News

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...

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...