With Spring quickly approaching many have started or are starting their seeds, in prep. for their 2009 garden. We've been growing OP( Open Pollinated) seeds for 5 seasons. Growing OP crops also requires educating yourself about seed saving. Here are a few articles that introduce you to the importance of saving seed.
Why Save Seeds? by CR Lawn
http://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/why_save_seeds.htm
1. To renew your age-old partnership with plants. Seeds are the life force. Plants, as living beings, desire to reproduce. By allowing them to go to seed and complete their growth cycle, you cooperate in a process essential to all life forms on Earth.
2. To retain control of your food supply. Some things are too important to allow other people to do for you. Food is a basic necessity and the cornerstone of our culture. Control of the seed is key to control of our food supply. By saving seeds you retain that lifeline. Over the past two generations, the seed industry has done almost no work to maintain, improve or develop open-pollinated varieties that will come true from seed. What little has been done has been accomplished by dedicated amateur seed savers and breeders. We need more such people. Instead, the industry has emphasized hybrid varieties whose breeding lines are trade secrets and whose seed will not come true to type. Lately, biotechnology research has almost completely replaced classical plant breeding at our universities and in the seed industry.
3. To preserve our heritage and our biodiversity. Farmers saved seeds and improved food crops for millennia. Seed companies have been on the scene for fewer than three centuries. Only in the last hundred years have farmers and gardeners become widely dependent on seed companies. Today the seed industry is so concentrated that just five large multinational corporations control 75% of the world’s vegetable seed market. They add and drop varieties according to their own financial interests. Many of our present varieties have only one commercial source. If they are dropped, they will disappear and you won’t be able to get them—unless you save seed.
4. To preserve the varietal characteristics you want. Most varieties being developed by the industry are for large-scale food processors and marketers. For the most part, they are bred for uniform ripening, long distance shippability, and perfect appearance at the expense of taste and staggered ripening. If you want the best-tasting varieties, save your own seed from the ones you like.
5. To develop and preserve strains adapted to your own growing conditions. The large corporations who control the seed trade bought out scores of small and regional seed companies and dropped many of the regional specialties. They are interested only in varieties with widespread adaptability. If you want varieties and strains most adaptable to your specific climate conditions, you can get them only by saving your own seed. Over several generations, seeds can develop very specific adaptabilities to the conditions at your site
.6. To help preserve our right to save seeds. The industry continues to place more and more restrictions on farmers’ and gardeners’ right to save seeds. Variety patenting, licensing agreements, and restricted lists such as that maintained by the European Union, are industry tools to wrest control of the seed from the commons and keep it for themselves. Terminator Technology, now in its developmental phase, would render seeds sterile, making it impossible for farmers to save seed and forcing users back to the seed companies for every new crop.
7. To increase our available options. Contrary to industry claims, patenting has not encouraged creative plant breeding. Instead it has reduced cooperation among plant breeders and restricted availability of germplasm and plant varieties. For example, Blizzard snow pea has been off the market for over a decade because the patent holder dropped it but will not grant permission to any other company to propagate it for sale.
Speaking of food safety and genetic purity (small portion of letter)
Speaking of food safety and genetic purity, Baker Creek Seed Company has been doing major and expensive GMO testing on all of our corn varieties, and we only carry corn seeds that test GMO-free! Our tests have shown that many, if not most varieties of heirloom corn are now contaminated with these GMO “Franken” genes.
These are artificially-modified genes that have been shown to cause tumors, allergies and even death in lab rats--genes that can come from toxic insects, bacteria, fish or even humans! It is sad that many of our tests on corn have come back positive for genetically-engineered organisms, especially since much of the corn we have tested has come from non corn-growing areas.This shows that GMO pollen can travel many miles on a strong wind, only to wreak havoc on organic and heirloom farms. This problem is costing us and our growers thousands of dollars each year, and is only getting worse.We must totally boycott the companies that sell these foods, seeds and fertilizers.
Let’s do it for ourselves, our children and the earth. Let’s make the new president and congress know that America values food safety and the right to pure food, health and happiness.
It’s a new day, and it’s time for a culinary revolt. Let it begin with dinner!
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