Click here to read the Greens/EFA study.
The event will highlight the question of the already existing market concentration in the EU seed market and the dominance of a small group of multinational companies in the EU seed market. Therefore, the proposed regulation of the EC is based on false assumptions and benefits the seed lobby and giant seed companies.
The Greens/EFA group in the EP takes the opportunity of this conference to present its latest study on ‘Concentration of market power in the EU seed market’. The study points out that industry’s monopoly supporting the mantra that the EU market is healthy and diversified, with some 7000 mainly small and medium enterprises (SMEs), is misleading. Notably, in the absence of freely available data and independently verifiable statistics, the EC is forced to rely upon industry statistics and further promotes the industry myth. This allows the corporations to dominate the narrative and manipulate the arguments to the general public on what is in their best interest. Furthermore, the EU market is well integrated in a globalised market, where arms of global corporations use worldwide networks to obtain, breed, multiply and distribute their seed; with the result that the biggest 10 companies own up to 75% of the worldwide market share.
With such a concentrated EU and global market increasingly dominated by only a few major players, the background context is a steady decline in agro-biodiversity, a vital part for our long term food security and to adapt around challenges like climate change. We also see breeding moving out of the hands of the users, the farmers who for many centuries have adapted seed to their own local, environmental and climatic needs, and instead innovation is being reserved only for the corporations, who are intent on promoting and providing for a market of industrial scale production, with tailor-made dependency on agrochemicals.
Given the importance of the issue, we call for EU institutions to provide better tools in order to reverse the concentration phenomenon, by recognising the issue rather than citing statistics provided by the industrial lobby.
The conference will start with the presentation of the Greens/EFA study followed by a roundtable of reactions by speakers from diverse backgrounds: academic, civil society and representative of the European Commission. A debate with the public will follow.