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  • From: SArjuna@aol.com
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] Viewing SSE & Seeds of Change changes
  • Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2010 15:04:15 EDT

I asked a friend who works inside the world of seed/variety saving for an
informed view of the changes at SSE and Seeds of Change, which to some appear
to be hostile takeovers, and received the following.
-Shivani in Wi

Seed Saver’s Exchange, co-founded by Kent Whealy, was the product of many
other people’s work as well as KW’s. But KW hogged pretty nearly 100% of
the credit. The handful of varieties collected originally by KW as well as
the thousands collected by others are still there and still available. KW
ultimately got deposed for behaving in a way that, as best I can evaluate,
would pretty much require any board of directors to fire him. As far as I
know, none of the volunteers, advisors, specialty area curators, or employees
jumped ship. That pretty much says it all, I think. Now the current
issues of SSE publications seem to feature many of those involved in SSE and
the seed saving movement instead of just KW. KW’s skill at publicity was
undoubtedly crucial to SSE’s success initially. But I’ll bet some of the
others are glad to finally be getting at least a little credit for their
work.
So KW’s lifework has not been “lost.” And it wasn’t so totally his
lifework as he made it seem to outsiders. The success of SSE was the
accomplishment of many. And it wasn’t any kind of Monsanto takeover. It
was more
an internal upheaval, I think, one that was probably long overdue. So don’
t worry. SSE is fine.

As for Seeds of Change, clearly something has happened, but it isn’t yet
clear what. However, the research and plant breeding was and is nearly all
done in Oregon by Alan Kapuler, not in New Mexico. The Seeds of Change
Research Farm was a research farm mostly in name only. It did do variety
trials, however. Alan Kapuler, a co-founder, is now retired as Research
Director of Seeds of Change, but he continues to do research in his Oregon
gardens.
And he is breeding plants faster and more furiously than ever, and
introduces them through both his own small seed company Peace Seeds as well
as
through Seeds of Change. Mars bought Seeds of Change years ago and saved it
from financial ruin. Mars is now heavily involved in promoting the growing
of chocolate organically, and has introduced a line of organic (non-candy)
foods. The Seeds of Change Research Farm in New Mexico probably never made
sense economically. And moving the warehouse and company headquarters to
California where the organic food operation is probably also makes financial
sense. However, I don’t yet know exactly what is going on, or who has been
fired or not fired, or whether the SOC scope or mission is going to be
changing.

As for people being fired without warning and escorted off the property by
security—that seems to be pretty much the norm with corporations these days.
(I don’t know if that is what SOC did to anybody, but that is what SSE
did to KW.) Many such companies are pretty much their mailing lists. So
the company needs to keep the fired employee from stealing the mailing list,
which most would certainly do if they had warning. Alternately, these days,
a pissed off employee could screw up a computer system or send nasty emails
to all the mailing list. Usually, the company has to give a couple weeks
or more of pay to employees, the amount represented by whatever notice
employees are supposed to get. But usually the company cannot really afford
to
have the employees around once they have been notified that they have been
fired. It’s hard and humiliating for the fired employees, undoubtedly.
But I rather suspect any company that behaves otherwise these days comes to
regret it pretty fast.













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