EUROPEAN-SEED.COM I EUROPEAN SEED I 11 ESA has established for the exchange of material and experience is being used by as many players as possible to gain the highest attention and raise awareness for our issues.” D r. Carl - St e ph a n Sch äfe r, Secretary General of the German Plant Breeders’ Association (BDP) EMBRACING THE POWER OF NATURE IN THE NETHERLANDS “The campaign that Plantum will launch early 2018 focusing on six well defined target groups will certainly link with ‘Embracing the Power of Nature’. We already use materials developed by ESA (and ISF) and make available the materials that we develop ourselves. The messages are of course totally aligned. Plantum is an active participant in the Working Group Communication of the European Seed Association (ESA). And considering the developments within ESA with regards to the campaign Embracing the Power of Nature and the campaign PlantKracht (PlantPower) of Plantum, we think such alignment is very important. Through good cooperation we can align the messaging of both campaigns, in order to create an ever- larger audience for our communications about this beautiful sector. From the side of Plantum, we look closely which of the resources and devel- oped materials of the ESA campaign can be used in The Netherlands. For exam- ple, we have translated an ESA video into Dutch language. And we will use this video in the PlantKracht-campaign. During the last meeting of the Plantum working group, we gave a presentation on the ‘Embracing Nature’ campaign. In this way we keep each other informed about what we’re doing, and we can advise each other on the methods that work well. In this way we can reach as many people as possible, with our fascinating stories about the seed sector.” Niels Louwaars, Director of Plantum. EMBRACING THE POWER OF NATURE IN DENMARK “In Denmark, we have joined forces between organisations in the grass-, clover-, beet-, grain-, oilseeds and potatoes sectors to run the ESA twitter campaign #embracingnature. We have engaged a student to help us five hours per week. This will enable us to like, retweet and soon post our own messages on Twitter. We are of course totally in line with the ESA campaign messages, but will try reach politicians, journalists, public serv- ants and other opinion/deciding persons to bring the important messages from the campaign to the knowledge and under- standing of these people. Also, it is hoped that the public will embrace the campaign. The ESA campaign is laid out on a silver plate for national associations to easily grab. Also, the ESA staff is very professional and helpful in assisting the associations in their work. All the seed sectors in Denmark hope this campaign will improve the knowledge and understanding the importance of plant breeding – and not least understand that plant breed- ing is one of the most important tools in developing our food and feed supply as well as taking care of the natural resources.” Nils Elmegaard, Secretary-General of the Danish Seed Association