Score at the Amsterdam Seed Exchange!
Someone came home with a nice haul
Resilient Seed
I’ve posted this video before. Resilient Seed is a film by Ella von der Haide of the seed saving event last spring in Brussels, and some of the people behind it. New versions have been released, which seem to be of better quality and include some more languages. You can find French, Spanish and German on their YouTube Channel. English and Dutch are embedded below.
English:
Nederlands:
Reclaim the Seeds
Saturday was a busy day. As far as I know, it was the largest and possibly the first seed swap organized in Amsterdam. I think it’s safe to say the number of people attending exceeded most people’s expectations. Personally, I think it’s quite astonishing to find out there are so many people here interested in sharing seeds. I gave away a lot of seeds, as did most other stands. People attended from The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Canada. I spoke with someone visiting from Chile. People probably came from other countries as well.
I gave two workshops, the first a seed saving introduction, and the second a presentation on my garden and this blog. Both workshops were packed, with people standing outside the door in the hallway. There were other workshops given by other people, and I understand they were given to overflowing audiences as well.
If you were one of the people who attended or participated, thanks for coming and making it such a great success!
In the afternoon there was a debate, with some of the most important people involved in traditional agriculture and plant breeding in the country on the panel, as well as participants from Germany and Belgium. There were some gentle disagreements, but overall broad agreement on the general direction future agriculture needs to take.
In the evening was dinner. Later was live music, but we didn’t stay that long because we were very tired from a long day.
For the people who got seeds from me, here’s a description:
Cherokee Trail of Tears Beans: One of the best ‘ordinary’ green beans available. Grows very strong, and gives harvest over a long period. Heavy cropper. Pole bean (stokboon). These beans were not grown in isolation, expect 2-3% crossing. Plant after the soil warms, about 15 May in Amsterdam.
Hidatsa Early Edamame Soy: North hardy soy bean that grows well in Amsterdam. Normal beans need rhizobia bacteria, and these beans need a different one. This means the first year you grow these they may not do as well as you expect, but the second year of growing them in the same spot they will probably do much better. Plant after the soil warms, about 15 May in Amsterdam.
O Driscall Pole Bean (stokboon): A bean from the UK Heritage Seed Library that seems to do well in my garden. This is my second year growing it, and it is very prolific. Probably best suited for dry beans, but the green beans are also reasonably good. These beans were not grown in isolation, expect 2-3% crossing. Plant after the soil warms, about 15 May in Amsterdam.
Yellow Forest Bush Bean (stamboon): These are originally from Friesland, and in my garden are a sort of ‘no weed’ bean. That is, when grown in healthy and initially weed free soil, and in a block or adjacent rows, they are very vigorous and smother nearly all weeds. A little weeding may still be necessary, but not very much. They are also a good tasting green bean, and also good dry. The green beans have a very nice appearance, and are a little unusual. These beans were not grown in isolation, expect 2-3% crossing. Plant after the soil warms, about 15 May in Amsterdam.
Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli: This is a very large broccoli plant that must be grown over the winter (start seeds in August) and won’t stand up to a very cold winter like this last one. In the spring it produces broccoli shoots instead of the usual heads, and they are purple in color but turn green during cooking. The distance between two plants needs to be about 1 meter. I purchased these seeds from Baker Creek Seeds in the US.
Paquebot 2012 Tomato List
Tomatoes!
Paquebot recently asked me to update the list of tomatoes he’s offering from what I posted here for him last year.
Emphasis in 2011 was on big fruit so about half were to a pound or more.
Paquebot lives in Wisconsin, USA. He’s offering more than 350 tomatoes, organized into the year grown, giving an indication of the age of the seeds. Tomato seed are normally good for about 10 years, sometimes more, so age isn’t an issue if you plant them within the next couple of years.
He’s offering them as part of the Seed Network, and in particular he said they are available to anyone, anywhere in the world. You have to discuss payment or trading terms with him yourself.
If you’re interested in anything here, send me an email and I’ll forward it to him.
2011 Seeds
1884
1884 Purple
ABC Potato Leaf (ch)
African Queen
Andes Horn
Anna Aasa, Red (ch)
Anna Aasa, Yellow (ch)
Ashleigh
Banana Legs
Believe It Or Not
Big Zebra
Brimmer
Buckbee’s New 50 Day
Cabin
Canadian Heart
Carol Chyko’s Big Paste
Count Banyani
Doubloon
Eli
Gildo Pietroboni
Green Ghost
Heinz 2653
Homer Fike’s Yellow Oxheart
Hunt’s Family Favorite
Libanaise des Montagnes
Magyar Piros Boker
Mirabell, Red
Mr. Tartar’s
New Yorker
Novosadski Jabucar
Orange Oxheart
OSU Blue
Paquebot Roma
Pomodoro di Albenga/Luguria
Red Barn
Rio Grande
Rostova
Sicilian Saucer
Skorospelka
Spark’s Yellow
Stardust Cherry (ch)
Strawberry Margarita
Sun Baby (ch)
Sylvan Gaume
Tangello
Tappy’s Heritage
Tarasenko 6
T.C. Jones
Terhune
Tlacolula
Tlacolula, Yellow
Veepick
White Rabbit (ch)
White Snowball
Wild Rose
Winsall
Winsall Gold
Wisconsin 55
Wisconsin 55 Gold2010 seeds
Absinthe
Amazon Chocolate
Arkansas Traveller
Armenian
Aunt Ruby’s German Green Cherry
Babywine
Barnes Mountain Yellow
Basket Vee
Beaute Blanche de Canada
Belle Angevine
Big Rainbow
Black Crimson
Black Elephant
Black Ethiopian
Black Zebra
Bonne du Roussillon
Canestrino
Chadwick Cherry
Cherokee Chocolate
Chuda Rynka
Coburg
Copia
Coyotte
Creole
Early Chatham
Falcon
Fidelio
Gary O’Sena
German Gold
Goji Faranji
Goldman’s Italian American
Gold Nugget
Grandma Josie
Hong Yuen
Huayu
Indian Stripe
Jack White
Large Black & Red Boar
Large Red Cherry
Livingston’s Golden Queen
Livingston’s Paragon
Marion
Mark Twain
Mazarini
Meme Beauce
Mule Team
Negro Azteca
Old Brooks
Peaches & Cream
Quingza
Radio
Red Target
Regina’s Yellow
Rita’s Black Pear
Rutgers
Serre Wonder
Shumway’s Sensation
Sioux
Southern Night
Sugar Plum
Super Sioux
Tangella
Tasmanian Yellow
Urbanite
Valiant
Velvet Red
Wagon Wheel
White Oxheart
Wisconsin Chief
Yellow Scotland
Zigan2009 seeds
Aker’s West Virginia Black
Albany Georgia Heirloom
Amish Paste
Anna Hermann
Apelsin
Apricot Brandywine
Aunt Ruby’s German Green
Banjan Roomii
Belgian Heart
Big White Pink Stripes
Black Sea Man
Bosu
Buckeye Yellow
Carbon
Caro Rich
Chico III
Chocolate Cherry
Cour de Bou
Cow’s Tit
Eagle’s Beak
Endless Summer
Ernesto
Fantome de Laos
Giraffe
Guido
Guernsey Island
Hawaiian Orange Cherry
Hawaiian Pineapple
Hazelfield Farm Red
Heinz 1439
Japanese Black Triffle
Kardinal
Lagidny
Limmony
Marizol Purple
Mirabell, Yellow
Monkey Ass
Moya
Northern Crown
Northern Lights
Pantano Romanesco
Persimmon
Pink Ruffled
Portugal Monster
Principe Borghese
Riesentraube
Rozovii Giant
Sainte Lucie
Siberian
Silvery Fir Tree
Snowberry
Super Snow White
Ten Fingers of Naples
Tennessee Britches
The Orange
Tiny Tim
Togo Trefele
Turks Muts
Volgogradskij 5/95
Vorlon
West Virginia Pink Slicer
Willamette
Yellow 1884 Pinkheart2008 seeds
Amish Red
Belarusan Heart
Besser
Black From Tula
Black Plum
Black Prince
Bloody Butcher
Boondocks
Borgio Cellano
Brianna
Cherokee Purple (PL)
Chianti Rose
Chocolate Stripes
Dinner Plate
Dr. Lyle
Dorothy’s Mennonite Beefsteak
Dorothy’s Mennonite Bicolor
Dorothy’s Mennonite Big Heart
Douce de Picardie (PL)
German Head
Giant Belgium
Giant Oxheart
Giant Roma
Giant Tree
Gigante Liscio
Golden Dwarf Champion
Hungarian Italian Paste
Japanese Oxheart
King Pineapple
Lancaster Pink
Large Pink Bulgarian
Legend
Long Keeper
Marglobe
Market Miracle
Mexico
Noire Russie
Old German
Preacher
Red Heart Yellow
Red Penna
Red Zebra
Russian Annie
Sandul Moldovan
Spoon
Super Beefsteak
Super Choice
Tater Kin
Taxi
Teton de Venus
Thessaloniki Oxheart
Valencia Pink
Watermelon Beefsteak
White Tomesol
Woodle Orange
Wuhib
Yamal2007 seeds
Ace 55
Amana Orange
Ananas Noir
Aunt Madge’s
Aussie
Bear Claw
Beauty King
Berkeley Tie Dyed
Black Oxheart
Blue Beech
Boyarsky
Boy Boy
Brown Berry
Bull’s Heart
Burracker’s Favorite
Carmelo
Chateau Rose
Clover Trefle
Costoluto Fiorentino
Crimson Cushion
Crnkovic Jugoslavian
Danish Export
Des Andes Jaune
German Queen
Gogosha
Greater Baltimore
Gregori Altai
Grosse Cotelee
Hartman’s Yellow Gooseberry
Hog Heart
Howard German
Japanese Golden Pear
Julia Child
Kalman’s Hungarian
Korney’s Jelly Bean
Kosovo
Lemon Giant
Lumpy Red
Mandarine
Matt’s Wild Cherry
Mennonite Orange
Merveilles des Marches
Minibel
Nelson’s Golden Giant
Novikov Giant
Oaxacan Jewel
Olive Doree
Orange Giant
Paul Robeson
Peacevine Cherry
Pigmeo
Pipo
Pomodoro Palla di Fuoco
Pomodoro Red Pear
Raspberry Giant
Sausage
Scatalone
Selandia
Super Marmande
Tiger Tom
Tumbling Tom
UC82B
Ukrainian Pear
Wanda’s PT
Wes
Zebra
Zorica’s Croatian Bull Eye2006 Seeds
Abraham Lincoln
Amish Salad
Amish Yellow
Aunt Gertie’s Gold
Aztec
Balkon Star
Black Cherry
Bradley
Cherry Roma
Cherokee Green
Cosmonaut Volkov
Croatian Heart
Douce de Picardie (RL)
Emeraude
Gardeners Delight
Garden Peach, Red
Garden Peach, Yellow
German Pink
Giant Syrian
Goose Creek
Greenbush Italian
Green Cherry
Green Giant
Green Zebra
Harvard Square
John Baer
Kristina Vatcheva
Leatha’s
Lemon Drop
Lithuanian
Long Tom
Marianna’s Conflict
Marianna’s Peace
Medford
Moby Grape
Mr. Fumo
Novogogoshary
Nyagous, Red
Oregon Spring
Perito Italian
Roman Candle
Segler
Sheyenne
Striped Cavern
Surender’s Indian Curry
Tigerella
Tommy Toes, Red
Tommy Toes, Yellow
Ugly Ripe
Voyage
West Virginia 63
Yellow Pear
Yoder’s German Yellow
Sugar Tax
Wow, the politics in the US are sure heating up and getting intertwined! Time was where you had a few powerful lobbies, who all looked after their own interests. Increasingly the US is starting to see powerful lobbies working together in very convoluted ways. Now a sugar tax?
World sugar consumption has tripled in the last 50 years!
Well first of all the world population has more than doubled in that time, so this accounts for most of it. Beyond this one of the things Michael Pollan pointed out in his book Omnivore’s Dilemma is during the time high fructose corn syrup was introduced into US soft drinks, America’s consumption of ordinary sugar stayed nearly constant. In other words, the HFCS was just more sugar added on top of existing consumption, and HFCS probably doesn’t satisfy an appetite for real sugar.
Considering an increase of all sweeteners together is misleading. If you only consider per capita consumption of ordinary sugar, you aren’t likely to see a meaningful increase over the last 50 years.
Not only is a modest amount of ordinary sugar a relatively safe and constructive part of a balanced diet, but it’s an appetite suppressant and trying to eliminate or reduce it will almost certainly lead to the overconsumption of other foods. It’s known for example that people who drink sugar-free soft drinks are statistically heavier than those who drink the sugared version, and this could be one reason.
Just Like Europe
It’s true a few countries in Europe have special taxes for soft drinks, but as far as I know this is not a tax on sugar. In particular drinks containing aspartame are not exempt from these taxes.
In Europe it’s more common to drink soft drinks in restaurants, who often depend on sales of drinks for a large part of their profits. It’s less common to drink soft drinks at home, and there are very few people who depend on soft drinks as part of their grocery shopping. Taxing soft drinks is more a way to tax eating out at a restaurant than anything else. Soft drinks are also usually an imported product, and by taxing them it encourages the consumption of local products like beers and wines.
In the US many people who consume large amounts of soft drinks live in the so-called food deserts of inner cities, with limited access to healthier alternatives. A sugar tax would only serve to raise the grocery bill of these people. A sugar tax in the US would be a disproportionate tax on the poor.
More Profit in Sugar Alternatives
The problem is while sugar is a commodity crop, and relatively speaking expensive to transport, process and store, as well as subject to swings in price depending on availability, the alternatives like HFCS and aspartame are not. These alternatives are patented, cheap to manufacture and represent huge profits for the companies that sell them and own the associated intellectual property rights.
Calories
The argument is sugar ‘and other sweeteners’ contain too many calories, making it ‘better’ to consume an artificial sweetener like aspartame. In fact there is not a single shred of credible evidence to suggest any link between the number of calories you consume and health. Calories are a very old unit of measure determined by literally burning food and seeing how much heat is given off. Your body does not metabolize food this way, and you can’t make any comparisons.
It’s true, there are low calorie diets which help people lose weight, but in nearly all cases the diets cannot be sustained and the weight returns after ending the diet. In fact most people who attempt such diets end up heavier in the end. This is all you can say about calories, and there’s nothing about this weight gain and loss that’s healthy.
Dangers of Non-Sugar Sweeteners
Alternative sweeteners like aspartame and HFCS have so many health concerns or suspected health concerns associated with them, that I’m not even going to get into it here. I’ve written some posts about these, and you can find lots of other things by searching the Internet.
In particular both of these are suspected of being behind the current world wide obesity epidemic, and are both suspected or known carcinogens.
Age Limit for Buying Soft Drinks?
Not to be left out here are of course the tobacco and alcohol lobbies.
To begin with the tobacco lobby does not want any legal competition with their products. This is the reason they were and are behind things like prohibition, worldwide drug wars and age limits that ensure young people grow up with a period of time where tobacco is the only legal drug available. It’s pretty logical they would like to see sugar less available, because craving it could also make using tobacco more attractive.
More importantly the tobacco industry wants to see the culture of enforced age limits, as a way of making their products seem safer. After all if we have age limits for everything from alcohol to tanning salons, and tobacco has a relatively low limit, it makes tobacco products seem safer and more normal to young people. In fact there are few more lethal products worldwide than tobacco.
Alcohol follows closely behind tobacco, because if you’re addicted to tobacco, you’re much more likely to consume larger amounts of alcohol.
What is it about elections in the US that brings together such powerful political lobbies in such intrusive ways?
Alternatives?
How about some alternatives to a sugar tax:
Prohibition of soft drink and candy vending machines in schools, except for products containing 100% fruit, ordinary sugar, water or other completely natural ingredients.
Prohibition of sponsorship or promotion of processed foods, in a similar way promotion of tobacco products is prohibited in many places now.
Prohibition or tax on HFCS and aspartame.
A tax in the US on saturated fat, like in Denmark and Hungary.
End subsidies on corn, HFCS and ethanol.
A levy on brand name soft drinks, in a similar way brand name cigarettes are priced higher in the US.
Anyone have other suggestions?
