permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

On 11/30/2010 11:21 PM, Scott Vlaun wrote:
> I've worked with Seeds of Change for the last 17 years as a photographer
> and writer. While recent events have been difficult to swallow for many,
> including me, there are still a lot of well intentioned people there
> that are working hard to support organic seed growers and increase the
> stock of high quality organic seed on the market. They also still
> support a lot of community gardening projects. We all knew that there
> would be compromises when they were taken on by Mars, but millions of
> dollars worth of good organic seed has been grown and distributed none
> the less.
>
> BS? Maybe, Total? I don't think so.

Here's the whole post that I was referring to, not so much SoC but the 
comments on SSE which are some of the most disgustingly ignorant and 
anti-grassroots natural agriculture and permaculture as you can get.
This SArjuna person and his "insider" friend (what a joke) must be in 
some corporate pocket to write the following post. I repost it just to 
show the extremes of opposition types the natural farming and 
permaculture will have to learn to deal with over the coming years in 
order to maintain the viability of these movements.

Whoever wrote this BS isn't fooling anyone, BTW. - LL

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        [Seed Keepers] Viewing the SSE and Seeds of Change changes
Date:   Tue, 10 Aug 2010 15:04:52 EDT
From:   SArjuna@aol.com
Reply-To:       Seed Keepers <seedkeepers@lists.ibiblio.org>
To:     seedkeepers@lists.ibiblio.org

I asked a friend who works inside the world of seed/variety saving for
an informed view of these incidents, 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.

<><><>

This is one of the most revolting pack of lies, mindlessness, crass 
propaganda and thoughtless drivel I have ever read. If those who wrote 
this and crossposted it to the list don't already work for Mars or 
Monsanto they could probably easily find a job there. They would be 
welcomed with open arms by the Hudson Institute as well.