SUPPORTING BIODIVERSITY SEED AND FRUIT TREE ACTORS IN SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE
In 2018, Arche Noah and Pro Specie Rara, with funding from the Gen-Ethische Foundation, launched BALKAN BEETS. This project aims to promote the conservation of crop diversity and the production of organic seeds and planting materials in South Eastern Europe. Various on-site organizations in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia and Romania, each with their own set of diverse solutions adapted to their respective local context, will be supported under BALKAN BEETS until 2022 to build sustainable and economically self-sufficient systems.
BALKAN BEETS set out four different goals over its three-year lifetime:
- Support start-ups in creating alternatives to the use of imported industrial seeds and fruit trees
- Support a community seed bank in increasing their capacities to become central actors of crop biodiversity management
- Re-introduce endangered genetic resources collected in the “hot-spots” of crop biodiversity and embedding them into local and sustainable value chains
- Engaging gastronomy and tourism in crop biodiversity management to create revenues for small actors
In Romania, the project proposes different activities:
– the creation of one or several community seed banks, the first one in Bucharest
– the creation of o significant seed collection which supports the needs of the donors and the savers
– documenting the process. The documentation will be used as a guide for the future seed banks in Romania and abroad
– the collaboration with different organisations and persons, organic farmers, institutes, NGO, farmer’s associations, cooperatives, etc.