One of the most rewarding aspects of our work is the inspiration we receive from all the good work you all are doing day after day, season after season, in your community, school, and neighborhood gardens. For one of the organizations we support, seed saving is a way to reconnect with lost cultural and community at times of crisis and transition.

We started talking with The International Rescue Committee (IRC) when we presented a workshop on community seed projects at the National Community Garden Association Conference.

An IRC staffer approached us about helping them integrate seed saving into their New Roots program. IRC’s New Roots Program supports refugee and low-income communities to build healthy, sustainable and economically viable local food systems. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, IRC helps people whose lives are disrupted by war, disaster and other crisis rebuild their lives in new communities…they talk about their work as leading “from harm to home.” When possible they support people in rebuilding their communities, and when not, they help find new homes in new communities. Unless you’ve been through it, it is probably impossible to imagine having lost connection to community – to relationships, language, music, climate, and so on. Food is at the heart of cultural and community.

The New Roots program works in 22 U.S. cities to “enable refugees to reestablish their ties to the land, celebrate their heritage and nourish themselves and their neighbors by planting strong roots—literally—in their new communities.” The program provides nutrition education and “foodscape” orientation for thousands of newly arrived refugees and immigrants. They have 26 farm and garden sites, 42 independent farm-based businesses, and more than 500 growers. The programs range from large 2 acre urban gardens to 10 and 20 acre incubator farms, micro farm training centers to business incubators.  The farmers and gardeners involved come from countries as diverse as Sudan, Burma, Bhutan, Chad, DR Congo and Burundi.

IRC recognized that many refugees and immigrants have trouble finding seed for the crops they are accustomed to eating.  Sometimes they can go back to country of origin to find their cultural seeds, but in places of instability you cannot always depend on stable seed systems.  Seed saving is the natural solution to this dilemma, providing IRC families with a way to incorporate their heritage into their new communities, not only for a season, but into the next generation.

We granted IRC/New Roots with toolkits for five locations – San Diego, Oakland, Salt Lake City, Phoenix and at their New Roots National Farm Training Center in Pauma Valley, California. Their goal is to work with local gardeners and farmers to save seed and start a seed library that will provide seed for all the sites to use.  Imagine the diversity of crops that they will be working with and the amazing collection of seed that can come from this program.  We are impressed with the work IRC is doing and the depth of their approach in helping new immigrants and refugees find a way to sustain their cultures and communities.  Thanks for inspiring us to and showing us another way Seed Matters!

PATENT EXHAUSTION

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously sided with Monsanto recently in a case that upheld the company’s right to prohibit the replanting of patented seed. The court ruled that the doctrine of “patent exhaustion,” which an Indiana farmer argued should apply after the first sale of patented seed, “does not permit a farmer to reproduce patented seeds through planting and harvesting without the patent holder’s permission.”

It is not surprising the court ruled in Monsanto’s favor. Still, the case had merit: Bowman wasn’t challenging Monsanto’s claims that he knowingly planted seed with its protected genetics. Instead, he challenged the way patent law is currently applied to self-replicating products – a worthy effort, considering the injustices patents on seed have sown across America.

To back up, it is relatively well understood that simply using seed with patented genetics – especially widely planted genetically engineered varieties, such as Roundup Ready soybeans – enters the user into a restrictive licensing agreement. Many farmers sign these agreements at the time of sale, which includes a prohibition on planting more than one crop. The seed packaging also states that simply opening the bag binds the user to the agreement.

Mr. Bowman thought that by purchasing soybean seed from a grain elevator he had found a legal way to plant seed from subsequent generations. He assumed the seed contained patented genetics but argued that the patent exhaustion doctrine allowed him to plant them anyway, without paying a royalty to the patent holder. The court said he was wrong. The Federal Circuit court ruled, and the Supreme Court agreed, that Mr. Bowman must pay Monsanto more than $80,000.

Needless to say, Mr. Bowman is not alone in his desire to use seed from subsequent generations for replanting. More than 150 farmers have been targets of patent infringement lawsuits filed by Monsanto. And legislative initiatives at the federal level also highlight the demand in the Heartland to regain control over seed. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, of Ohio, introduced legislation in 2004 and again this year to establish a registration and fee system that would allow farmers to legally save patented seed. In February, Rep. Kaptur expressed discomfort with the level of control companies have over the reproduction of a food crop. She also said: “Companies deserve a fair return, not an exorbitant return.”

We agree. Should developers of new seed varieties earn returns on their research and development investments? Yes, absolutely. But we believe patents on self-replicating seed – and any living organism, for that matter – are unethical and dangerous.

The law needs to change. In the meantime, there is an important role for the judicial system to play in teasing out the injustices of the current patent system. Indeed, we’re keeping a close eye on the outcome of this Supreme Court case that challenges patents on human genes.

Whether the recent ruling leaves a door open to further challenge how patents are applied to seed remains to be seen. Justice Elena Kagan’s comments suggest it does:

“Our holding today is limited – addressing the situation before us, rather than every one involving a self-replicating product,” she wrote. “We recognize that such inventions are becoming ever more prevalent, complex and diverse. In another case, the article’s self-replication might occur outside the purchaser’s control. Or it might be a necessary but incidental step in using the item for another purpose.”

Mr. Bowman was not only trying to save money, he was challenging a relatively new paradigm in agriculture. It is only since another Supreme Court decision, J.E.M. Ag Supply, Inc. vs. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, in 2001, that patent law – that is, the U.S. Patent Act governing utility patents, or “patents for inventions” – has been applied to living organisms.

Think about it. In less than fifteen years, many commodity crop farmers went from saving and replanting a portion of their harvest to largely buying new seed each year. This has increased farmers’ dependence on a highly consolidated seed industry that has narrowed crop genetic diversity. The transition has also eroded the self-sufficiency and financial security of the farms we rely on to feed us. And the trend is spreading across the globe.

It’s important to note that the exclusive right to market a seed product for an established number of years is not exactly controversial. The major point of contention, as demonstrated in the Bowman case, is a patent holder’s ability to control a self-replicating product after it is sold, generation after generation. In fact, this far-reaching ownership and control is precisely why Congress long opposed the inclusion of plants under the Patent Act.

Before the Supreme Court’s ruling in J.E.M. Ag Supply, Inc., seed developers largely relied on intellectual property protections afforded through the Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA). In 1967, Congress rejected an amendment to the Patent Act that would have extended utility patents to seed. The PVPA, passed in 1970, represented a compromise: seed developers had exclusive marketing rights of their new varieties for 20 years (like a patent), but it included two critical exemptions: farmers could save seed (later amended to limit this to on-farm use only) and breeders could use protected varieties to innovate, including the development of new varieties. Utility patent protections provide no such exemptions, with devastating consequences.

Owners of utility patents on plants have far-reaching control over access and use of their protected products. A single patent, for example, can cover a plant, tissue cultures, seed, future generations, crosses with other varieties, and the methods used to produce it. Such broad claims are not possible under the PVPA. And, even more troubling, these broad patents cover traits that can also exist in nature, such as “heat tolerant broccoli” and “pleasant taste” in melons.

Patents have grave impacts on innovation, despite Monsanto’s assertion to the contrary. Public researchers note the constraints of patents and the restrictive licensing agreements tied to them. These agreements are onerous, dictating what kind of research can be conducted with patented seed and whether the findings can be published. The result is that patents effectively remove valuable seed varieties from the pool breeders rely on for improving our food crops.

That’s why it was disconcerting to read the justification in this week’s ruling that if the court didn’t protect how patents on seed are applied, the result would be “less incentive for innovation than Congress wanted” under the Patent Act. Yet, not only have patents slowed innovation, Congress never intended for patents to concentrate ownership of seed, or for utility patents to be awarded for seed at all, out of fear of curtailing innovation and competition in the marketplace.

This fear is now reality. Patents on seed have facilitated oligopolies in the seed marketplace. The profits earned from the exclusive ownership and licensing of patented seed products – bolstered by the right to restrict research and seed saving – has led to numerous buyouts. The Independent Professional Seed Association estimates the U.S. has lost at least 200 independent seed companies in the last 15 years. The seed industry is now one of the most concentrated in agriculture, where two chemical firms command more than 60 percent of the retail markets for both corn and soybeans. This level of concentration has left farmers with fewer choices and paying higher prices, and less control over what they plant.

The growing evidence that patents on seed are detrimental to the public good should raise eyebrows at the U.S. Department of Justice. At the agency’s 2010 hearing “to explore competition issues” affecting agriculture, hosted in Ankeny, Iowa, we actually thought it had. Assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, Christine Varney, highlighted the problem of patents in her opening remarks: “Patents have in the past been used to maintain or extend monopolies, and that’s illegal, and you can be sure, Secretary, that we are going to be looking very closely at any attempt to maintain or extend a monopoly through an abuse of patent laws.” Her comments were echoed by a farmer in the audience: “The utility patent is the strongest tool that’s creating monopolies and inhibiting the development of regional diverse seed companies that can be competitive.”

But our hope that meaningful action would follow was short-lived. The following year, Ms. Varney left DOJ (her departure was reportedly “a surprise to many”) and neither DOJ, nor its investigative partner, USDA, have acted on 15,000 public comments (many targeting seed) that they received in response to their inquiry about competition concerns in agriculture.

The agencies’ inaction, combined with the court ruling, creates a situation in which our government protects corporate control over seed.

Make no mistake: While the DOJ may have focused its investigation on the GMO marketplace, patent and competition concerns in seed are much broader. Conventional (non-GMO) varieties of seed are also increasingly being patented. And with Monsanto’s 2005 acquisition of the largest vegetable seed company, Seminis, the same contract that Mr. Bowman violated now appears on seed packets of vegetable varieties that are popular among backyard gardeners and farmers alike, including ‘Big Beef’ tomato, a variety that, as far as we know, doesn’t contain patented genetics.

And so we’re left with another important question: If our regulatory agencies are unwilling to confront the misuse of patent law in the context of seed, then what recourse do we, the people, have to ensure access to, and innovation in, seed?

For starters, despite a lack of acknowledgement in the Supreme Court ruling, there are appropriate intellectual property protections already available, including the PVPA. Congress could amend the PVPA to clarify its purpose to provide an exclusive means of intellectual property protection for self-replicating plant varieties.

Organic Seed Alliance and our partners are also exploring contracts that adhere to principles of an “open-source” seed model. We believe it is possible to receive fair returns on investments while fostering new research that addresses our most pressing agricultural needs, including farm-based innovation that results from saving and selecting seed. After all, our farming ancestors are responsible for the food crops we enjoy today.

The seed patent issue is not of concern only to the organic community. It’s not just about GMOs or Monsanto. This is a seed issue that impacts us all, regardless of our decisions on the farm or in the grocery store. Seed is as fundamental to life as the food and fiber it produces. By way of order, then, seed is more fundamental. And it belongs in the hands of the people, not the patent holder.

Via our Organic Seed Research and Education Grants, Seed Matters has funded two years of Frank’s work on a very important and intriguing breeding project. Developing “Organic-Ready” maize populations with GA1s gametophytic incompatibility is both simpler, and more complex than it sounds. Frank is breeding organic corn to have a naturally occurring trait that would allow it to reduce or even stop pollen of genetically engineered corn from contaminating the organic crop. GA1s is a natural corn gene found in some wild corn populations.  It is used in popcorn, allowing farmers in the US to grow popcorn alongside field corn without crossing and ruining the popcorns’ “popping” characteristics.

To understand how the GAS1l gene works it’s important to know the simple version of how corn fertilization works.  The male flower (tassel) on a corn plant releases pollen, and blown by the wind lands on a corn silk (the female flower on the corn plant is the ear and its silks). This is the first step in fertilization – pollination. The pollen then germinates on the silk and grows a tubule down to the ovary in the ear of corn where fertilization occurs. If the pollen tubule does not grow—no corn kernel (seed) is produced from that ovary.

The GAS1 gene in a plant allows it to recognize when “incompatible” pollen is trying to grow a pollen tubule down a corn silk, and it sends out chemicals to inhibit this growth and prevent fertilization. It’s not a perfect system—sometimes fertilization can occur—but this trait in organic corn will help organic farmers produce crops with much less risk of contamination from genetically engineered crops.

Frank has already started sharing corn populations with researchers in other regions, and is making solid progress in this work. By funding projects like this we are reminded that improving seed systems is slow, multi-year work – you can only go so far in a single season. We hope you’ll help us support the work of independent plant breeders like Frank. Get involved with Seed Matters!

A Local Seed Library is Starting to Grow

Seed slavery. Seed dictatorship. Seed sovereignty. These unusual-sounding concepts are at the root of a growing local—and global—effort to save and exchange seeds, free of charge, at a community level.

Spurred by the rise in corporate ownership of the world’s seed stocks, and by an increasing number of patented, genetically modified organism (GMO) seeds, thousands of seed keepers around the world are saving seeds and working to keep them free.

San Luis Obispo County gardeners and free-seed advocates gathered Oct. 5 to exchange their recently harvested seeds and share ideas about building a local seed library. On long tables at one edge of the room, seeds of an incredible variety of vegetables, flowers, fruit, herbs, and native plants sat in carefully labeled paper bags, dishes, and envelopes.

Excited gardeners browsed and chatted, reading labels and gathering up whatever they wanted into recycled junk-mail envelopes for later planting.

“The idea is that seeds are community and public property,” Paso Robles farmer John DeRosier told the group. At a local seed library of the future, for example, backyard gardeners could check out a variety of seed—lettuce, say—then grow the lettuce, harvest the seeds, and give some back to the seed library.

DeRosier, who started saving seeds as a teenager, is especially intrigued by edible seed crops, such as grains, sunflowers, lentils, and garbanzo beans. He’s been growing historic varieties of oats, wheat, quinoa, millet, and other grains in fields all around SLO County.

“Seeds are such a powerful aspect of our heritage and our culture as humans, not just our food. There’s a tremendous amount of our history in grains,” he said. “The diversity, with tens of thousands of varieties of wheat, is the backbone of who we were and what made us strong.”

These days, though, most of the world’s grain crops consist of GMOs(ED Note:  GMOs are prevalent in corn, soy, canola, papaya, sugar beets, and cotton – but not wheat or other grains), a worrying trend that has led to a major loss of diversity, DeRosier said. Like others at the gathering, he supports Proposition 37, which would require labeling of food products containing GMOs.

In contrast to conventional plant breeding, where seeds from two plants of the same species are crossed, GMO crops are created in a laboratory by inserting a gene from one organism—plant or animal—into another organism that’s completely unrelated, such as crossing a tomato with a salmon[Ed note: The “Flavr Savor” tomato contained flounder genes, but is no longer on the market].

The resulting seeds are often patented by multinational corporations, preventing farmers all over the globe from saving and exchanging their own seeds for replanting.

“GMO—God Move Over,” quips a new report coordinated by food activist Dr. Vandana Shiva, Seed Freedom: A Global Citizens’ Report. Its 100 authors from around the world are calling for people to become empowered “to liberate seeds and themselves,” and for the rollback of patents and laws that have led to “seed slavery and seed dictatorship.”

“We are witnessing a seed emergency at a global level,” the report states.

For Melanie Blankenship, who grows seeds and plants to sell at her Nature’s Touch store in Templeton, a local seed library or seed bank would be a welcome resource.

“A seed library is truly needed. It’s a true form of food security. You cannot have the security of knowing your food will be there tomorrow unless you’re planting the seed,” she said in an interview after the October 5^th seed exchange.

She likes to grow rare, unusual, and old-fashioned varieties of plants and seeds, and said she has noticed an alarming reduction in the diversity of seeds available commercially ever since a few multinational corporations started buying up seed companies around the world.

A SLO County seed library—or seed bank, where people would deposit and withdraw seeds in an equal exchange—could help change that trend, Blankenship believes.

Quite a few details remain to be sorted out, and interested people will meet on Nov. 14 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the SLO Grange to continue the process.

“Growing seeds:  it’s life, it’s vitality, it’s guaranteed good food for generations to come,” Blankenship said.

Photo by Savanna Elliott

One example of OSA’s work with Seed Matters is the Fundamentals of On-Farm Plant Breeding course they hosted in June 2012. Twenty-five farmers, students, and other community members spent two days learning from one of the nation’s leading seed instructors, OSA’s Dr. John Navazio, about all things seed. They covered the biology of seed production, as well as how to conduct on-farm breeding projects, variety trials, and seed harvesting and cleaning.

OSA has long recognized that seed knowledge is being lost among farmers even more quickly than seed diversity. That’s why training farmers in basic on-farm seed production and plant breeding is essential to conserving and expanding the diversity of the seed on which our food systems depend.  OSA engages farmers not just in the classroom, but in the field. A participatory plant breeding approach guides their work, encouraging farmers to be fully engaged decision makers and leaders in developing new breeding projects and restoring older varieties to meet the changing needs of organic agriculture.

Participants in the June 2012 course visited an OSA participatory spinach breeding project and discussed some of the tools needed for good farmer-researcher interactions. ‘Abundant Bloomsdale’ spinach is a variety that OSA has worked on for years and continues to develop thanks to support from Seed Matters. The new variety is already showing promise, from field to plate. It thrives under organic farming conditions, and is highly nutritious and tasty. OSA plans to release the new variety in a couple years through an open-source seed initiative.

“I like the idea of being able to grow and plant my own seed on my farm, and develop plant types that are locally adapted.”  – Hannah Walters, participant in OSA June workshop

Brook was the first recipient of a Seed Matters Fellowship in organic plant breeding, and is working on his Ph.D.  under the tutelage of Dr. Stephen Jones at Washington State University, Mount Vernon Research and Extension Center. Brook is focusing on three crops—barley, wheat, and dry beans—and does most of his work in the Skagit Valley, a fertile floodplain in western Washington.  Small grains were once grown in abundance throughout this region, as they were throughout most of America, but as agriculture moved towards highly specialized and industrial regional centers of crop production, the maritime climates in the northwest saw a serious decline in grain production, and in the research that once supported it.

There is a new trend emerging—farmers growing vegetables or other specialty crops are realizing that small grains fit well in their systems. Brook explains, “Small grains are an important rotation for these crops – breaking disease cycles and returning organic matter to the soil.”

Unfortunately, organic grain farmers face a challenge—there has been very little breeding done for their needs, and so they rely on conventionally bred varieties. Brook describes conventional breeding as working in a “uniform environment, for a uniform market that sees the crop as a bulk commodity. The goal is to breed something that is a perfect fit in an industrial system of uniformity.”

Whereas he sees organic breeding as working in a system where there is more variables from field to market. “This creates challenges but also opens up possibilities of doing something different, including different qualities and flavors in the end product.”

While Brook points to specific needs of organic growers in breeding—better weed competition and greater resistance to disease—he also keeps the “end user” in mind. Local bakers are noting very unique flavor profiles in the wheat and rye Dr. Jones’ breeding program have developed. Brook hopes to do the same with barley malt – yes, actually breeding barley for beer production that provides local breweries with a local crop, and hopefully a locally unique flavor.

“I want to develop varieties that help farmers’ crops outcompete weeds, and have greater resistance to disease, but I’m also interested in flavor and other qualities for the consumer. It really adds another level of complexity and intrigue in plant breeding.”

Here are the details:
Where: High Mowing Organic Seeds, Wolcott, VTWhen: Thursday, August 9th 9 am – 6 pm (with additional activities before and after)Cost: $100 (includes lunch and evening social hour

Description:  This event is intended to be intensive and will be limited to 100 participants. 50 will be by invitation and 50 will be from the public. The day will include talks by leading plant breeders from around the country as well as hands-on participatory activities such as rouging open¬pollinated varieties, rouging parent lines for hybrid seed production, making crosses with different species, seed harvesting and evaluating research trials. We will focus on three key areas, all with an organic focus: Plant Breeding and Selection, Research Trials and Seed Production.

Presenters include: Dr. William Tracy (University of Wisconsin), Dr. John Navazio and Jared Zystro (Organic Seed Alliance), Dr. Mark Hutton (University of Maine), Dr. Michael Mazourek (Cornell University), Dr. Jodi Lew Smith (High Mowing Seeds), Dr. Jack Kloppenburg (author of First the Seed) and Tom Stearns (High Mowing).

To register:http://www.highmowingseeds.com/news-and-events.html

But this morning I saw an article that lifted my spirits. When I was a kid my mother always said, “good things come in small packages” (I was a premature infant, and remain on the small end of the bell shaped curve of human form…and my mom is only 4’11″), and sometimes the smallest things do indeed give me the greatest sense of good in the world (maybe that’s why I love seed so much). So to find that in the nearly $300 billion Farm Bill is a tiny provision for allowing those in need of food assistance to receive seed assistance…well…that’s a small thing of great beauty hidden in a bloated bill that favors big ag, big lobbying, and big business. 

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP – formerly known as food stamps) allows recipients to use their SNAP funds to purchase seeds and plants for their home gardens – allowing them to grow fresh food for their families. LOVE IT. 

(hmmm….maybe we shouldn’t celebrate it too loud or a politician will single it out as excessive entitlement for the poor)

My first SHOUT OUT!  goes to  Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog - written by Luigi Guarino and Jeremy Cherfas who are both highly respected professionals in the field of biodiversity (although the site is a voluntary project, not linked to their professional employment). I get their feeds daily, and always look forward to the section they call “Nibbles” as well as their longer articles like this one Late Blight is Forever.

The blight article is representative of why I think so highly of this site. There’s been some media attention lately to genetically engineering a “solution” to late blight, protests in Ireland against this, and at a few pro-biotech blogs and twitter accounts some snarky comments suggesting that they would expect the Irish to be a little more open to the promise of biotech taters given the devastating hunger that killed millions of Irish in the 19th century.

The folks at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog bring some much needed clarity to the idea that we can solve anything when it comes to pests, “The point is quite simple: overcoming resistance is what pests and diseases do. They multiply like mad, and every new individual is a new lottery ticket. Sure, the odds of a jackpot are slim. But in every case I know of, the question is not if but when.”

This is true whether about any approach to breeding for disease resistance –  whether a transgenic biotech approach, classical breeding using vertical (single gene) resistance, or taking a more organic approach and breeding for durable, or horizontal (polygenic) resistance – plants have coevolved with disease even more closely than they have coevolved with humans. Pests and diseases are not going away any more than human hunger, greed, inspiration and compassion are going away. And any attempt to “fix” such conditions are hubris at best.

Anytime a seed company, organization, philanthropic foundation, or agricultural pundit tries to sell us plant breeding as a “solution” we should be skeptical. Integrated approaches to the challenges we face in agricultural production are complicated, and require greater cross disciplinary approaches. We need diversity – not only in our crops – but in the researchers, farmers, social scientists, economists, policy makers, and in the public sphere discussions around these issues.

I am grateful for the diversity that Jeremy and Luigi’s bring to the discussion and recommend following their blog and individual twitter feeds (Jeremy on twitter; Luigi on twitter).

No flowers in my garden unless they were producing seed or providing habitat for beneficial insects (and ideally they should do both, or why bother). 

I’ve slain that god, and now realize that the human understanding of “utility” will always be too narrow.  That said, I still tend to talk, write, and be passionate about seed from edible plants. I’m trying to change that tendency. 

The last four months we’ve been living in Oakland, and so have needed the occasional refuge from the urban scene. Thank goodness for the Berkeley Botanical Garden. We became members and go at least once a month to watch the plants in the different zones slowly (and sometimes suddenly) go about their seasons.

One of the things I noted recently was that some of the plants from the southern hemisphere are going to seed. And I’m discovering seed pods, seedheads, and seeds that I’ve never seen before.  I want to share one of my new favorites with you. The Proteaceae family has about 1600 species, all growing in the southern hemisphere. Here’s an example of a flower from a protea I saw on Sunday (I think Protea caffra).

By the way, the family/genus is named after Proteus, who was a Greek sea deity who could change form – and the Berkeley gardens certainly have representatives of the myriad forms and flowers from this family.

And here is a seedhead of another Protea (Banskia aemula). The two pods you see are a very hard wood, and they split open to release winged seeds (a couple per pod).

The hardened seedpods are harvested and carved in Australia, and make beautiful sculpture…and even some “useful” items like teapots. 

…the joys of aging.