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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Saving of Seeds of the World
  • Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 22:24:04 -0600

Saving of Seeds of the World
Voices of the Bioneers
by Kent Whealy Seed Savers Exchange
http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/new_articles.cfm?articleID=262&journalID=48

These resources stand between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we
cannot imagine. In a very real sense, the future of the human race rides on
these materials. The line between abundance and disaster is becoming thinner
and thinner and the public is unaware and unconcerned.
-Jack Harlan, retired professor of plant genetics, University of
Illinois at Urbana


Two-thirds of the people on Earth live on what they're able to grow. In the
US, 43 million families now grow part of their own food. At the same time,
there is increasing concern about the loss of the world's native seed strains.

The only place genes can be stored is in living systems - either in the
living branches, such as in budwooded apple trees, or in the living embryos
of grains and vegetable seeds. Native varieties rapidly become extinct once
they're dropped in favor of introduced hybrid seed. That extinction can take
place in a single year if the seeds are cooked and eaten instead of being
saved as seed stock. Quite literally, the genetic heritage of a millennium in
a particular valley can disappear in a single bowl of porridge.

The Immigration of Seeds
Because the US and Canada are nations of immigrants, today's gardeners are
blessed with an immense cornucopia of food crops. Gardeners and farmers from
every corner of the world invariably brought their best seeds when their
families immigrated. Seeds provided living remembrances of their former lives
and assured continued enjoyment of foods from the Old Country.

Millions of immigrants came through Ellis Island with seeds hidden under
the bands of their hats, in the linings of their suitcases, and sewn into the
hems of dresses. You can bet there are seeds carried in today by refugees and
immigrants from Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, Laos and Cambodia. We are truly blessed
with the best seeds from every corner of the world. Much of this tremendous
heritage has never been systematically collected.

This vast, almost unknown genetic treasure is quietly being maintained
by elderly gardeners and farmers in isolated rural areas and ethnic enclaves
all over North America. Often these living heirlooms have been grown on the
same family farm by different generations for up to 150 years. Plants grown
in the same location for that long gradually develop resistance to local
diseases and insects, and become well adapted to specific climates and soil
conditions.

Today, because of continuing deterioration of rural economies, young
people are abandoning the land, leaving elderly gardeners with no one willing
to maintain their seeds. As this older generation passes away, these
outstanding strains will become extinct unless dedicated gardeners are
willing to continue planting their unique seeds.

Genesis of a Seed Saver
When my wife Diane and I founded Seed Savers in 1975, we immediately started
trying to find other people who were keeping heirloom varieties when they
immigrated. Our twin goals were to do everything we could to reverse genetic
erosion and to dramatically increase the diversity that was available to
gardeners and farmers who were growing healthy food for their families.

Every January, Seed Savers publishes a yearbook that lists all the seeds
being maintained by our members. In 1975, that network consisted of 29 people
offering a few dozen varieties through a six-page newsletter. Today, the
network has grown to 1,000 members who offer 12,000 rare varieties of
vegetables and fruits through a 460-page yearbook sent out to more than 8,000
gardeners.

Seed Savers members have used the organization's publications to
distribute an estimated 750,000 samples of rare seeds that have never been in
commercial catalogs and were often on the verge of extinction. In 1981, many
of our members expressed concern that many of their favorite varieties were
being dropped from seed catalogs. In response, I spent three years compiling
the first edition of the Garden Seed Inventory, a comprehensive survey of the
US and Canadian mail-order seed industry.

Revenue from the sales of these books has been used to purchase hundreds
of varieties that were about to be dropped from commercial availability.

Widespread losses of these commercial varieties in the US and Canada are
mainly a consequence of economic consolidation. Large agro-chemical
conglomerates have been buying out small family-owned seed companies. As a
result, many rare collections of regionally adapted garden seeds (sometimes
representing the life's work of several generations of a farming family) have
been dropped in favor of fairly generic varieties that will appeal to the new
owner's nationwide mass-market.

The worst losses occurred a decade ago. Of the 230 companies that we
inventoried in 1984, 54 had gone out of business or been taken over by 1987.
From 1981 to 1994, we lost 84 percent of all the non-hybrid vegetables that
are available in this country.

Some rays of hope are starting to emanate from the garden seed industry.
The success of Seed Savers' efforts to popularize heirloom varieties is
reflected in the vast numbers of heirloom and regionally adapted varieties
that have recently been re-introduced. In the three years following
publication of the third edition of the Seed Savers' Catalog in 1991, nearly
1,800 rediscovered old varieties were introduced.

Our statistics also show that more than half of those heritage seeds
were introduced by only 21 companies, so these gains are extremely fragile.
They could be lost very quickly with just the failure of a few companies. Two
decades of effort by Seed Savers to raise national awareness of the dangers
of genetic erosion are finally starting to have an impact.

Heritage Farm
Seed Savers' efforts didn't really gain national attention until 1986, when
we purchased the 170-acre Heritage Farm near Decorah, Iowa. Heritage Farm
became a sanctuary where we could permanently maintain and display endangered
collections of vegetables, apples, grapes and cattle.

Today, Heritage Farm is home to nine large organic preservation gardens
with a total collection of 19,000 heirloom varieties - including some that
supposedly came over on the Mayflower. We've acquired about 200 varieties of
grapes from the 5,000 varieties collected and maintained by Elmer Swenson, an
85-year old Minnesota grape-breeder. We've also developed a historic orchard
where 700 different kinds of 19th century apples are on display.

At the turn of the century, there were 7,000 named varieties of apples
in this country, but today, when we go into the USDA collections and the
large private collections, all we can find are about 700. Heritage Farm has
all 700.

In 1994, we started construction on a $600,000 expansion that includes
an office complex, a greenhouse, a large root cellar, and an underground seed
vault. In basement drying chambers, entire rooms full of seed can be taken
down to optimum moisture level and heat-sealed into foil packets. The seed
packets are kept in humidity-controlled, refrigerated vaults. We keep back-up
samples frozen in underground vaults.

Heritage Farm provides a safe haven for Seed Savers' huge collection of
North American heirloom seeds and for endangered collections from Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union. The seed collections now contain 18,000
varieties, including 3,500 beans, 4,000 tomatoes, 800 lettuces, 200 garlics
and 1,200 peppers.

Much of this material could never be re-collected because it has come
from Seed Savers members who have since passed away and from areas in
countries that are now involved in civil strife.

The seed bank in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia was completely
flattened by civil war. The Azerbaijani seed bank was destroyed during the
war with Armenia. Much of this material, now lost in these home countries,
only survives at seed banks in other countries - and at Heritage Farm.

Seed Saving Goes International
In 1992, I began developing Seed Savers International, a network of plant
collectors in genetically rich eastern countries who are rescuing traditional
crops in immediate danger of extinction. In five years, I made 10 trips to
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to establish working relationships
with the scientists at Gottersleben in eastern Germany and the Vavilov
Institute in St. Petersburg.

Nikolai Vavilov, one of my heroes, was probably the best plant collector
the world has ever known. He started collecting in 1908. By the time World
War II rolled around, he had collected 165,000 varieties of plants and seeds.
After Vavilov got into a dispute with Lysenko, Stalin's chief genetic
scientist, he was thrown into prison where he died in 1943. He was buried in
an unmarked prison grave.

During the 900-day German siege of Leningrad, 600,000 Russians died of
starvation. They were reduced to eating rats, consuming the glue in the
joints of chairs, and even devouring corpses.

Five of Vavilov's coworkers, each one a leading scientist in his field,
died at their desks rather than eat the tons of edible seeds that were around
them. They chose to die because they didn't believe that they had the right
to deprive the future of those irreplaceable genetic treasures.

Since Heritage Farm has grown probably 3,000 different varieties of
tomatoes, nearly everything that was coming into our collections had begun to
seem familiar. But when the flow of material started coming in from Eastern
Europe and Russia, much of it was completely new. Black tomatoes from Russia!
Tomatoes with foliage that looks like carrot tops! Short-season melons and
watermelons from southern Siberia!

It used to bother me that I hadn't started this work 50 years earlier
when this country had so much more available. But I've grown to believe that
there couldn't be a more incredibly exciting time to be working than right
now - when so much can be accomplished so quickly.

Many of the most remote areas of the former communist world are opening
up like creaky treasure chests. Even China is starting to open up.

Rural regions like the Appalachians, the Smokies and the Ozarks - where
people, lacking the money to buy seeds, have continued to trade heirloom
seeds over the backyard garden fence - are real treasure troves of heirloom
varieties.

Traditional people like the Mennonites, Amish, Dunkers and Hutterites
maintain a large number of these heritage crops. Native Americans are
gradually starting to participate in Seed Savers as trust has built in the
organization. That's very rare because most Native Americans are usually
reluctant to share their seeds, believing that their seeds are sacred. And
well they should, because seeds are the sparks of life that feed us all.

There's never been a more exciting time to be a gardener. Centuries of
history are available for the choosing: pre-Columbian seeds that were grown
by Native American tribes; varieties grown by Thomas Jefferson; seeds that
were carried by the Cherokee over the Trail of Tears.

But the irony is that much of this incredible genetic richness is very
close to dying out. If it is to be saved, it's really up to us.

We're just hitting our stride. We've already changed the way North
Americans garden. Before this is over, we will have created the most intense
wave of horticultural interest that the US has seen since the golden age of
gardening a century ago. This is true stewardship, and I hope that many of
you will join us.

Kent Whealy is director and co-founder of the Seed Savers Exchange, a
nonprofit organization of 8,000 gardeners, orchardists and plant collectors.
He recently founded Seed Savers International to rescue traditional food
crops abroad.

? 1999 Collective Heritage Institute [901 W. San Mateo Road, Suite L, Santa
Fe, NM 87505, (877) 246-6337 (toll free), http://www.bioneers.org]. To obtain
certified organic heritage herbs, vegetables and flowers for your own garden,
contact Seeds of Change [3209 Richards Lane, Santa Fe, NM 87505, (505)
438-8080, http://www.seedsofchange.com] and request a catalog filled with
seed selections and useful tools for the home gardener.




  • [Livingontheland] Saving of Seeds of the World, Tradingpost, 10/23/2004

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