THE world’s first seed breeding programme aimed at producing varieties for
organic farming was announced in London this week. “We want to take organic seed
production out of the hands of the big seed producers and put it back in the
hands of the farmers,” says Lawrence Woodward, director of the Elm Farm Research
Centre near Newbury in Berkshire. Elm Farm is one of the three research
institutes coordinating the project, along with the Louis Bolk Institute in
Driebergen, the Netherlands, and Switzerland’s Research Institute of Organic
Agriculture (FiBL) in Frick, near Basle.
The scheme will help organic farmers meet…
