RESEAU SEMENCES PAYSANNES - ASSOCIATION POUR LA BIODIVERSITE DES SEMENCES ET PLANTS DANS LES FERMES

Their core work

Réseau Semences Paysannes (RSP) is a French NGO that maintains and advocates for the use of traditional, farmer-saved seed varieties — what the movement calls "peasant seeds." Their core work is building and sustaining grassroots networks of farmers who grow, select, and exchange locally adapted, heritage crop varieties outside the commercial seed industry. In H2020 projects, they functioned as a practitioner-network partner, connecting academic researchers with active farming communities that maintain living seed diversity. They bring irreplaceable on-the-ground access to farmers, seed libraries, and crop populations that cannot be found in genebanks or commercial catalogues.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Both of RSP's H2020 projects started within one year of each other (2015–2016) and ran through 2019, meaning there is effectively no temporal split to analyse — this was a single concentrated period of EU-funded engagement, not an evolution across phases. No project keywords were available in the data to trace thematic shifts. What can be said is that their two projects show a consistent focus: DIVERSIFOOD addressed crop diversity broadly for quality local food systems, while CERERE narrowed to cereals and organic/low-input contexts specifically — suggesting a deepening rather than a broadening of focus within their core seed diversity domain.

RSP appears to be deepening its specialisation in diversity-driven, low-input cereal systems rather than broadening into new sectors — making them a reliable but narrowly focused partner for agroecology and seed sovereignty research.

How they like to work

RSP has never led an H2020 project — both participations were as a consortium partner, which is typical for advocacy NGOs that contribute networks and communities of practice rather than research infrastructure. Despite their small size, they engaged in substantial consortia (31 unique partners across 15 countries), indicating they are valued as a bridge between researcher-led projects and practicing farming communities. Working with them means gaining access to their farmer network, but project coordination and technical delivery will need to come from other consortium members.

RSP collaborated with 31 unique partners across 15 countries through just two projects, reflecting the large, multi-country consortium structures typical of RIA and CSA projects on crop diversity. Their network is pan-European in reach but anchored in agricultural civil society and farmer organisations rather than universities or research institutes.

What sets them apart

RSP is not a research organisation — they are one of Europe's most active civil society bodies specifically dedicated to keeping traditional seed varieties alive in farmers' hands. That makes them almost impossible to replace in consortia that need credible access to farming communities maintaining rare or heritage crop populations. For any project touching seed sovereignty, participatory breeding, or the policy landscape around EU seed legislation, RSP brings political legitimacy and practitioner trust that academic partners cannot replicate.

Highlights from their portfolio

• DIVERSIFOOD
  Their largest project by funding (€250,000) and the broadest in scope — embedding crop diversity across local food networks, positioning RSP as a key civil society node in a pan-European research effort.
• CERERE
  Focused specifically on cereal diversity revival in organic and low-input systems, demonstrating RSP's ability to contribute to applied agronomic research — not just advocacy — within specialist crop contexts.