The Farmer’s Pride project has published a policy brief to call on policy makers to work with Farmer’s Pride and other stakeholders to ensure adequate policies are in place for in situ conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources in Europe. 

This short piece stresses the importance of a European-wide network for in situ conservation of agricultural plant diversity and sketches the problem of conflicting policies currently harming the in situ conservation of agricultural plant diversity. Furthermore the policy brief proposes several solutions and recommendations for enduring in situ conservation and sustainable use of agricultural plant diversity in Europe. The policy brief can be accessed through the Farmer’s Pride website and is available in English, Hungarian, Spanish, Swedish, Italian, Portugese, Russian and German. 

Farmer’s pride is a project funded under Horizon 2020 and led by the University of Birmingham. It is establishing the European Network for In Situ Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources and will bring together stakeholders and sites across the region to coordinate actions to conserve plant genetic diversity for crop enhancement and adaptation in the future.