permaculture

[Marshall Chrostowski <mcfarm@silcom.com>]

Jay, yes this is a flawed world and a world filled with well-meaning people 
rushing about doing good works. Most anyone can learn to save seed and 
acquire the means of growing, selecting, protecting, harvesting, processing 
and storing seed -- year after year after year after year. How many of us 
have the time, opportunity and perserverence to conserve unique, mostly 
annual plant materials over many years? The reality is closer to the 
situation where relatively few people grow a relatively small roster of seed 
types more or less readily available.

I now get that you really don't understand the SSE's role and functioning in 
conservation of heirloom and traditional varieties. The single organization 
works closely with similar organization in country and abroad as well as 
national governments. Yes, there is a large number of seed stored at Heritage 
Farm but samples of many of these have been donated from other holders of 
same seeds and many others have been distributed to listed members who grow 
them out and conserve them. Other varieties have been introduced into the 
commercial seed trade. This is a dynamic  and living conservation effort. 
Yes, it would be cheaper to deep freeze germplasm to available for future 
plant breeding. Is this to be the end result of 10,000 years of crop 
selection by farmers and horticulturists from many parts of the world?

Marshall

Message: 9
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 05:20:20 -0600
From: Jay Woods <woodsjay@cox.net>
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Seed Savers Exchange
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <200801210520.20694.woodsjay@cox.net>
Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="iso-8859-1"

So what do we do to become trained and equipped. In this flawed world, to 
depend on a single organization at a single spot is folly.

On Monday 21 January 2008 12:19:51 am Marshall Chrostowski wrote:

> > 3. SSE practices living conservation of genetic resources with a
> > rigorous program of rotating growouts. The USDA and other governmental
> > agencies have been expanding germplasm banks held at very low
> > temperatures. It was been SSE's experience that such germplasm storage
> > systems do not protect living matter for advertised durations.