Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - [permaculture] an update on gmo-free seed sources.

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: jamesdavid Sneed <harvestcircle@hotmail.com>
  • To: <dan.borman.food.plants@gmail.com>
  • Cc: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] an update on gmo-free seed sources.
  • Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:43:43 -0700


Due to questions about the safety of some folks' favorite seed sources, I
contacted a couple of those outlets in question, namely Uprising Seeds in
Bellingham Washington, and Fedco seeds in Maine.
Uprising seeds, except for their rhubarb chard, gets their beets and chard
seed from Frank Morton, a highly committed breeder at Wild Garden seeds, and
he tests for the presence of gmos on all his beets and chard, and has zero
tolerance. Uprising grows their own rhubarb chard variety in a remote field,
niles from anything that could go to seed and contaminate their crop. As long
as the organic farms surrounding their field either avoid using non-tested
beet or chard varieties, and/or avoid letting any go to seed, that chard seed
should be safe as well. Because chard often has a few plants that try to go
to seed te first year, it takes vigilance and co-operation with one's
neighbors to accomplish this.
The situation with Fedco seeds is a bit more complex. They test their sweet
corn, but not their flint or dry corns, apparently because they were not
aware that live, viable corn pollen has been found fifty miles from it's
source. They have now been informed of that, and perhaps public pressure from
numerous customers requesting they test all their corn will help them.
NEXT YEAR, they say, they will test all their beets and chard for gmo
contamination, but this year only two have been tested. Their non-organic,
commercial touchstone beet seed tested clean, and one batch of non-organic,
commercial detroit dark red, lot no. 323, has tested clean. They could not
tell me why they only tested those batches, or whether they were currenly
selling from batch 323 or another, since they have other batches of the
detroit beet on hand.
Again, customer pressure may make a difference. Please call AND email them to
encourage them to test all their corn and beets.
And a cloud with our silver lining: Squash in the C. pepo species and chicory
should be tested, and soon members of the cabbage branch of the brassicas may
be questionable.

_________________________________________________________________
The New Busy is not the too busy. Combine all your e-mail accounts with
Hotmail.
http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?tile=multiaccount&ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_4


  • [permaculture] an update on gmo-free seed sources., jamesdavid Sneed, 04/21/2010

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page