Kent Whealy, co-founder of the Seed Savers Exchange, sent me a copy of this speech in an letter, entitled Svalbard Doomsday Vault: Biopiracy by U.N. Treaty [updated]. This was the only thing in the envelope, no cover letter, and I’ve had no indication so far it was sent to all listed members of the SSE as has happened in the past. I think it’s his intention that it be distributed further, so I’m offering a scanned copy of it for download here. It’s also available elsewhere on the Internet.
I think it’s a very important letter for all past, present or future members of the SSE to read and understand. What Whealy says is what I have long suspected or known about Svalbard, but have not be able to articulate or fully research to make an accurate statement.
It’s the nature of international treaties that you can’t just read the text in order to understand what they all mean, because they are so complex and intertwined with one another. In fact it’s often true that the only ones who really understand what they mean are the people who wrote them. You have to have someone else research the treaties for you and explain what they mean, there’s really no other way. That’s what Whealy has done for us in this speech. If I were to briefly summarize what Whealy said it would be the following:
If you give seeds to the SSE it’s the same as giving them to Monsanto for research and creating new GM varieties. If you give the SSE money or are a member, you are supporting this activity with other people’s seeds.
At the same time we need to recognize the importance of the current SSE seed collection. Rather than turn our backs completely on the SSE, we need to fight for the recovery of the seeds they already have.
One of the things Whealy says in his letter is he will personally pay the legal costs of anyone who has given the SSE seeds, since seen them deposited at Svalbard, and wishes to try to recover them. Are you someone in this situation, or do you think you are? Take Whealy up on his offer! Let’s get one or more test cases going, and try to get as many of those seeds back as we can! If you send me an email via the contact link on the front of this blog, I will make sure you get in touch with him.
One of the things that happens when you say anything about the Svalbard Doomsday Vault or the Global Crop Diversity Trust on the Internet, is a paid representative finds it in Google and sends you an email or leaves a comment objecting to what you said. That’s what happened the last time I posted about it.
Let me therefore just offer few words to them in advance. It’s my policy to allow any legitimate comments here, that appear to come from a real person and address the subject at hand. As long as you have something along these lines to offer, you are very welcome to leave a comment here. It’s also my policy to delete spam, so if what you offer appears to be a meaningless prepared statement available elsewhere on the Internet, I may delete it. I suggest your own website is a good place for this sort of thing, and anyone who is interested can go and read it there. If you send me a private email, I reserve the right to do whatever I want with it, including publishing it if I want. Above all, I want to make very clear that I personally don’t care at all what you think about what Kent Whealy or I say here, and I won’t change or delete anything just because you ask me to or think I should.
I have more to say about Whealy’s letter in future posts, so stay tuned!
Hi Patrick
i just seem to get a blank PDF document with no text.
Hi Owen,
You can find the text of the speech here:
http://ppjg.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/svalbard-doomsday-vault-biopiracy-by-u-n-treaty/
Does anyone else have problems with the PDF here? I don’t have any problems reading it on my computer.
Patrick,
I received Kents lettre in the regular mail as well, so I’ve read it thoroughly. I did try to open up the pdf and it didn’t work either, just a blank document…
I’m placing more and more of my seeds in the Arche Noah catalogue, they’re a bit more reliable. Unfortunately it’s in German, so that’s a bit of an obstacle for many of you. If we could unite all these different European projects we could have a seedbank way larger compared to the SSE bank. I wouldn’t see this as a ‘big’ sort of thing, but just something to faciliate access to all sorts of seeds. People are blocked now because of the different systems and languages, if this could be more uniform, seeds could more easily be conserved and distributed over here. And there’s a lot more circulating in Europe compared to the US!
A great project.
i believe it is important to have a way of preserving our nature, that being the Svalbard Doomsday Vault, the Global Crop Diversity Trust the SSE or other ways. The important part is that the one you chose can truly represent your opinion and beliefs on how to address this issue.
Like with any organizations they will be bumps on the road, different mindsets and conflicts, but is all part of the development needed. Hopefully no one will end out loosing.
Of course is a problem to have this kind of conflicts, but hopefully the goal of organizations like this remains honorable.
Hi ~fer,
Thanks for the comment!
I’m not sure if there is a misunderstanding here, or we just disagree, but I think Kent Whealy’s point is that the SSE has just really gone bad, and I agree with him. I used to be a member of the SSE, and used to enthusiastically support them. I’m now of the opinion there is little difference between the SSE and Monsanto.
As far as Svalbard Doomsday Vault and the Global Crop Diversity Trust, there is nothing they do that benefits the average person or the independent plant breeder. The only ones that benefit are large corporations. While the idea of storing away our seeds in case of a world catastrophe is a good one, there isn’t any sort of plan in place for using the seeds in this way, and I think this is little more than playing with peoples emotions and marketing.
I have lots more to say about this later. For now my advice would be that if you are not a member of the SSE you should not join them. If you are already a member you should use that fact to press the SSE to recover their seeds from Svalbard and return control of them to their members. You certainly shouldn’t give the SSE themselves any of your seeds, although there’s no reason not to share with other SSE members.
I think the day and age for an organization like the SSE has passed. Kent Whealy isn’t ever likely to return to running the organization he founded, and the world is a different place now with important tools like the Internet. Like Frank says there are lots more seeds floating around Europe now than what the SSE has, and I think there needs to be more of an effort made to support smaller national organizations and organize them so they can be used by more people.
Too many seeds in the hands of a small number of people is not a good thing.
Owen and Frank: Thanks for letting me know about the problems with the PDF file. I’ve rescanned it. I think the problem was my scanner autodetected Kent Whealy’s letter as a high-resolution picture, because of the density of the text… Now it’s scanned at a much lower resolution, and should be more readable as well as download faster.
If anyone still has problems reading it, would you please let me know?
Hi patrick
I understand what the issue that the letter was addressing, and I am sorry I think it was a misunderstanding.
The point that i was trying to make is that yes organizations can go bad, it happens a lot, but the ideal that got those organizations started was based on a good idea.
For me is good to have a way of preserving nature. Not only for a catastrophe but also as a common place to being able to share and develop.
In my particular case, I am not a big proponent of a structure like those where all seeds are stored by a single vault or a single manager. I think a community where everyone has a small part of the collection is better for individuals. But what i do admire of that kind of structures is the capability of classification and organization where you can register who has what, and where it is stored, since that is the hardest part in the community kind of structure.
I think the project is good, the idea around it is great. But about the organization I cant truly give an opinion since I am only beginning to learn about them. My only hope is that in the end, regardless of how the organizations change, the purpose remains, and we have some way of preserving nature and also hopefully a starting point to exchange and communicate.
To compare the work of Seed Savers Exchange to Monsanto is laughable. If Kent Whealy’s interest was based in preservation and not revenge, he would be spending his time and money fighting the real villain, big business and our food policies in the Usa. If people want to organize and make a difference, let’s realize who the real problem makers are and encourage those who have been trying to make a difference. Don’t believe the hype of this bitter man!
Hi Sharron,
First of all to be clear, the comparison with Monsanto is my own and simply a generalization of what Kent Whealy said. If you disagree with this comparison, you disagree with me alone.
Otherwise, I think we are mostly on the same side. The situation is very complicated, and hard to explain clearly, but the SSE has just gone bad. They are no longer doing what they are suppose to, and no longer working in the interests of their members.
The food policies in the USA are a huge problem, both for the people living there and the rest of the world. The time has come for us however to look for organizations besides the SSE to help change things.
One of the most important things you can do as a person is grow your own food, or buy it locally from farmers markets. This is certainly what I do. For now, your local farmers need your support more than the SSE does.
Hi, I am new to all of this so excuse my ignorance. I am new to seed saving and sse, but I saw the controversy. I don’t know where to buy seeds from especially if sse is tainted. I am in the US, and I need someone to explain what is going on. Could you do that please? Is Kent saying that the seeds I am receiving are tainted? I need details please.
I am so disheartened when I see comments as Tara’s. How sad that the complicated nature of Kent Whealy’s neverending rants have left people comparing SSE to Monsanto and leaving those new to seed saving confused as to whether or not the seeds they are receiving are tainted. Why don’t we focus on what is important, gardening and saving seeds. Mr. Whealy will never be satisfied and perpetuating this drama on this type of forum is only fueling his fire.
Hi Tara,
I think your question is a good one, and thanks for asking it. I’ll do my best to answer.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with any seeds from the SSE. If you have any now, you should certainly use and enjoy them. From the point of view of quality, there is nothing wrong with the SSEs seeds and you should not be afraid of buying them for this reason.
Kent’s beef is with the SSE management and how the organization is run. Many people buy seeds or become members of the SSE because of it’s history and how it was in the past, and Kent’s argument is that it’s changed and he doesn’t like the direction it’s taking.
If you want to avoid the controversy, there are lots of other good places to buy good seeds. If you want to save your own seeds, but sure to buy your seeds from a place that specializes in OP or Open Pollinated seeds. One of my favorites is Baker Creek http://www.rareseeds.com but there are many other places. At the top of this page, under the graphic is the word ‘links’, and if you click on that there is list of seed companies that all specialize in OP seeds.
I hope this answers your question, and best of luck with your garden!
Dave,
Above all I believe in the idea of free speech. I don’t appreciate when one person or group tells another to shut up, like the SSE has done with Kent Whealy and many of it’s members. In fact I think most of the problems of the SSE have been brought on by themselves, for exactly this reason.
I suspect as long as Kent Whealy feels his only means of communicating with the SSE is by sending out these letters, and he doesn’t object to me doing it, I will continue to publish them on the Internet in the most visible way possible. I fully and unconditionally support his right to express himself.
I’ve never met Kent Whealy and never been to Heritage Farm. If I meet him someday and he turns out to be the biggest jerk on the face of the planet, I won’t regret publishing his letters.
Everything about this blog is complicated. Seed saving itself is very complicated. I spend hours and hours explaining things to people who don’t understand. If anyone doesn’t understand what I’ve written here, I will do my best to explain it if I can.
I value everyone who reads this blog, including you. I also appreciate the time you took to leave a comment. I hope you come back again, and you’ll always be welcome here.
On the other hand there are a lot of other places on the Internet to go to, and if reading my posts or comments like Tara’s are disturbing you might consider looking elsewhere.
It seems that the PDF is blank again!??? Strange doings?
Hi Eric,
Thanks for letting me know about the PDF. My latest theory is my scanner creates PDFs that are Adobe version 1.5, and that’s too new for many computers. In the past I used a scanner that used version 1.4, but I don’t have easy access to that any more.
I think if your version of Adobe is more than about 5 years old, it won’t be able to read this PDF file. This probably includes a lot of Macs, because I think Adobe and Apple are not on good terms with each other. I realize there are lots of old computers floating around these days, so I will try to find another scanner to use, but in the meantime you can view the speech one of the following places:
http://view.samurajdata.se/psview.php?id=64a6a241&page=1
http://ppjg.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/svalbard-doomsday-vault-biopiracy-by-u-n-treaty/
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.patnsteph.net/blogpics/Whealy_Oct2010.pdf
Patrick, thank you for supporting Kent; I do not know the guy myself, but it is obvious he was & “is” wholesomely passionate about our seeds on the planet. And yes, I would be angry to no end with being ripped off by a bunch of backroom maneuverings by this Goldman and Fowler issue playing out. Goldman, needs to take her money elsewhere, and Fowler go back to where he came from. Nothing ugly about it, just, they are not needed or wanted by “true seed savers”! It is disgusting to put it lightly. With that said;
Nice communications on this blog; thank you for your efforts on such an important subject and keeping it on task / focus of the rip-off on Seed Saver Seeds. Especially considering our food grow-out (from seeds) is the most important activity on the planet along with clean water. And, that is even endangered by seed varieties being designed to lock the farmers into a never go away, financial closed-loop of consumerism of seeds; and with attached growing instructions/techniques of lots of “chemicals” to address fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides applications; all being supplied by the Monsanto, Bayer, and other mega-corporations, that is becoming so global. Their approach (and cloaking the true intent)is by financially Funding our college agriculture departments/programs; this, with research done, and creating outcomes that promote their products(without using the Brand name publicly for obvious reasons)and done in the classic style by using chemical cost VS harvest amounts in their dandy little cost matrix’s of R.O.I. Example: if I can use $15 per acre in chemical bug or weed killers, which allows me to harvest $20 dollars more in produce, well gee-wiz, that’s an additional $5.00 an acre I can realize! How stupid, considering all the “other life killed”, the water-shed pollution, and on and on! Aside, from the nutritional values dropping by 40 to 50% compared to a few years ago. Isn’t it time for the USDA to change the kids “food pyramid” to reflect the loss of vitamins in our corporate vegetables being manufactured?
I hope and I do & “will” support Kent Whealy in whatever way is productive on getting the seeds back to SSE. What is our best approach?
I surely will not renew my membership, but will by directly from it’s members or support other legitimate OP seed supplies.
On a side note of an experience with trying to contact SSE for some heirloom seeds, and my approach was “seeds of any kind”, that I wanted to try and grow in my area/hot, buggy, humid, Florida climate >, the approach was totally organic in a way that the seeds were going to have to “survive on their own, with very limited input” by me, just to try and “strengthen” a seeds potential for future generations. Of course I would give it some water, and a little manure tea, “but little”. We have been successful with okra, egg plants, and a some greens; but it only became obvious after Kent’s letter, they were not, or are not interested in my attempts to strengthen the generations to come;(I got no response what so ever!) I am now sure, if I was a Corporation, ready to attempt some “patent” project where they could gain a “percentage” of the efforts in a monetary form, there would be immediate response!
The SSE grass-roots movement and Goals, have obviously been breed out of the organization(as Kent was culled out) of what it was meant to be . The Board has been genetically modified by financial interest to support big corporations, and not Seed Security!
Let me know how I can help. Thanks again for your honest efforts. Steve
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the great comment.
I too have a story about contacting the SSE.
This was a few years after the invasion of Iraq, and after it had become clear their national seed collection had been almost entirely destroyed either directly by bombs, or later when the freezer units thawed out due to a lack of electricity and other resources. No effort was made to rescue this collection by coalition forces, and instead it was replaced mostly with hybrid and GM seeds from large US and European seed companies. The coalition also passed decrees forbidding farmers from saving their own seeds.
At the same time it became clear Iran had nuclear ambitions, and it wasn’t clear if the US and/or coalition forces would bomb or invade Iran as well.
I made some pretty strongly worded posts about the situation in Iraq here on this blog, and one day I got an email from a scientist in Iran. This was apparently because he thought I was also a scientist.
He had a large collection of Iran’s national seeds, many of which he was personally working on, and he wanted to know if I would accept them and keep them in case something happened to his country.
I’m not a seed bank or scientist, I have no appropriate storage facility, and I was really not prepared to do this. So I contacted the SSE by email. Nothing, no answer. So I called them on the phone. I explained the situation to the person who answered, and told them about my email. She said she would look for my email and get back to me. Nothing. Several days later I got another email from this guy, and he had obviously not heard from the SSE.
Fortunately Iran was not attacked, but if it had been these seeds may have been lost, and it would have been no thanks to the SSE.
I don’t know what exactly it is the SSE does, but they don’t seem to care about preserving seeds.
Patrick,
You mention: “The coalition also passed decrees forbidding farmers from saving their own seeds.”
Can you, or someone within this readership have the the knowledge to explain “why” farmers are not allowed to save their seeds?
That is totally irrational from a personal survival stand point of who we are in Nature. Those Farmers seeds have tasted the Earth, and the Air/gases in that particular environment; becoming one more generation closer to a symbiotic relationship with everything around it. It is incredibly stupid to think some legal entity or government would have the audacity to step forward and try and control “my seeds that I have grown”.(?) Understand; regardless of whatever a company has spent on research or efforts in changing plant life, once it is growing on this planet, no one can take claim to it’s existence. The Earth grows plants not humans. Science is just there own best admirer of manipulating life as it naturally is; if anything, I should be able to “sue the corporation that polluted my seeds, based on they released some artificial variation into the ecosystem! So, for a government or Corporation to say, “the seeds from “my” plants are their Patent? That just ain’t going to happen in my life time. Am I way off base here?
What meat heads really think they can “forbid” farmers from saving seeds? Big change has got to happen, and I think it is growing out of sight like a tuber! It will spring from the Earth when the temperature and moisture of knowledge has qualified itself, and this under current has acknowledged the time is right. It will suddenly flush like an Amanita virosa! We can sit down with this corporate cronies, and have a pizza party and discuss there payment for these so called “patents” on the Earth’s plants.
I am interested in the “position” on these other humans passing out a “forbidding farmers from saving seeds”?
s/
Hi Steve,
I don’t know the answer myself, but maybe someone else will come along with something to say…
They CAN, and DO get control of your seed so that you can not use them. YOU ALL MISS the point.
He’s very upset, and rightfully so, because the agreements made with the “Vaults” and the UN change everything.
Patents, yes patents on seeds keep you from using them, and if you do not know that there are patents on seeds, then you are not informed ENOUGH about this issue. Start researching, and reading books that have been written about it.
You can talk all you want about gardens and your garden dreams, but if you wait until you get stopped, then what is the point.
Corperations like Monsanto HAS taken farms for just this reason.
Their GMO seeds (patented seeds) polinated farmers crops, and Monsanto ended up with their farms, and Monsanto did it on purpose. (they have done it all over the world)
If they take the seed savers seeds and genetically modify them, they are THEIRS and OWN them from then on. No more seed saving, and if that is not enough for you, the UN gets control of the seeds. Even taking Seed Savers out of the picture.
Read people, try the book “Seeds of Destruction”
Control the oil you control a nation, CONTROL THE SEED AND YOU CONTROL THE PEOPLE. Kissinger
It will kill any chance of you owning any clean, heirloom seed, and give control of every seed in the world to a corporation, and the UN. Then they control even the USA’s via treaty.
Read the link above by wordpress it tells the story. It talks of the treaties, they are real.
AND YOU WONDER WHY WHEALY IS UPSET?
ARE YOU CRAZY?
He’s trying to save what YOU PEOPLE saved over 33 years of work, and doing it FOR YOU!!!
Get Educated THEN decide what you think.
This is HEAVY stuff . What the Heck is going on OUT
THERE .
It’s all about MONEY and EGOS .
Co-operation in it’s purest form is the only
Answer .
The first I heard of the controversy was when I pulled up the SSE Website to look for something for a friend, and was surprised to see all the PR Puffery linked from the home page.
I have to admit this is quite a saddening turn of events, but thankfully they are not the only option.
I too like Baker Creek and have a list of others I buy seed from.
My guess is that SSE as an independent non-profit seed preservation organization was seen as too big of a threat to those seeking to throttle us under their yoke. So, it had to be subverted and taken over.
I am new to the controversy also. I became interested in starting a backyard garden within the past 3 or 4 months. I am aware of corporations like Monsanto with their terminator seeds, etc. because of non-mainstream media like Alex Jones, etc.
Let’s hope (and pray) that companies like Baker Creek stay safe from these corporate/government monsters.
Hi Danno,
Thanks for the comment, and good luck with your new garden!
I too like Baker Creek, but we need to keep an eye on them. We need to hold a fire under them to keep doing as they are, and as soon as they lose their ethics we need to drop them like a hot potato!
I was banned and my questions were instantly deleted on seed savers exchange facebook page, which was a total shock to me. I asked only about what happened to Kent Whealy and Svalbard. The actions of SSE alarmed me to such an extent, that I’m now organizing an investigation into this matter. They acted more like fascist guards than gentle seed saving people. I sincerely want to get to the bottom of this corporate takeover.