A new idea is brewing in Germany, with the first seeds sown of a new alliance along the food value chain for cereals and legumes. ARC2020’s President Hannes Lorenzen reports on how farmers, bakers, seed savers, researchers, and grain breeders are coming together with a shared vision: to build a resilient, regional, and fair food system.
Outside the town of Thallwitz, near Leipzig, a new idea is fermenting; the ‘Agroecological Practice Alliance’, a grassroots movement driven by people who work every day with the fields and flours that make up our daily bread.
The idea is to reshape the foundations of how we grow, process, and eat cereals and legumes in Germany. “The time is now for a new movement and the establishment of a strong network of practitioners,” reads the official declaration from the Free Bakers and their allies.
From Crisis Comes Collaboration
The alliance aims to bring together all those involved in the value chain, from breeders to bakers, to create lasting, community-supported food systems.
The call to action comes at a time of mounting pressure for those working along the grain and legume value chain. Climate change is hitting cereal yields hard, baking qualities are deteriorating, and operational costs are climbing. Yet farmgate prices remain stagnant.
Meanwhile, despite increasing calls at all political levels, critical infrastructure such as local mills, storage units, and small bakeries is vanishing from the countryside. The result? A fragile system dominated by powerful intermediaries and globalised supply chains that leave little room for local control or sustainable innovation.
But the problems that we have created together can be solved together. It’s a call not just for mutual support, but for mutual empowerment — through shared infrastructure, collaborative research, and new models of ownership and distribution.
In this landscape, the founders argue, the need for a robust, regionally grounded alliance has never been more urgent. In this way, instead of isolation with an overwhelming excess of problems, the alliance can help strengthen individuals and promote resilient, equitable and sustainable systems that are supported by the community.
The Good News
The reality is that regional, sustainable value chains remain the cornerstones of the socio-ecological transformation of our food systems and of the security architecture in globalised, concentrated markets.
And the good news is that, despite all the adversity, things are moving, both in rural and urban areas.
For example, people are discovering that the artisanal production of bread and baked goods, using only a few sustainably produced raw materials but a great deal of know-how and skill, is meaningful. Young people and those leaving other professions are setting up local bakeries (and not just in Berlin!) with long queues forming outside their doors.
Importantly, the movement is not only rural. Urban areas, too, are experiencing a quiet revolution. Across Germany, young people and career changers are opening artisanal bakeries, drawing crowds and curiosity with loaves made from regionally grown grains, natural sourdoughs, and time-tested techniques. These new urban-rural connections are helping to reweave the fabric of a broken food system.
Baking the Loaf, Together
Among the alliance are the Free Bakers, a professional organisation of artisan bakers and confectioners; AbL, a progressive farmers’ association; VERN, an association of seed savers; the Dottenfelderhof cereal breeding initiative; the University of Kassel’s faculty of organic agricultural sciences; and Atelier Ernährungswende, a studio for food system transition.
Together, they are working not only on advocacy and awareness but on participatory research projects, testing how farming systems can adapt to a warming world while preserving biodiversity.
For them, the bakery storefront is more than a point of sale; it’s a public stage for food system change.
What they’re proposing goes beyond the rhetoric that often surrounds local food movements. They are calling for practical investments in infrastructure, like regional mills and storage hubs, and for policies that support, rather than stifle, small and medium producers.
And they know that to succeed, they must bring consumers with them. Solutions for producing and manufacturing what feeds us today and tomorrow can only be realised if the benefits are obvious to consumers.
The Start of a Rhizome
The alliance’s first public announcement — available here, currently only in German — is a manifesto of hope and hard-earned wisdom. It speaks of the need to overcome isolation, to exchange knowledge across the value chain, and to think bigger than individual survival.
Our experiences encourage and motivate us to think bigger for our network. Let’s stop fighting alone and tackle the challenges together, from the breeders to the bakers to the finished loaf, and develop new, sustainable solutions.
In botanical terms, a rhizome is a root system that spreads underground, sprouting new shoots far from the original plant. It’s an apt metaphor for this new alliance — quiet, persistent, and potentially transformative.
The hope is that what began in the fields near Leipzig may well mark the start of a new chapter for Germany’s food system; one where bread becomes more than sustenance, but the shared ground for a fairer, more resilient future.
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