Saatgut Festival

In the page's words:

The Seed Festival in Düsseldorf is all about diversity, ecology and environmental protection. We want to give private gardeners access to free seeds and knowledge about the cultivation and preservation of rare and old varieties. The seeds on offer are free from intellectual property rights and can be propagated without losing their properties. The Seed Festival is our way of promoting greater diversity here and worldwide.

Anyone who buys seeds and plants at the seed festival will be able to propagate them themselves in future and ideally will never need to buy seeds again, as has been the case for centuries.

The seed festival is primarily about edible plants. And what tastes good is eaten and cultivated. In recent decades, breeding has focused on commercial requirements such as appearance, uniformity, transportability and storability, and taste has largely fallen by the wayside, but more and more people are discovering the culinary diversity of old varieties. For example, many excellent tasting tomatoes cannot be stored, but want to be eaten fresh on the day of harvest, and when they fall to the ground, they burst and do not bounce back like a tennis ball. This pleasure is reserved for those who grow their own varieties.