A friend of mine, Erik D’haese has written a Dutch language article for MO magazine on the current state of EU seed laws. Regular readers of this blog will have seen a lot of it before, but he mentions a few things I didn’t, and it’s really the best article with everything laid out in one place I’ve seen anywhere. Google translate works pretty well translating it into English.
Your Opinion is NOT Wanted on Agricultural Biodiversity in the EU
The EU is conducting a survey on it’s current program of agricultural biodiversity, and you aren’t invited to participate. Participation is by invitation only, and a username and password are required. This program has often been criticized for not allowing sufficient access to farmers organizations and NGOs, or indeed others who have a stake in agricultural biodiversity.
Does anyone not have a stake in agricultural biodiversity?
Anyway, if you feel you have a stake and want your voice to be heard, you might contact them via email at AGRI-RESGEN-SURVEY@ec.europa.eu
A copy of the survey can be found here.
The European Commission, Directorate-General for Agricultural and Rural Development, is carrying out a consultation on the “Community programme on the conservation, characterisation, collection and use of genetic resources in agriculture” to get stakeholders’ views on the Community programme itself and on the topic of agricultural biodiversity in general terms.
You are invited to share your opinion: the questionnaire is addressed to a wide range of targeted representative organisations working at European or International level which are potentially concerned by genetic resources diversity in agriculture:
you will find below a username and a password which enable you to access the questionnaire and submit your answers.
Submit your answers no later than Friday 20th January 2012: after this deadline, the survey will be closed.
The questionnaire can be completed in any official language of the European Union. However, we would be particularly grateful, if you could complete the consultation in English, as this will considerably facilitates the processing assessment of results under conditions of limited resources.
Olivier de Schutter Video
Below is the video of Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, as it was shown in April 2011, at the demonstration in Brussels I posted about before.
The spoken language is French, with English subtitles.
If you wish to download a version to play directly on your own computer, you can do that here. The original video without embedded subtitles can be downloaded here.
Get the Flash Player to see this video.
Bolivia Enacts Food Sovereignty Law
Today Bolivia enacted a food sovereignty law intended to better develop national food production, based on traditional varieties produced by small scale farmers and non commercial seeds.
