This is the time when the stewardship of a few will make a difference to the future of many.
— Lorna McMaster
THE SEED CRISIS
In the last century, we lost 93% of our open pollinated food varieties due to the corporate consolidation of the seed industry. Today, 60% of all seed, worldwide, is owned by 4 corporations.
For thousands of years, people have depended on seeds saved naturally from open pollinated plants as a means of food security. In the last century, however, patent laws and increased corporate control of the global seed industry have eroded our right to save seeds and grow our own food.
Before the 1930’s there was no term “open pollinated” to describe seeds because all seeds were pollinated through the natural means of insects or wind. This, uncontrolled, “open” pollination creates a genetically diverse population of plants with individual variations. New varieties were developed through the breeding, selection and replanting of the most favorable members of a population.
During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the US government recognized that food security depends on plant diversity, and heavily funded state agricultural colleges to research and develop new food plant varieties. These publicly funded varieties lived in the public domain, which meant that anyone could save their seeds, and did. Thousands of small seed companies sprung up all over the US as entrepreneurial farmers grew out and sold seeds from the most successful regional varieties. These companies continued to build and maintain a rich diversity of food plants, while individual gardeners were able to save seeds from any of their favorite plants.
HYBRID CORN
In the 1920’s, there was a breakthrough in the science of plant reproduction called hybridization. Plant scientists experimented with inbreeding corn to attempt to concentrate the quality of yield. In nature, inbred plants are weak and unsustainable, but under controlled laboratory conditions, it was discovered that a crossing two highly inbred parents actually did capture the best qualities of both parents in the first generation (F1) due to a phenomenon called hybrid vigor. Unfortunately, hybrid vigor does not carry into successive generations because of the genetically unstable parents, which means that the hybrid cross must be made fresh for every generation, making seed saving impossible.
When hybrid corn was first released in the 1930’s, it produced four times the yield of traditional OP varieties and was an immediate success, despite the drawback that you had to purchase the seed every year instead of saving it for free. However, increased yields from hybrids meant farmers could afford to buy new seed every year and soon the old fashion, open pollinated varieties began to fall out of favor.
PLANT VARIETY PROTECTION
ACT OF 1970
It takes years to develop a hybrid plant, which is expensive, (though not as expensive as developing a genetically modified food plant). Corporations who could afford this kind of research wanted to protect their investments and lobbied the US Congress for decades until the Plant Variety Protection Act was passed in 1970, granting the first utility patents for genetically modified food plant varieties. With this new ability to own the source of life, corporations began a massive buyout of the seed industry. The thousands of small regional seed houses that once defined the industry were either absorbed or out competed as the market share consolidated. Hybrid varieties, which turn a profit for corporations, quickly replaced the publicly owned open pollinated varieties, many of which were simply thrown away in the consolidation process. Without small-scale seed companies and individual seed savers to maintain them, open pollinated varieties began to disappear. By the early 1980’s, 93% of those varieties were extinct.
Today, 60% of the global seed market is owned by four petrochemical and pharmaceutical corporations: Bayer, Corteva, ChemChina and Limagrain.
THE POWER OF THE
BACKYARD GARDENER
Small-scale farmers and gardeners all over the world are working to protect our right to save seed by breeding, saving, and sharing the open pollinated seed varieties that we still have. But small-scale farmers can’t do this alone. And we’ve already learned that corporations won’t do this for us either.
One the most powerful agents for changing the tide of this extinction is the backyard gardener. 55% of Americans are involved with lawn and garden activities and spend 48 billion dollars a year on their hobby. If even a small percentage of these gardeners would adopt an open pollinated variety, learn the rules of seed saving and continue to grow it for multiple years, we could potentially reclaim that body of wisdom and play a significant role in preserving those genetics for future plant breeders.
LEARN MORE
CLICK ON THE LINKS BELOW TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CRISIS THAT UNDERMINES THE WORLD’S FOOD SUPPLY AND SECURITY