b'Farmers Needs and Expectations Around New, Improved Plant Varieties for Enhanced SustainabilityBY: ARIANNA GIULIODORI, SECRETARY GENERAL, WORLD FARMERS ORGANISATION (WFO)T he United Nations Food Systems Summit marked 2021the organisation to advocate for what farmers really need and with a brand-new international policy process poolingexpect in those policy and innovation fields that are relevant for resources and efforts towards the sustainability of foodtheir daily work.systems. That is why we often consult our members on several topics Innovation has been recognized as a lever of change for foodto be sure we reach the last mile and represent the voice of the systems transformation. Farmers stood in the middle of thisfarmers inclusively.process to say loudly that they are crucial agents in this gameSeeds is a crucial sector for farmers: farming starts from and embrace innovation in all its forms. Still, too often, farmersseeds and soil, and we must ensure that innovation in this field are not involved in planning innovation strategies. Too often,responds to the fast-changing environment in which our produc-they are not even consulted.ers are meant to work (with a growing world population; with the At the World Farmers Organisation (WFO), represent- impacts of climate change etc) and enable farmers to cope up ing farmers across the globe, we promote a farmer-drivenwith the pace of these changes.approach to innovation in agriculture and food systems. We want to make sure that any investment in research andNEW IMPROVED PLANT VARIETIES ON THE FARM: innovation is effective and responds to the farmers needsFARMERS CONSULTATION RESULTS and expectations. It is time to shift from a farmer-respon- Farmers look at New Improved Plant Varieties with an innova-sive to a farmer-driven approach and hear from the farmerstion lens to ensure better yields, economic stability of the farms, what they consider necessary for their activity to innovate.ensuring resilience over shocks, but also to make farming easier and less labour/input intensive.TOWARDS A FARMER-DRIVEN APPROACH TO INNOVATION With the aim of ensuring a farmer-driven, science-based andFigure 1pragmatic approach to innovation for an improved sustainability71% of respondents said that they use new of farming and food systems, the World Farmers Organisation (WFO), the International Seed Federation (ISF) with the tech- improved plant varietiesnical expertise of the Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) carried out a joint collaborative work to explore the needs, expectations, and constraints of farmers in the New Improved Plant Varieties domain.As a first step, WFO conducted a consultation among our members community asking directly to the farmers if they cur- 29%rently use New Improved Plant Varieties in their daily production and no matter the answer to this inquiry, they have been asked which are the constraints they are encountering in accessing that innovation and what they would like to see improved.The results were then discussed in a technical workshop71%between farmers, seed producers, breeders, and the plant pro-tection sector and a dialogue among a broader basin of stake-holders, including policymakers, private sector, research and academia.FARMERS NEEDS AND EXPECTATIONSAT THE CENTREThe real strength of WFO lies in its member-driven bottom-upNO YESapproach, which allows the development of balanced and con-sensual policy papers, first of all, but most importantly allows 6IEUROPEAN SEEDIEUROPEAN-SEED.COM'