The Association des Croqueurs de Carottes (Carrot Crusaders in English) was founded in 2005. Today it has seven members which are small seed companies (five in France, one in Belgium and one in Spain). All produce and sell organic seeds of open-pollinated vegetable varieties from the public domain. Therefore, these varieties are reproducible: open pollination is the biological component of reproducible varieties.

The association’s purpose is “to work for the static and dynamic conservation of varieties threatened by genetic erosion and to highlight this work of heritage preservation. In particular, the project will ensure, by all appropriate means, the maintenance of varieties in the public domain which may have been deleted from the official catalogue and will ensure that some of these varieties are once again available for sale to gardeners and market gardeners. It will therefore be able to encourage, develop and promote any action in this direction and will be an interlocutor with the competent authorities.” (extracts for the statutes of the association – Article 2, May 2005).

“A second objective is to promote the exchange of know-how and training in the maintenance of these varieties. These objectives also involve defending the right to produce and market non-registered varieties, and finally they seek to promote and encourage the practices of artisan seed companies”.

Each of the companies offers its customers a wide range of self-produced varieties from the purchase/resale of member companies of the Carrot Crusaders and external companies offering seeds from organic farming.

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