Seed Keepers

[SArjuna@aol.com]

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.













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