during COVID-19: EU response was rapid, but insufficiently targeted by the member states” led by ECA Member Joëlle Elvinger concluded that while the Commission reacted rapidly and on multiple fronts, there was scope for improvement in the adoption and implementation of the emergency measures. Learning from the experience with the pandemic will be an important step in preparing for future crises.
The report is available online, together with the response of the European Commission.
Radicchio: a success story of culinary breeding
The Culinary Breeding Network, founded by professor Lane Selman, aims to build communities of plant breeders, seed growers and other stakeholders to improve quality in vegetables, fruits and grains that are relevant and desirable for organic farmers and their customers.
The Network organizes culinary explorations and other activities to inspire connection and collaboration throughout the food system. Among these was a trip to Italy, visiting the places where radicchio – the most famous form of plant Chicorium intybus – originates from.
Radicchio is an excellent example of selective breeding for culinary purposes, as described in the article written to document the experience:
[…] radicchio di Treviso has been bred for, among other things, this ability to be stored for a very long time. It has been selected, not by deity or chance, but by the cumulative decision-making of thousands of farmers.
Individually, most selection events are unremarkable. A farmer pauses briefly while considering which plants to allow to produce seed, eventually choosing one with a leaf shape that speaks to them, one with a particularly attractive color. Or a field floods and most plants die, leaving only a few hardy survivors to pass their genes to the next generation.
The result of these millions of moments of selection – some coordinated, some idiosyncratic, some entirely random – has been this: A crunchy, bitter, ovoid vegetable so closely linked to this specific Italian region that it is protected by the same laws governing Champagne and Stilton.
[…]
Through selective breeding, we impose our values on domestic plants. Crops like radicchio have evolved, and continue to evolve, in response to human desires: A redder leaf, a more uniform shape, adherence to market standards, the ability to silently grow a crisp, tender heart while buried in a dark, manure-filled corner of a barn through the cold months of winter.
M. Waterbury, Whetstone
Read the whole article below.
Together with the community for free seed, we made the first open source rye a reality
Developing new crop varieties is often difficult to finance for small organic breeders. At OpenSourceSeeds, we have long been concerned with the question of how society can contribute to the financing of new free varieties. We have already been able to show that many people are quite willing to actively support organic breeding. In a survey 92% of respondents said they would pay more for a product in the supermarket if it meant that new varieties could be financed – which then would be protected as a commons for everyone.
Learn more about our thoughts leading to the ‚rye that belongs to all of us‘, which learnings we take from our campaign and what will happen now.
FiBL: Visiting Friends of Agrobiodiversity Across Europe
This new publication from FiBL takes readers on a journey to 15 organic plant and animal breeding initiatives in Europe. Every initiative is presented by a person involved in the initiative. For each initiative, the aims and challenges are described. The selected examples give a good insight into the great diversity of initiatives to maintain and promote biodiversity in organic crops and animal species.
source: FiBL_Visiting-Friends-of-Agrobiodiversity-Across-Europe publication
The new Balkan Seed Network: opportunities for Eastern Europe
After becoming a member of the Let’s Liberate Diversity (LLD) network, Magház Association just had another great opportunity for international networking – this time in Bucharest. The occasion was the final meeting of the Balkan Beets (https://www.arche-noah.at/english/projects/balkan-beets) project between the 25th and 27th of May, where the organizers kindly invited LLD to have a formal introduction with the project partners from all over the Balkans. It so happened that I represented Magház and LLD as well at this wonderful meeting.
I was a little anxious before arriving as I haven’t met with most of the participants – not even on a Zoom meeting – and sometimes it’s hard to arrive to a group that has been working together for a long time. It turned out soon that it was unnecessary to worry: I was accepted very kindly and warmly, the participants were interested both in the work of Magház and LLD, and we even started to plan some future collaborations. The venue of the meeting was fantastic, we spent most of the three days in The Legacy ((https://bucharest.the-legacy.life/)), a small and green oasis in the center of Bucharest. Besides the great place I also have to mention the amazing food that was made onsite by our two cooks, mostly from local and seasonal vegetables.
The Balkan Beets project: partners and details
The coordinator of the project was Arche Noah Schiltern from Austria, and the participants were coming from all over the Balkans: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia. Some of the participants represented some organizations, like ZMAG from Croatia, Okvir života network from Serbia, ALICA Foundation from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Casa Semintelor from Romania, AEGILOPS from Greece, or the Instute of Plant Genetic Resources of the University of Tirana. Some other participants came from community seed banks or were seed farmers. It was wonderful to spend time in such a diverse and interesting company! The program was quite busy, most of the topics being about the project itself, seeds and plant cultivation, but we had some opportunity to talk about various other topics as well in the breaks.
The agenda of the Bucharest meeting
There were only two and a half days to go over all the planned sessions, so the program was quite busy and tiring but so much productive as well. We spent the first day mostly with introductions: participants reported on the achievements during the Balkan Beets project. As I only knew the basics about the project, this session was particularly interesting for me. After all the reports, I also had the opportunity to introduce Magház and LLD, as well as sharing the invitation for all the participants and organizations for the international conference about agrobiodiversity and seeds in October.
The second day started with another intriguing session about varieties that can somehow adapt to the effects of climate change. First we heard a short introduction to the topic, why is it important to research this area and some of the most important aspects. After this, participants presented some good examples from their countries, for example a drought-tolerant corn variety from Serbia, a very resistant broad bean from Croatia and a drought-tolerant running bean from Albania. Being seed savers, of course, we had a small international seed swapping after this session.
The Balkan Seed Network: the aims and actions!
Then came the hardest and longest but incredibly fruitful discussion, at the end of wich the Balkan Seed Network was officially established. The aim of the network is to join the efforts of the organizations and individuals that are working on seed sovereignty and the conservation of old varieties and landraces. In the afternoon we also talked about the current European Union seed legislation and the relatively new legislation about Organic Heterogenous Materials. After discussing legal questions we changed to the next key topic: what kind of projects and collaborations can we build together? These discussions were so enthusiastic that we continued them on the next day as well. Unfortunately I had to leave after lunch and I couldn’t stay for visiting the garden and seed bank of Casa Semintelor. But these two and a half days were a great experience for me nonetheless and I’m really grateful for the opportunity for Arche Noah and LLD as well! I really hope that we can soon establish some closer cooperation, and that we’ll meet many of the participants in Budapest in October!
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May 2026
EC-LLD! General Assembly (for EC-LLD! members only)
Official opening of the Forum
WS1: Seeds, Biodiversity and the Right to Food: The Role of Municipal Food Policies
WS 2: Seeds in Common: Genebanks, Breeding Innovation, and the Future of Democratic Seed Systems
WS 3: On-farm agrobiodiversity in the Balkan region: from preservation to plant population development
WS 4: Enhancing cultivated biodiversity through local food policies
WS 5: EU Seed Law Reform – What Does It Mean for Fields and Plates, and How Can We Safeguard Seed Diversity?
WS 6: Farmers’ Seed Systems in the Region of Central Asia and Eastern Europe: Experience, Challenges and Future Directions
WS 7: Agroecology Living Labs – Crossfertilization for promoting agrobiodiversity
WS 8: NGTs and Patents: How Can We Grow Without Them? Updates on Political Debates and Cooperation Amongst Organic Breeders and Growers
WS 9: Affectionate Alliances and Exploratory Mindsets: Building a Global Coalition of Agroecological Seed Networks for Evolutionary Radical Futures
