Laura of Mas Du Diable recently posted about her disappointment with several orders of seeds received from Chase Organics in the UK.
This company’s use of the word “Organic” is almost humorous, a bit like they think their customers are stupid. First the name of the company Chase Organics. Then their URL, http://www.organiccatalog.com When you load their web page, the title is The Organic Gardening Catalogue. Across the top of the page it says:
The catalogue for organic and environmentally friendly gardeners – organic seeds for vegetables, heritage and modern varieties…
When you finally get down to the Sweetie Corn that Laura purchased, in very small letters is says “(non-organic)”. These are seeds that arrived in a shrivelled state and ended up having less than a 50% rate of germination.
You would think a company that sells “heritage and modern varieties”, according to their blurb across the front of their website would tell you the true nature of their seeds, but they sent Laura F1 seeds in spite of there being no mention of hybrid seeds on the website.
Laura had a similar problem is a previous order where she ordered seeds for an heritage pumpkin variety with the intention of saving seeds. Without asking her permission or informing her, they sent her a different F1 variety instead. Is sending an email in these circumstances really all that hard?
We are all supposed to feel good about a company like this, one that uses the word “Organic” to the point they are truly patronizing their customers. A company that seems somehow to be associated with the HDRA and HSL (both organizations connected with heritage seeds collections and seed saving), and that advertises they sell heritage seeds. Don’t be fooled!
Christina of Calendula and Concrete pointed out in a post that 98% of the world’s seed used to grow food come from one of six companies: Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Mitsui, Aventis, and Dow. This includes 98% of the seeds available for growing by home gardeners. The methods these companies use to promote their products is really extreme and dishonest. They control every aspect of the sale of their seeds, and a company like Chase Organics is bound by a very extensive set of contractual obligations requiring them to promote these commercial varieties above and beyond any heritage varieties that might be sold along side of them and take measures that ultimately lead to frustration to seed savers.
These six large seed companies lose money every time someone is able to save their own seeds and not have to return each year as a customer and buy more. By pretending to sell you heritage variety seeds and leaving you frustrated, they hope to teach you saving your own seeds is just more trouble than it’s worth. By selling you excessively marketed varieties that look special, but in reality are the same varieties commercial farmers use, they want to teach you that supermarket vegetables are “normal” and what you should be growing in your garden. They want you to learn that growing anything else is weird and too much trouble, and marketing terms often include such things as ‘disease resistance’, ‘reliable’ or ‘high yields’ which often have no true meaning except perhaps to farmers.
I cannot emphasize enough that you will be punishing yourself if you buy garden seeds under these circumstances! The seed companies will win in the end, and you will just be left frustrated.
If you want to avoid these tricks the six large seed companies play, you must look for a seed company that does not sell any of their seeds! You must look for a seed company that has a clear and public statement that says they only sell Open Pollinated seeds. It is not good enough that the seeds are ‘organic’, ‘just like your mother grew’, ‘heirloom quality’ or any other marketing term that makes you think the seeds must be heritage varieties. It’s not a secret, and companies don’t just forget to make such a public statement. It’s not good enough if they offer you an explanation in a private email. If you don’t see a clear public statement, look for another company to buy your seeds from.
Better yet, instead of buying seeds, learn how to save your own seeds and trade with other seed saving gardeners.
On the front of this blog are links to a number of seed companies, all of which only sell Open Pollinated seeds. If you live in Europe, the seed laws all but make this kind of seed company illegal. To the best of my knowledge there is one and only one seed company still in existence in Europe that sells only Open Pollinated seeds, and that’s Real Seeds in the UK. Don’t count on Real Seeds being around forever, and be sure to support their efforts by doing business with them and saving their seeds!
A number of US based seed companies will ship overseas, and most countries do not restrict the import of garden seeds. I have not had any serious problems importing seeds into the Netherlands. I don’t think it’s much of an issue to import seeds into the UK.
We love Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds here in the US…
Dreadfully disappointing when companies jump on the organic band-wagon, to get sales, Patrick.
Luckily we have several very good seed companies here – old fashioned family businesses with a passion for open-polinated fruit and vegetables. They are all listed on my blog.
The longer our seedsavers group goes on, the more we swap with each other and the less we each buy. 20 active members saving seed is a good amount. Then, once a year, there is a list published of all the seedsaver groups in Australia and the seeds they have to share. So, this is all a good way to grow stuff and be independent of seed companies.
It is all about community, people sharing and blogs are good for that too.
I think the percentage of seeds sold by the “gene giant” seed companies is a more realistic 60% of the world’s seeds. They would love to have 90% of the sales, and do in certain markets.
The way to beat this whole thing is to teach each other to save our own seeds again from open-pollinated varieties adapted to our very own climates. Organize an annual seed exchange pot luck dinner in the fall. Invite all the local seed savers. Trade away some of your best for the rest of what you need. In a few years, your area will again be self-reliant. Rejoin the ritual that made civilization possible. Plant seeds and save some for planting next year.
You can find free detailed online seed saving instructions on the website of this 20 year-old non-profit:
http://www.seedsave.org/issi/issi_904.html
There are some more goodies in Europe, however most of them are non-English spoken:the Netherlands: de bolster, Belgium:semailles, de nieuwe tuin.
Germany is in fact the place to be for open -pollinated seeds (and Austria): Dreschflegel, Klaus Lang, reinsaat, bingenheimer saatgut, and really quite a bit more, not to mention G.Bohl (over 2000 OP tomato varieties ,yes, two thousand!), and some more. In France: germinance (but I’m not sure if they’re 100 % OP), and of course association kokopelli, a good herb nursery is in Scotland: Poyntzfield herb nursery, and I could go on, so nothing is lost yet, some Seed Savers organisations are Arche Noah (Austria), Pro Species Rara (Switzerland), Sesam (Sweden),…
Frank:
The last I had heard Kokopelli had been sued for their seed registration fees, and I thought they had closed down, but I see in any case they are there now.
I heard from someone who works for Vreeken’s Zaden that de Nieuwe Tuin was to close soon. Something about the financial backers were pulling out. The website of de Nieuwe Tuin is still there, so I guess they are still in business. By the way Vreeken’s Zaden is another small seed company, but he does sell commercial varieties.
I knew about de Bolster, but I couldn’t find any clear statements on their website that they didn’t sell commercial seeds or only OP seeds, perhaps I’m not looking in the right place.
I’ll have to take your word on the others. I don’t understand much French or German. I didn’t know these companies existed. If companies like these don’t have an English section on their website, they are not really a seed company selling to Europe as a whole.
Of course there are a number of seed saving organizations, but I was more thinking about places where the average gardener could just go and buy some seeds with the same convenience as a company like Chase Organics.
Certainly all is not lost, and there are an increasing number of sources of heritage and OP seeds in Europe, you have to look hard to find companies selling them however.
Bill: Thanks for the comment, and for stopping by again.
There is not much culture of seed saving in the Netherlands! I hope it improves someday. Fortunately there seems to be a lot of seed saving in most of the neighboring countries.
The original source of the figure of 98% is a book I don’t have, so I can’t say much about it. I can imagine there are a lot of different ways of computing a statistic like that; commercial or home grown, total food crops planted, percentage of the public diet, calories consumed, varieties available, etc. I don’t know how this number was arrived at.
I think in Europe this figure is very high in any case!
I think in general it’s much higher outside of the US, because most countries have seed laws of some sort that restrict the availability of non-commercial seeds. Living in the US you are lucky in this respect that all plant varieties are legal there. Australia and NZ seem to be the only other major region in the world without draconian seed laws.
Regardless of if it’s 60% or 90%, it’s still the majority of seeds available and it requires effort if your intention is to avoid them.
To everyone else reading this, Bill’s seed company http://www.seedstrust.com is worth having a look at. This year I am growing Taxi tomatos from my own saved seeds. The original seeds were purchased from him several years ago. His seeds are Certified Naturally Grown like Mike of Tiny Farm Blog.
Kate:
We were talking about some of the Australian seed companies in the discussion on this post:
http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/?p=234
Many of them have the same problems as seed companies in other parts of the world and what I discussed in this post.
It’s worth mentioning since making the comments on the link above, I found out the Diggers’ Club has a relationship with the SSE in the US, meaning they probably deserved more respect than I gave them in what I said. They are apparently famous for their 5-color silverbeet swiss chard. They do still sell commercial varieties however. and don’t clearly distinguish between OP and otherwise.
It does seem overall you have some nice companies to buy seeds from.
Robbyn:
I love Baker Creek too. At least until now, they haven’t had any different shipping rates for outside the US. They just ship to everyone for the same low price! I order something from them almost every year.
I’ll be super carefull sourcing seeds for next year as a result of the unreliability I found getting non F1 seeds. I am an active member of Association Kokopelli and seed guardian for them so I get most from them (they are still going strong so don’t worry Patrick)and I am a member of the Heritage Seed Library UK, so some from there, but I am still looking for others to make sure i can get the breadth of seed I am after.
I came across Wild Garden Seed in the US, ALL O-P and have a great ethos. Has anyone else used them before?
wwwgardenseed.com
I agree the best thing is to learn to save and swap seeds. Note the highlight in my garden this month is the mangetout peas that Patrick send me seeds for. So thanks Patrick they are really fantastic particularly the Taiwan.
I would like to recommend Runåberg Fröer in Sweden. Sweden have a wide range of climates, ranging from similar to mine and up beoynd the polar circle. They can only grow special varieties in the north, and the have these varieties form old times. For that reaseon Sweden had an exception from the regulations of seedvarieties, and they can produce and sell non-EU varieties in small packets. Their website is in swedish, but I’m sure any seed geek can find out what kind of plant you are looking at from the latin name. They will understand english at least, and probably more languages. They give thouroughly information on seedsaving in swedish. The most rare varieties they grow themselfes.
They sell both organis and non-organic seeds, allways organic if awailable. Look out for the word “ekofrö” meaning organic seed.