Call to Action: Shaping the Future of ISSD

In October 2025, over 100 seed system professionals came together in Wageningen for the International Conference on Integrated Seed Sector Development (ISSD), co-hosted by SeedNL and Wageningen University & Research. The event built on more than 15 years of ISSD practice and was closely linked to a special issue of the journal Agricultural Systems, which brought together nearly 40 scientific contributions from researchers and practitioners across the globe.

This Call to Action is the outcome of that collective effort. It presents six shared perspectives that aim to guide the design of future seed sector programmes, policies, and research. These include embracing more inclusive framings of seed systems, using evidence to support equitable transformation, recognising and supporting farmers’ agency and entrepreneurship, scaling through learning and context-specific adaptation, promoting regulation that enables trust and innovation, and building long-term, equitable partnerships across the seed sector.

The Call to Action is both a reflection of the community’s commitment and a call for greater alignment among funders, policymakers, researchers, and practitioners. It encourages seed sector actors to move beyond one-size-fits-all models and toward approaches that are grounded in diversity, collaboration, and the realities of the farmers and systems they aim to serve.