These hands are holding characteristic heads of the rare species of Georgian Zanduri wheat, Triticum timopheevii.
© Hannes Lorenzen
Seeds4All is a census platform aiming to give visibility to all European organisations that collect, enrich, produce, disseminate and sustainably use traditional and new varieties of seeds belonging to the public domain, freely reproducible and not genetically modified.
By presenting a broad range of organisations – NGOs, citizens' initiatives, businesses, formal & informal networks – as well as by exhibiting the number of cultivated plant varieties they keep, Seeds4All wishes to promote this emerging sector, while creating a much needed space for common knowledge and experience sharing.
Seeds4All hopes to become a medium facilitating access to information about seed-swaps and market development
opportunities in Europe; as well as to demonstrate how rich and diverse are the kinds of initiatives dedicated to
preserve agrobiodiversity and how they can learn from each other, in order to grow and be spread everywhere.
On Sunday 26 of September, the Seeds4All coordination team had the pleasure of participating in one of its first seed exchanges in a very long time, which took place at the Guigui’s farm, located in Wauthiers-Braine (Wallonia, Belgium).
© Adèle Pautrat
The Guigui’s farm is managed by Guillaume Copée and is entirely organic, developed according to the principles of agroecology, market gardening and permaculture, with the aim of offering quality, healthy and sustainable local products.
The farm doesn’t exclusively use its own seeds, but Guillaume Copée is sensitize to the subject and wishes to get involved in the mission of disseminating the various issues related to seed autonomy and cultivated biodiversity to its customers and supporters. For example, by organising, with the help of Laetitia Fain, awareness days like the one we attended.
Two activities were proposed: a seed harvesting workshop with dried plants of Artemisia, Angelica, Lettuce, Flax, Lemon balm, etc. and a workshop to learn how to make cuttings.
The founder of the Rixensart Seed Library participated in the event, offering part of the collection to the people who also could give it some of their own varieties.
© Adèle Pautrat
At the end of the day, Lawyer Blanche Magarinos-Rey animated a conference about the legislation on seed trade and its evolutions to come in the organic sector.
The discovery of this farm that is progressively committing itself to the issue of free and sustainable seeds, gave us the desire to launch a series of visits across Belgium, to go and meet the different agricultural stakeholders who are implementing new ways of working with seeds.
In keeping with our primary mission, this approach could allow us to create new connections between organisations with similar ambitions, to foster their cooperation and exchange of expertise, and to promote their commitments. Just as we did on the island of Pellworm, during the seminar we organised there last July.
In that framework, we would like to know if any of our Belgian subscribers would be interested in welcoming us to their farms to present their work and tell us about their ambitions.
© Adèle Pautrat
The Seeds4All platform is meant to grow thanks to the input of the seed distributors themselves.
The criteria to comply with...
- Being an organisation geographically located in Europe (not necessarily within the European Union).
- Being committed to the promotion, protection and enhancement of agrobiodiversity.
- Dealing with material belonging to the public domain, freely reproducible and not genetically modified.
If you run or take part in an organisation that meets these principles, you are very welcome to feature it and to contribute to the
inventory!
The Agricultural and Rural Convention for 2020 (ARC2020) and the European Coordination Let’s Liberate Diversity (EC-LLD)
support the vision and the development of the Seeds4All initiative that will help to multiply opportunities for cooperation between biodiversity keepers and to highlight the extent of their commitment, which has been legally insecure for too long.
The delegated act specifying the conditions for marketing seed lots from Organic Heterogeneous Material has officially been adopted.
With the aim of helping the sustainable seed sector to understand and take control of this new legislation, we are currently working on the publication of a flyer, with synthetic and rigorous information on the OHM.
We would like it to be spread to the greatest number of operators concerned; and need your support!
If your organisations are interested receiving a few copies, please contact us and place an order.
The flyer is available in English only for the moment. We will ask for a participation covering the postal costs.
Petition to the European Commission...
A petition to the European Commission is online, calling for seed savers to be recognised as key players in safeguarding crop biodiversity, and as such to be exempted from plant health registration.
Sixth edition of the Seed Policy Dialogue...
...focusing on the UNDROP Declaration. It will take place online on October 21st, from 5 to 6pm.
The French seed production company Kokopelli has launched a crowdfunding campaign through which you can support its itinerant shop project: the purchase and fitting out of a Seed Truck that will travel the roads of France, Belgium and Switzerland from next year.
The greek seed saving organisation Alternative Community Peliti has launched a crowdfunding campaign to help realise its project of building a Seed Bank able to house its wonderful collection of indigenous and rare varieties.
