European legislation requires the use of organic seeds in organic agriculture. However, the lack of availability of organic seeds has led to continued derogations for the use of non-organic seed of varieties developed and tested for conventional farming only. Increased supply of organically produced seeds of varieties meeting the organic values and requirements are crucial for the development of organic farming. A six-fold increase in the production of organic seeds is needed to reach the EU’s target. One step towards this ambitious goal is the harmonised implementation of the EU organic regulation (2018/848) and the development of national roadmaps to foster organic seed production, organic variety testing, and organic plant breeding.
The draft seed legislation proposed by the European Commission is very welcome as it provides e. g. room for flexibility for organic variety registration and enables the exchange of seeds among farmers. However, a possible hindrance is the draft’s intention to extend the VCU-testing procedure (value for cultivation and use) to all crops. This could impede the registration of new varieties of fruits and vegetables in the future. Currently, VCU-testing is only compulsory for the registration of varieties of arable crops. Another challenge for the organic sector is the draft regulation on New Genomic Techniques (NGT) by the EU commission. It deregulates certain types of NGT and does not guarantee traceability along the value chain. This makes it more difficult to keep the organic sector NGT-free.
Altogether, the Seed Conference was a great opportunity to approach those challenges and to bring together different forces to reach a tremendous increase in organic seed production.
Further information
Contacts
- Mariano Iossa, FiBL Europe
- Monika Messmer, FiBL Switzerland
- Mariateresa Lazzaro, FiBL Switzerland
Weblinks
- liveseeding.org: Full press release
- liveseeding.org: Project website
- fibl.org: LiveSeeding in the FiBL project database