Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Monsanto Boycott

market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Market Farming

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Monsanto Boycott
  • Date: Sun, 6 Sep 2009 20:22:38 -0400


On Sep 6, 2009, at 7:39 PM, MAsteveINE wrote:

So, if Monsanto bought Seminis what would be wrong with buying Marketmore
76 cucumber (and others) seeds from usual sources. I have no grudge with
Monsanto,

I think it is dangerous to have a very large proportion of the seed production of the planet in the hands of any one company; and therefore wise to act in such a fashion as to encourage decentralization.

We are most likely to be able to get seed suited to our very different farms, growing practices, and marketplaces if there are a lot of small seed producers. The increasing centralization of the seed production industry into a few very large companies raises the very real risk that they will not want to bother continuing to produce seed for relatively small markets.

Monsanto is the company that most often gets into the news for actively discouraging seed saving and small scale seed distribution by individual growers. I don't know whether other large seed production companies have less of this attitude, or whether they are just less likely to get into the news for it. I prefer, when possible, to buy from companies that encourage small growers to be involved in seed production and distribution. (This does, by the way, include Johnny's.)

I'm not sure what you mean by "from usual sources" in your email quoted above -- a given variety may be carried by dozens of retail seed companies, but all of it may be produced by the same production company; if that company stops producing it, the variety will disappear from all of those dozens of catalogues more or less at once (more or less, because some may have seed in storage that they may continue to sell for a couple of years). If Monsanto now owns all the production facilities for Northstar pepper, then even if I buy it from Johnny's, then I am also buying it from Monsanto; because that's who Johnny's had to get it from. As Northstar is a hybrid, even if it isn't patented nobody else is likely to be producing it, as no one else will have or know the parent lines for the hybrid.

Balancing the needs of the particular farm against this sort of consideration, especially in cases where a specific hybrid is the only thing that does really well in that location, is a difficulty for many growers. Of course it always makes me uneasy anyway when only one variety is doing well for me in a category, if it's a hybrid or something that for other reasons it's difficult to save my own seed for; because my experience has been that varieties often disappear from the market without warning; so in cases like that I'm always at least trialing additional possibilities in the hope of finding a good backup.

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



Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page