News

Together with the community for free seed, we made the first open source rye a reality | July 19th 2022 | by Bella

The principle of crowdfunding is to get all or nothing. At the end of our campaign we were trembling one last time. Would we possibly run out of time just before reaching our goal? During our campaign there had been technical problems, a staff shortage, and we had not been able to reach as many people as we had hoped. With great relief, we observed that a few days before the date set, we reached and even exceeded the target sum of €30,000 [1]. This meant that...

What role can seed commons play in securing good taste and nutritional value in bread? | 9th of March 2022 | by Adrien

Since the Neolithic Age and the dawn of agriculture, grain has been a main part of the human diet. With the rise of grain, bread – in its many forms – emerged as a staple food to many civilizations. The steady and slow selection of better grain strands by farmers enabled more elaborate forms of bread. It is likely that the requirements of bread making influenced the choices of farmers in their selection work, favoring types of plants that were easier to...

The time has finally come: from January 2022 onward, organic heterogeneous seed may be traded on the European seed market. | 27th September 2021 | by Bella

The European Union has approved the selling of organic seed populations. Until now, only registered varieties that had undergone a long and expensive approval process were allowed, varieties that meet the high standards of DUS: distinctiveness, homogeneity and stability. Therefore, in conventional and organic farming, breeding lines have been used that are largely homogeneous and stable over many generations. This...

The Global Coalition of Open-Source Seed Initiatives aims to support farmer plant breeding. | January 4th, 2021 | by Bella

Common goods need a community because it is people who create, use, protect and develop them further. This also goes for seeds. In 2018 we wrote about the founding of the Global Coalition of Open Source Seed Initiatives (GOSSI), an international alliance of organisations advocating free seeds. The cooperation has been exciting since the very beginning due to the varied conditions in the individual countries and the strategies and focuses of the...

in times of Covid-19 | June 4th, 2020 | by Lea

In the first few days of the pandemic I found it hard to concentrate on anything other than the number of cases and the various restrictions. Even the struggle for free seeds fell temporarily into the shadows of all the daily reports and general upheaval. Now I realise how wrong I was since many of the reports were simply pointing out the weaknesses in our society. The way in which we nourish ourselves is one of the hurdles we need to overcome. Here are five reasons why we need seeds to become common property now more than ever...

 September 5th, 2019 | by Johannes

The Open-Source Seed Licence protects seeds as commons and offers an alternative to privatisation and market concentration in the seed sector. We are often asked if the licence can also protect against genetic engineering. Our answer is “Yes” and we argue as follows.

“Genetic engineering (GE) in plant breeding” includes several different technologies, and new ones are continuously emerging. The term GE therefore cannot be precisely defined and regulated by law once and for all...