b'THE FUTURE OF CROP DIVERSITY IN A CONSOLIDATING WORLDTHE NEXT GREAT CHALLENGE IN AGRICULTURE ISNT YIELD: ITS CULTIVATING RESILIENCE.BY: MADELEINE BAERG, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, OPERATIONSA cross Europe, policymakers speak often of sustainability and resilience. Yet on the ground, those ideals play out in a system that still rewards production built around a narrow set of major crops. Maize, wheat, oilseed rape and sunflower dominate roughly 80 percent of the continents acreagea level of concentration that raises serious questions about innovation, soil health, and long-term food security. Europe faces a strategic dilemma: how to maintain true cropping diversityin species, genetics, companies and sys-temsin an environment that rewards scale above all else.The decisions we make today will impact agriculture for the coming decades, not just the next few years, says Regis Fournier, past CEO and now strategic advisor to Limagrain Field Seeds. Our duty as a seed sector is to propose solutions for the futurenot only for yield, but for soil, resilience, and the generations to come.That long view underscores a central challenge for Europes seed sector: measuring diversity by acreage or crop count tells only part of the story. Real resilience depends on functional diversity: systems that support farmers to alternate crops, build soil fertility, and access genetics adapted to their environments and markets.DIVERSITY BEYOND THE NUMBERS In recent years, European programs have begun to invest in that direction. Pulse initiativesparticularly for peas and faba beanshave gained momentum as aware-ness grows of both the soil-building power of legumes and the need to reduce depend-ence on imported protein crops.One example is a 50 million, five-year French initiative focusing on peas. The program is co-funded by the French government, the agri-food chain (led by Sofiprotol), and three seed companies: Limagrain, RAGT and Florimond Desprez. Photo: Jrme Pall, www.jeromepalle.com Fournier calls it a big bet on the future for a crop that would not justify such an investment without collaboration.12ISEED WORLD EUROPEISEEDWORLD.COM/EUROPE | NOVEMBER 2025'