Saving Our Seed Heritage

As I write this, early in the new year, North American gardeners are starting to dream about and plan this season’s garden. New catalogues from huge seed companies arrive every week, imploring us to buy their seeds. And buy we will – by March, when you read this, gardeners across the continent will have spent millions of dollars on seeds selected from these listings.

Despite the appearance of overwhelming variety, these catalogues are misleading. Most of them promote only seeds of hybrid varieties that we must buy year after year. Since 1990, over 950 varieties of vegetables have been lost to us, and almost 4,000 more commercial varieties are endangered. There is an alternative, however, that can save us money, help us preserve biodiversity, slow down the takeover of agriculture by big business, and as a bonus, give us better tasting foods. That alternative is growing, collecting and perpetuating open-pollinated seeds.

If you plant an open-pollinated seed, the seeds from that plant will produce the same vegetable (or fruit or flower) next year. If you plant an F1 hybrid seed, the seeds from that plant will produce vegetables that take after one or the other of the hybrid’s parents. In other words, it won’t breed true. Open-pollinated seeds will continue to breed true for generations, until a genetic mutation or cross-pollination (by insects, wind, or plant breeder's touch) by another variety occurs. This is how you can save money year after year. For a small investment of time, you can free yourself from having to buy hybrid seed every year, and you won’t be adding to Monsanto’s (and other transnationals’) profits.

You can’t tell an open-pollinated seed from a hybrid seed by looking at them (although the hybrid is likely covered in a brightly coloured fungicide), but there are ways to ensure the seeds you grow are open-pollinated. First, if your catalogue describes a variety as an F1 hybrid, or if its name has ®, ©, or ™ symbols after it, that variety is not open-pollinated. (Corporations are allowed to patent varieties they have created – known now as intellectual property rights, or IPR. By 1991, approximately 75 percent of all European vegetable varieties had become extinct due to enforcement of IPR legislation; in Europe, it is illegal for farmers to save their own seed!)

One source of open-pollinated seed, which brings with it many benefits, is joining a seed-saving organization. Seeds of Diversity Canada (SoDC) and Seed Savers Exchange (in the U.S.) are the two largest organizations; there are others as well, including ones for specific crops (such as corn). These organizations are repositories for open-pollinated seed from endangered, heritage and heirloom varieties of vegetables, fruits and flowers. As SoDC’s mission statement puts it: “Our mission is to assist and promote conservation, preservation, and enhancement of the diversity of open-pollinated plants. We are a living gene bank.”

SoDC does not sell seed; it asks its members to help preserve biodiversity by growing vegetables, fruits, flowers and herbs, then making the seeds available to other members for the cost of postage and handling. To help members choose the seeds they’d like to preserve, SoDC produces an annual seed listing. As an example of the diversity available from this organization, over 700 different varieties of tomato are offered by members.

Open-pollinated varieties can quickly interbreed with other varieties – that’s how we’ve come to have over 700 different tomatoes. However, for the preservationist, interbreeding must be eliminated if endangered and/or heirloom varieties are to be saved. This is particularly important for crops that do not self-pollinate, such as corn and squash. Growers can use several methods to ensure the heritage of these varieties remains pure. They include growing only one variety of a vegetable per year, growing early and late maturing varieties, or growing them great distances from each other so the chance of wind or insect cross-pollination is eliminated (SoDC publishes How to Save Your Own Vegetable Seeds, detailing the distances for growing two or more varieties of the same crop).

Many crops requiring insects or wind to pollinate produce female flowers before the male flowers. Fastening paper bags over the female flowers, then dabbing pollen from male flowers onto the female, and closing the bag again until the chance of cross-pollination is over, ensures genetic integrity.

A portion of the crop has to be left to ripen so the seeds can mature. Biennials, like carrots and parsnips, must be replanted the following spring (or left in the ground and mulched over winter). The seed is then collected, dried, stored, and labelled. This additional work means that preserving open-pollinated seed isn’t for everyone. For these gardeners, there are many companies selling open-pollinated seeds.

The owners of these companies are usually farmers or long-time gardeners, and all are dedicated to preserving and perpetuating open-pollinated seeds by growing them out and offering them for sale. These companies are small and located across the continent. The seeds they sell are adapted to the climate in which they’ve matured, which means you don’t have to worry about the plants surviving your particular growing conditions.

March may seem like an odd time to be reading about buying or choosing seed. We’ve already purchased this year’s seed, and most are already planted. My hope in presenting this information to you now is that you’ll have many opportunities over the next months to think about growing open-pollinated seed. And by joining organizations such as Seeds of Diversity Canada, you can start learning about the fascinating world of agricultural biodiversity, and the people dedicated to preserving and increasing it.

Every year is election year when it comes to seeds. We can vote with our dollars for big business, hybrids and intellectual property rights, or we can vote for biodiversity, heritage, small business, delicious flavour and open-pollinated seed.

Contact:
Seeds of Diversity Canada
Box 36, Station Q
Toronto ON M4T 2C7
Phone: (905) 623-0353

Seed Savers Exchange
3076 North Winn Rd.
Decorah IA 52101
Phone: (319) 382-5990