Press release of EMSA

On the occasion of its General Assembly, the European Mobile Seed Association gathered 7 delegations of European seed processors (United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Italy and Denmark) in Pas de Calais on Wednesday and Thursday 10 and 11 May, welcoming two new members.

Created in 2010, this federation of European mobile seed processors brings together about one hundred mobile seed processing companies across Europe. Today, farm-saved seed represents 58% of the seed in Europe, although there are significant differences between countries: 15% in Denmark and Sweden, 40-60% in the UK, France and Germany, and 90% in Poland and Greece.) Since a few years now, farm-saved seeds have been growing significantly in these countries for economic and environmental reasons.

This year, François Desprez, President of the French Interprofessional Organisation for Seeds and Plants (Semae) and member of the administrative council of Euroseed, was honored during this General Assembly. After the opening of the French Interprofessional to mobile seed processors (Semae), EMSA decides to initiate a standardization of relations between seed companies and mobile seed processors in the European Union.

The seed processors reaffirmed their full support for the remuneration of breeders and ensured that they can be stakeholders or facilitators in finding solutions to research funding depending on the country. In several European countries, in particular the United Kingdom and Italy, seed processors are direct collectors of royalties. Generally speaking, the seed processors all work with royalty-bearing varieties and thus support genetic progress.

Seed processors also met Jean-Frédéric Cuny, director general of SICASOV, who came to present the royalties collecting system on seeds in Europe, in particular in France where SICASOV operates and in Italy where a royalties collecting system was set up recently with the collaboration of mobile seed processors. EMSA supports the introduction of similar schemes where research is not funded.

The discussions were then focused on the new breeding techniques (NBTs); the idea of a reflection group was accepted by EMSA in order to look to the future of the seed sector on that topic. 

At the end of this General Assembly, President of the British National Association of Agricultural Contractors (NAAC) Nigel Day and Sylvain Ducroquet, President of the French STAFF (National Syndicate of Mobile Seed Processors in France), and President of the diversity of seeds section at Semae, were respectively re-elected President and Vice-President of EMSA.