Delivered by Michael Keller, ISF Secretary General, during the Opening Ceremony of the ISF World Seed Congress 2024 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Your Majesty King, esteemed guests, dear colleagues, and friends, a centennial welcome to Rotterdam.
This morning, many of us crossed the iconic Erasmus bridge named after the famous humanist who was born here in Rotterdam. Erasmus once said, “The whole world is my home,” words that resonate deeply with our mission today.
As we celebrate our 100th anniversary, it pays to remember the vision of our founders back in 1924, when 30 seed traders from 6 countries came together in Cambridge, to foster mutual understanding and create coherent business practices focused on trade rules and seed quality.
Like so often in history, a small group of thoughtful people made things happen by building bridges where there were borders, effectively laying the foundation for the global community we are today. Look around you: the seed sector’s home is the whole world.
Could those seed pioneers have imagined that 100 years later 1987 participants from 80+ countries representing nearly 600 companies would come together?
Could they have foreseen ISF becoming the voice of the private seed sector at the international level, representing 72 national seed associations, along with over 10,000 family businesses, small and medium-scale enterprises, multinationals from over 87 countries, working on over 80 crops and representing 97% of the international seed trade?
This, by itself, should be a powerful reminder to think beyond borders, beyond horizons – to continue building bridges.
The first post-war Congress was held in Paris in 1950, spurred on by the dedication of the Seed people to engagement with international organizations created to end hunger and improve food security, such as FAO.
The presence of many international organizations and the whole seed and agricultural value chain is an inherited endeavor that is part of our collective sense of responsibility to engage in multilateral cooperation.
Let’s not forget that up to 80 % of our food is plant-based and most come from seed. Not one country can produce all the seeds it needs to grow the food it needs. Seed interdependency is a reality. Seed movement is essential for food security.
It’s not an accident that, in the last 100 years, international seed trade has grown exponentially and is now valued at 20 billion dollars – an 8-fold increase compared to early 2000.
Seed movement needs to be paired with Research and Development. Over the last 100 years, while seeds like this one may appear unchanged on their surface, they embody decades of innovation.
Every day, companies are unlocking the genetic potential of seeds, resulting in harvests up to 50 times greater than in 1924.
This progress requires constant forward-thinking and cross-border collaboration because developing and marketing new varieties takes 8 to 10 years and involves traversing continents to ensure they are adapted to diverse agroclimatic situations and farmers’ needs.
Our sector thrives on investment, with businesses dedicating up to 30% of annual turnover, depending on the crop, to research and development. This translates to roughly 10 billion dollars annually. The percentage is comparable to, if not higher than, other innovative sectors like the pharmaceutical industry; the overall investment is higher than in the public sector.
Despite this reality, the world as it is now poses significant challenges, as we are witnessing de-globalization, with the resurgence of protectionism and non-scientific barriers.
Looking ahead to the next century, the central question, therefore, remains: How can we reach more farmers worldwide and give them the power of seed choice and seed resilience?
Farmers in Ethiopia with increased seed choice saw their yields improve by 2.5 times for onions, and nearly 6 times for tomatoes. This is despite the challenges they faced related to poor soil health, pests and diseases, and unpredictable climate events like drought.
This is what we mean we say we aim to empower farmers: to work collaboratively towards the achievement of Sustainable Developments goals.
And together, we can go even further.
To go further together, the daily work of seed companies on the ground is crucial, and as associations, we should support this in a complementary way. By working with the World Farmers Organisation, ISF looks to build more bridges towards Seed Choice and Innovation.
To go further together, public-private partnerships are crucial. Too often we are still working in silos and are unable to build a coherent seed value chain. Our partnership with CGIAR and the ISF pilot project in Rwanda are concrete steps we’re taking to strengthen bridges between us and the public sector.
To go further together, we are engaged in the World Seed Partnership and beyond to build predictable, science-based, and consistent regulations and an enabling business environment.
To go further together, we are engaged in coalitions like the Seeds4Food coalition to overcome opposing views on the role of the private seed sector and seed systems.
To go further together, we as the private seed sector are continuously elevating our business practices.
Many of you traders will spend the next three days trading with sometimes 60 meetings. Today, over half a million seed contracts have been signed, mentioning ISF in case of disagreements. And out of all that, we have only had 100 arbitration cases. This demonstrates that the Trade Rules have helped to foster the establishment of our shared values. The newly approved ISF Code of Ethics and Good Behavior is an additional layer to constantly improve our business practices.
This is why we are also fully engaged in the fight against all forms of illegal seed practices. Farmers buying a bag of seed need to be confident in what they are buying.
Now is the time to build bridges on the ground. The private seed sector is a solution provider, an employer, and a partner at local, national and international levels.
Now is the time to be inclusive and optimize existing solutions instead of thinking up new and exclusive concepts.
With this in mind we will reinvigorate the Seed Sector’s commitment to the current SDGs, during the United Nations Summit of the Future later this year, which will be a pivotal opportunity to breathe new life into multilateral systems.
I look to the future generation, the leaders of tomorrow: we need you, your dynamism, and your ideas as we face the real threat of an ageing population in agriculture. What could be more exciting than joining the world of food production and working with Mother Earth, which is continuously evolving?
The Argentinian painter and writer and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel said, “We know we cannot plant seeds with closed fists. To sow we must open our hands.”
By heeding the lessons of the past and embracing the opportunities of the future, we can sow the seeds of a brighter tomorrow with hands open, allowing the fruits of our labour to benefit all of humanity.
I am tremendously proud that I could find my way as a lawyer into the seed sector. You all, the seed people of today and tomorrow, are dedicated and responsible actors with long-term vision, patience, and perseverance. You are a crucial pillar in transforming agriculture over the next 100 years.
Seed is life! Life is Seed!
