Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

What's new is old
Clive Blazey in Australia explains why heirloom seeds are superior to
hybrids and
genetically engineered (GE) seeds.
http://www.diggers.com.au/WhatsNewIsOld.htm


Plant selection goes hand in hand with population growth. When man first
domesticated plants 8000 years ago he kept the earliest, the best yielding
and the most disease-resistant strains for planting back the next season.
This unbroken chain of evolutionary improvement has provided us with
well-adapted regional strains of vegetables, now called garden heirlooms,
which are incredibly productive, for all our culinary and cultural needs.


We’ve been planting the wrong vegetables

Depending upon our English forebears for culinary vegetables has given us
one of the poorest inheritances a country could have. William Robinson, a
famous English gardener, wrote in the introduction to the classic Vilmorin
book The Vegetable Garden, 1885: ‘We are meat eaters because our fathers
had little to eat… Men killed and cooked; there was little else worth
eating.
A few generations only have passed since our most common vegetables came
from
the continent … The vegetable kingdom is usually represented by a mass of
ill-smelling cabbage and sodden potato.’


Fortunately, recent immigrants from Europe and Asia have enriched our
choice,
bringing seeds of their favorite peppers, eggplants and herbs with them. It
was
not until our exposure to the 12,000 varieties under cultivation at Seed
Savers
Exchange in the USA, that we realised the poverty of our vegetable
inheritance.
Varieties that have been grown for hundreds of years in America never
reached
our shores. American groups such as Seed Savers exchange, who preserve our
garden inheritance, are surprised heirloom seeds are a new introduction to
Australia. For what’s new is old.


At the turn of the 20th century most families grew their own vegetables and

fruit – we knew what we were eating because we grew it ourselves – but
as
people moved from the country to the city, more and more began to buy food
rather than grow it themselves. Specialised growers, who were
market-orientated,
 sprang up close to the cities and chose higher-yielding varieties for
commercial sale. The profit motive became, for the first time, the major
criterion for plant improvement.


It was the advent of supermarkets and refrigeration after 1950 that swung
the
balance from consumer-chosen strains to producer-driven ones. Out-of-season

crops such as tomatoes, capsicums and melons were grown in warmer climates
and
shipped thousands of kilometres. New strains with tougher skins were bred
to
slow the ripening process and increase shelf life.


The myth of hybrid superiority

The new supermarket tomato, for instance, had to be both box and contents
so
flavour and freshness were sacrificed for shelf life and texture! Plant
breeders convinced themselves that ‘new equals improved’, so the older
standard varieties disappeared as new hybrids took over.


In meeting the particular needs of supermarket vegetables, hybrids became
so
altered as to be almost useless for gardeners. Gardeners want early crops
and
late crops and continuity in between, but above all, tasty crops.
Industrial
agriculture wants crops that can be harvested all at once and shipped
without
loss over long distances. What garden writers often don’t realise is that

hybrids rely on the genes of heirlooms, including those for early harvest
and
disease resistance. It is also totally unjustified to pay a premium price
for
seed that was never designed for the needs of gardeners.


Most seed breeders and scientists are convinced that hybridistaion does
mean
an improvement, and they invariably say, ‘But old varieties have no
disease
resistance’, as if bio technologists could invent the gene! Of the 200
heirloom tomatoes we have grown, we have had only one crop failure. If
heirlooms were susceptible to disease, they obviously wouldn’t out yield
hybrids in trials! Heirlooms have developed disease resistance over
hundreds
of years of selection; the weakest failing and the strongest succeeding, as

it is with all biological life. It stands to reason that the newest hybrid
varieties have had less time to adapt, and so have less ability to succeed
through decades of climate change. Because mono cropping is such an
unnatural
growing process, modern varieties are more prone to pest attack, whereas a
bio diverse backyard is virtually pest free.


Multinational seed breeders colonise seed in the name of hybrids or
Genetically Engineered Organisms, so when gardeners buy commercial hybrids
they are transferring their biological inheritance at a huge price. The
story
of heirloom vegetables is not ‘nostalgia in edible form’; they deserve
to be
grown because they are clearly the best performers in the garden. Many of
the
world’s finest gardens are more than 400 years old and we would be wise
to be
cynical about any ‘Johnny-come-lately’ seed breeder claiming that new
is
better. Modern seed breeders have a vested interest in ignoring the past,
so
they perpetuate the myth of hybrid superiority.


Today, only four per cent of the food grown in Australia comes from our own

backyards. Economic rationalism has almost destroyed the wonderful
biological
diversity of our heirloom garden seeds. The food we buy might look the same
as
the food we grow, but it has unprecedented amounts of synthetic
fertilisers,
herbicides and pesticides. All these changes to our food have been forced
upon
us; we, as consumers, have never been consulted.


The advent of genetically engineered food (GE) is a revolutionary change to

our food that offers no nutritional improvement, but is designed
specifically
to increase the profitability and market power of global seed and chemical
companies. This second producer-driven change will see the incorporation of

pesticides and herbicides within the DNA of the new food. If the
ingredients
and chemicals were properly labelled, like our processed food, some would
be
defined as pesticides.

Heirloom varieties are a gardener’s inheritance. We don’t need new
varieties,
because we have an inheritance 100 times as rich and diverse as the
commercial
market. Heirloom varieties are not fragile or exclusive, but available to
all,
and are capable of better yields and earlier crops than commercial hybrids.


We encourage you to grow them and become part of a vital preservation
campaign.
You will be growing not only the tastiest vegetables in the healthiest way,

but you will retain control of your food, which is as essential to us as
pure
air and clean water.


Seeds are the basis on which our lives depend. We will promote their
diversity
and free availability, and fight all attempts to own or destroy our
inheritance
of open pollinated heirloom seeds.


We oppose genetically engineered seeds that promote the use of chemicals.
We
support sustainable agriculture.