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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Monsanto owned seeds

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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Monsanto owned seeds
  • Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2011 17:08:01 -0500


On Feb 5, 2011, at 1:26 PM, Joe Tittiger wrote:

Heirlooms for the most part is the most nutritious so why would anyone buy hybrids owned by Monsanto or anyone else?
Don't you grow food mostly for the nutrition and taste? Anyhow I am surprised to see that it is even an issue with anyone.

I grow a number of heirlooms, and save seed of several myself. However:

1) I'm going to get very little nutrition or taste from a variety that just plain doesn't produce. Sometimes the variety that produces well in this location is a hybrid -- sometime the OP versions are too disease susceptible and/or not early enough.

2) Nutrition and taste are both affected by a lot of factors. A variety that tastes great grown in one place may be no good at all grown somewhere else, even in the same general areas. Not all heirlooms or all open pollinated varieties (while all heirlooms are OP's, not all OP's are heirlooms) taste good grown here, and some hybrids taste excellent. Determining nutritional differences between varieties grown in a particular spot can be very difficult -- I can hardly afford to have hundreds of tests done every year. Some modern varietes have been bred for high nutritional values, though often of one or two specific nutrients only.

3) Customers often want specific things. I have some customers who want a tomato that looks like the one in the grocery store. While I'm unwilling to grow anything as tasteless as what's in the grocery, and therefore insist on getting good flavor along with standard looks, I think I stand a much better chance of educating these customers by starting them on something they're willing to buy. If I can get them used to buying from me, I'm then in a better position to try talking them into trying heirlooms; and, even if they won't, if I can grow something that does please them I'll still have them as customers.

Therefore, I take a lot of things into account when deciding what varieties to plant. Nutrition and taste are high on the list; I favor open pollinated varieties when possible, if only because if they disappear from the market I may have some faint hope of producing seed myself; source of seed is also an issue for me. However, yield, earliness, disease resistance, and what the customers want to buy have to be considered also.


-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale







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