The trading floor and the exhibition booths were open again from 08.00 until 18.30. For those of you who were not busy on the trading floor or in the booths, your day likely started at 08.00 with the Section meeting Vegetables and Ornamentals. In that meeting the panel debated “A new seed law for Europe (II): sustainability testing for vegetable varieties”. Panellists included Dorothée André (Head of Unit Plant Health, DG SANTE, European Commission), Bert Scholte (Head of Variety Testing, NAK Tuinbouw) and Marco van Leeuwen (Managing Director, Rijkzwaan). We featured Marco van Leeuwen in Seed World Europe earlier this year.
In the meeting, we learned about a proposal from the EU Commission: the mandatory introduction of VCU testing in vegetables. This met with considerable concern among the vegetable seed companies. Van Leeuwen provided several arguments to reconsider this proposal, incl. the fact that there are 25,000 vegetable varieties in the EU Common Catalogue, available to farmers, and 22,000 field crop varieties. But the vegetables occupy only 2-3% of the EU acreage.
Thirty minutes later, the next Section meeting was held, this one on potatoes. Panellists from the EU Commission, the EU farmers organization, and the EU seed sector talked about if there is life under the tombstone during their panel debate, titled “Plant Breeding Innovation in the EU – resurrected”.
At 12.00, Euroseeds held the Statutory part of its General Assembly, accessible for Euroseeds members only. The meeting opened up to all two hours later. As has become customary, this open part included a keynote speech by Miriam García Ferrer, spokesperson for trade and agriculture, Cabinet of Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis at the European Commission and she spoke about food security and trade in a new world order – what’s Europe’s answer? This was followed by a panel debate, on the Green Deal revisited: How can Europe turn its ambitions into real progress in the new world order? Such important topics were discussed with panellists from the European Commission, COPA-COGECA, and BASF.
After the General Assembly was the launch of the Agricultural Crops Licensing Platform (ACLP). If you missed the launch, read about it in Seed World Europe here.
In case you wish to share your thoughts on social media, and find out what others are saying, make sure to use the hashtag #Euroseeds2023
If you ‘d like to learn more about what else is on the program of the Euroseeds congress, please see here: https://euroseedscongress.com/programme/
