I’m hoping to get some feedback from those planning to attend the Oxford meeting this year to help me make a few decisions. One of the people I’ve been trying to arrange to attend and talk to us is Tom Wagner, a public domain plant breeder from the US. Tom specializes in tomatoes and potatoes, and in particular has recently created a number of potato varieties totally resistant to late blight.
Late blight was the plant disease behind the Irish Potato Famine, and remains a serious problem today and is the reason hundreds of tons of very toxic chemicals are applied to potato crops every year. It’s very significant Tom’s work is in the public domain. His work holds tremendous potential as a major food crop for the developing world, and Tom’s host of his upcoming visit to Ireland put it this way in a recent comment on Tom’s discussion forum:
We are excited here in Ireland, that Tom might be coming to Brown Envelope Seeds, for the weekend of the 17/18th of October to do a workshop. We haven’t had any confirmation yet so i m hoping that Tom will see this and let us know. We commemorated the Irish potato famine in Skibbereen this year, where mass graves hold the remains 8,000-10,000 people who died in 1841. It would be apt that came and publicized his work as the use of GM techniques, to introduce blight resistance into potatoes, is being used as a marketing tool for GM crops here.
My questions for those of you planning to attend the Oxford get-together are basically as follows:
The most likely date for Tom to visit Oxford is Saturday 24 October, which is quite a bit later than our meeting last year. Is this a date that’s okay with most of you? Probably it means our picnic would be indoors rather than out.
There are some costs associated with Tom coming, and someone has to pay these. I’m still pretty sure the cost of the Oxford event won’t be more than £15, but it’s possible it could be cheaper if Tom didn’t come. It’s also possible if we didn’t spend the money on Tom, we could do something else instead. If we can’t raise enough with our meeting to cover Tom’s expenses, it’s possible I can find money from other sources to pay for it, but someone would have to pay this one way or another. Is it worth these extra costs in order to invite Tom to speak to us?
One way to cover the costs of Tom’s visit might be to hold an all day hands on potato breeding workshop with Tom the Sunday following our get-together. Anyone who wanted to attend this workshop would have to pay a little extra, the intention being to help raise money to pay for Tom’s visit to Oxford. Would anyone be interested in attending such a workshop? As an alternative to this workshop in Oxford, it may also be an option for anyone interested to travel to Ireland instead the weekend before.
Here are links of people who’ve expressed interest in the past:
Daughter of the Soil
Veg Plotting
Spadework
Fluffius Muppetus
Manor Stables Vegetable Plot
Hills and Plains Seedsavers
MustardPlaster
Joanna’s Food
The plot thickens
A Blog Called Fuggles
Ben – Real Seeds
This and That
Baklava Shed Coalition
Guardian Gardening Blog
Horticultural
Soilman’s Allotment Blog
Kitchen Garden in France
Tater-Mater
Observer Organic Allotment Blog
Oxford World Development Movement Group
Down on the Allotment
Organic Allotment
Urban Food Gardening
Kokopelli
Brown Envelope Seeds
Frøsamlerne
Fennel and Fern
