Eco Hvar

A learning curve

Published in Forum items

A post on the Eco Hvar Facebook page led to an unexpected response. Eco Hvar learned a lot!

Novi list- 2013, 2017! Novi list- 2013, 2017!

On April 25th 2017, I came across an article on a Croatian news website, Novi list, stating that the European Commission was about to issue a directive proposing drastic seed control measures, which would mean that only standardized 'approved' seeds could be sown, not only for commercial agriculture, but even in private gardens. Shocked, I posted the link on the Eco Hvar Facebook page.

The post evoked some interesting reactions.

One comment declared that it was 'fake news', and that such 'semi-information, which is very dangerous and tendentious, is being spread around Croatia by extreme right-wing circles who opposed Croatia's entry into the EU.'

As it turned out, the news was not fake, but old. It did actually happen. I hadn't noticed that the article was published in May 2013. The EC did indeed present the seed control proposal at that time. It was withdrawn in 2015. You can read the EC proposal here, and a description of the proposal in English here. An account of organised opposition to the proposal is accessible here.

The news was old, but still served a purpose, as the issue lies at the heart of the differences between so-called conventional agriculture (using chemical pesticides and fertilizers) and organic practices.

WHAT I LEARNED

1. Legislation for the control of seeds is proposed for a variety of different reasons. Some, such as protection of indigenous flora and fauna, are worthwhile, others, especially protecting the commercial interests of the big agrochemical companies, are not.

2  Seed control is an issue which is being debated worldwide. For instance, it is a major cause for concern among environmentalists in the United States, New Zealand, Romania, India and Brazil. It is an issue also strongly linked to the development of GMO crops for which related seeds have been patented. Food production is a major economic activity, which is controlled by relatively few (huge) international companies.

3. Denmark has shown that EU seed protection laws can be interpreted by member nations to the satisfaction of environmental groups: 'Denmark has just become the European Union role model for biodiversity friendly seed marketing laws, putting pressure on every other country in the EU currently embracing the push to corporatize our seed heritage to follow suit.'  (Seed Freedom, March 2017)

4. This particular EC proposal did not progress, although it took two years for it to be abandoned. The subject may come up again. Seed control means control of the food supply. The major agrochemical companies would be likely to support any initiative to extend that control at national government level, if they felt it would increase their influence.

5. Environmentalists have to be on permanent guard against any proposed legislation which threatens the free practice of organic agriculture. The individual's right to choose organic plant and crop cultivation, and the consumer's right to buy organic products must never be undermined.

© Vivian Grisogono MA(Oxon) 2017

 

 

 

 

More in this category: « Dragonflies, info request Mosquitoes and more »
back to top
You are here: Home forum items A learning curve

Eco Environment News feeds

  • Africa’s great elephant divide: countries struggle with too many elephants – or too few

    In countries such as South Sudan, the great herds have all but disappeared. But further south, conservation success mean increasing human-wildlife conflict

    It is late on a January afternoon in the middle of South Sudan’s dry season, and the landscape, pricked with stubby acacias, is hazy with smoke from people burning the grasslands to encourage new growth. Even from the perspective of a single-engine ultralight aircraft, we are warned it will be hard to spot the last elephant in Badingilo national park, a protected area covering nearly 9,000 sq km (3,475 sq miles).

    Technology helps – the 20-year-old bull elephant wears a GPS collar that pings coordinates every hour. The animal’s behaviour patterns also help; Badingilo’s last elephant is so lonely that it moves with a herd of giraffes.

    Continue reading...

  • Offshore windfarm contracts to fuel 12m homes in Great Britain after record auction

    Subsidies awarded to eight new projects help keep UK on track to decarbonise by 2030

    A make-or-break auction for the UK government’s goal to create a clean electricity system by 2030 has awarded subsidy contracts to enough offshore windfarms to power 12m homes.

    In Great Britain’s most competitive auction for renewable subsidies to date, energy companies vied for contracts that guarantee the price for each unit of clean electricity they generate.

    Continue reading...

  • Traces of cancer-linked pesticide found in tests at UK playgrounds

    Pressure mounting for use of glyphosate, listed by WHO since 2015 as probable carcinogen, to be heavily restricted

    Children are potentially being exposed to the controversial weedkiller glyphosate at playgrounds across the UK, campaigners have said after testing playgrounds in London and the home counties.

    The World Health Organization has listed glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen since 2015. However, campaigners say local authorities in the UK are still using thousands of litres of glyphosate-based herbicides in public green spaces.

    Continue reading...

  • Country diary: A chilly tour of our historic churches (while the tourists are away) | Virginia Spierss

    St Kew, Cornwall: Midwinter is the best time for us to visit heritage sites and speculate on legends, starting at the secluded St Winnow’s church

    The stained glass window of St Kew’s church, with a tamed bear at the saint’s feet, is temporarily out of sight, penned in by a jumble of scaffolding. On a chilly hilltop a few miles to the south, St Mabyn’s tower features weathered carvings of heraldic beasts, including a muzzled bear pointing its snout northwards; inside, bears feature on crests of the Prideaux, Barratt and Godolphin families. Midwinter, when Cornwall is relatively free of visitors’ traffic, is a time to visit historic sites and speculate on legends, Arthurian myths and associated early reverence for the pole star encircled by the constellation of the Great Bear.

    Secluded St Winnow, further south alongside the tidal River Fowey, is first on our itinerary, reached along narrow, winding lanes. The church is dedicated to a Celtic missionary who is depicted with a handheld grindstone – this holy man neglected the task of milling the monks’ flour in favour of more prayer time.

    Continue reading...

  • Human activity helped make 2025 third-hottest year on record, experts say

    Data leads scientists to declare 2015 Paris agreement to keep global heating below 1.5C ‘dead in the water’

    Last year was the third hottest on record, scientists have said, with mounting fossil fuel pollution behind “exceptional” temperatures.

    The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said 2025 had continued a three-year streak of “extraordinary global temperatures” during which surface air temperatures averaged 1.48C above preindustrial levels.

    Continue reading...

  • BP to take hit of up to $5bn on green energy as it refocuses on fossil fuels

    Energy company also under pressure from worse oil trading performance and weaker oil prices

    BP has said it expects to write down the value of its struggling green energy business by as much as $5bn (£3.7bn), as it refocuses on fossil fuels under its new chair, Albert Manifold.

    The oil company said the writedowns were mostly related to its gas and low-carbon energy divisions in its “transition businesses”, but added that wiping between $4bn and $5bn off their value would not affect its underlying profits when it reports its full-year results in February.

    Continue reading...

  • ‘A bombshell’: doubt cast on discovery of microplastics throughout human body

    Exclusive: Some scientists say many detections are most likely error, with one high-profile study called a ‘joke’

    High-profile studies reporting the presence of microplastics throughout the human body have been thrown into doubt by scientists who say the discoveries are probably the result of contamination and false positives. One chemist called the concerns “a bombshell”.

    Studies claiming to have revealed micro and nanoplastics in the brain, testes, placentas, arteries and elsewhere were reported by media across the world, including the Guardian. There is no doubt that plastic pollution of the natural world is ubiquitous, and present in the food and drink we consume and the air we breathe. But the health damage potentially caused by microplastics and the chemicals they contain is unclear, and an explosion of research has taken off in this area in recent years.

    Continue reading...

  • Six-yearly count to track diverging fortunes of UK and Ireland’s wintering swans

    The international swan census takes place this weekend, with volunteers helping count whooper and Bewick’s swans

    Volunteer birders across the UK and Ireland will be among those taking part in the six-yearly international swan census this weekend, counting numbers of the countries’ two wintering species, whooper and Bewick’s swans.

    The survey, which last took place in January 2020, aims to track changes in the populations of these charismatic wildfowl in the UK and Ireland. The whoopers have mainly travelled from Iceland and the Bewick’s from Siberia.

    Continue reading...

  • The crisis whisperer: how Adam Tooze makes sense of our bewildering age

    Whether it’s the financial crash, the climate emergency or the breakdown of the international order, historian Adam Tooze has become the go-to guide to the radical new world we’ve entered

    In late January 2025, 10 days after Donald Trump was sworn in for a second time as president of the United States, an economic conference in Brussels brought together several officials from the recently deposed Biden administration for a discussion about the global economy. In Washington, Trump and his wrecking crew were already busy razing every last brick of Joe Biden’s legacy, but in Brussels, the Democratic exiles put on a brave face. They summoned the comforting ghosts of white papers past, intoning old spells like “worker-centered trade policy” and “middle-out bottom-up economics”. They touted their late-term achievements. They even quoted poetry: “We did not go gently into that good night,” Katherine Tai, who served as Biden’s US trade representative, said from the stage. Tai proudly told the audience that before leaving office she and her team had worked hard to complete “a set of supply-chain-resiliency papers, a set of model negotiating texts, and a shipbuilding investigation”.

    It was not until 70 minutes into the conversation that a discordant note was sounded, when Adam Tooze joined the panel remotely. Born in London, raised in West Germany, and living now in New York, where he teaches at Columbia, Tooze was for many years a successful but largely unknown academic. A decade ago he was recognised, when he was recognised at all, as an economic historian of Europe. Since 2018, however, when he published Crashed, his “contemporary history” of the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, Tooze has become, in the words of Jonathan Derbyshire, his editor at the Financial Times, “a sort of platonic ideal of the universal intellectual”.

    Continue reading...

  • Birdwatch: Cold snap brings fieldfares and redwings to the fore

    Britain’s winter thrushes, the swallows and swifts of the season, were strangely absent until recently

    Just as swallows and swifts are the constant sight and sound of spring and summer, so our two winter thrushes – fieldfares and redwings – are usually ever-present during the autumn and winter months.

    Last autumn, however, the fields and hedgerows around my Somerset home were unusually devoid of these birds, while their favourite food – the hawthorn’s bright scarlet berries – remained uneaten.

    Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Eco Nature News feeds

Copyright © 2026 Eco Hvar. All Rights Reserved. Developed by Orion Informatika.