The overall goal of ENGAGEMENT.BIOBREEDING EUROPE is to ensure the maintenance and initiation of new organic breeding programs for a broad range of crops and animals by promoting novel financial concepts and fair value chain partnerships in different regions of Europe.
Different models shall be developed with shared risk and financial responsibility for organic plant breeding in a participatory transdisciplinary approach. Based on such models the organic value chain shall be engaged and enabled to make targeted investments in organic breeding to secure integrity of organic products for the next decades.
The specific objectives of this initiative are:
Organic breeding is the basis for a self-determined, independent further development of the organic sector. Despite this urgent need, the number of organic breeding initiatives in Europe is very limited and the future of young organic breeders is insecure due to insufficient fragmented project based funding.
Therefore, the financing of organic breeding for plants and animals should be placed on a solid and sustainable basis with shared responsibilities along the value chain. In a previous study FiBL has developed a cross-sector concept of the joint precommercial investment of the organic value chain into organic plant and animal breeding for Germany and Switzerland. The basic principles of this concept on engaging the value chain in organic breeding shall be raised to the European level to promote organic breeding on a larger scale across Europe.
We will conduct case studies on various financial models to identiy key factors for success and the major expected outcomes of the project are:
Fondation Salvia
Project coordination and implementation
