Report on the Online Policy Conference „Pathways to create a level playing field in the organic seed sector in the EU“

Summary

The aim of the online policy conference was to raise awareness on policy measures to increase a level playing field in the organic seed sector in Europe. A level playing field is associated with a fair and transparent organic seed market. The conference was split into three focus points, i) importance of organic seed expert groups, ii) increase transparency in the organic seed supply chain and iii) develop national roadmaps towards 100% organic seed by 2036. Speakers from four countries (Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and France) were invited to present practise examples referring to the focus points. The target group of participants included all actors along the organic seed supply and breeding chain, including policy makers, national/regional authorities, control bodies, seed authorities, seed associations, seed producer & trader, breeder, researcher, farmer associations, NGOs and others. In total, more than 150 participants registered to the online conference. Due to a major global outage in the Google/Microsoft systems at the day of the online conference, not all participants could join to the meeting. However, more than 95 participants stayed until the end of the policy conference. Representatives of the four countries presented various measures that improve transparency and fairness in the organic seed sector. It could be shown, that by implementing rules that support the production and use of organic seed and planting material the number of derogations on non-organic seed can be reduced. Overall cooperation between actors, e.g. via seed expert groups, and the commitment to concrete measures and targets are key to move forward towards 100% organic seed and planting material in Europe. In this report, further information on upcoming workshops and trainings within the LIVESEEDING project is given.