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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.

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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?

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EU Advocate-General Opinion

I created quite a bit of confusion yesterday with my post about the opinion issued by the Advocate-General in the case of Association Kokopelli vs Graines Baumaux SAS in France.  I’m sorry about that.  It was a case of wanting to get some information out, but not having all the details at hand.

I received an email about this in French and German that had some wrong information, and then found the opinion had only been issued by the EU Court of Justice in Spanish, German, Estonian, Greek, French, Italian, Latvian, Dutch, Portuguese and Finnish — not English.  I was also not very familiar with this case, not familiar with how the EU Court of Justice works, and not very good with legal things in general.  I was struggling to sort this all out with Google Translate.

Anyway, thanks mostly to an email exchange with Ben of The Real Seed Catalogue, who is a lot more familiar with this subject in general, I have some more information to share.

Not Binding, But Very Important

First of all, what exactly is an Advocate-General or in some places called the Attorney General?

The EU Court of Justice is made up of 27 judges from each of the EU countries, and 8 Advocate-Generals.  According to Wikipedia:

…The intention behind having Advocate-General attached is to provide independent and impartial opinions concerning the Court’s cases. Unlike the Court’s judgements, the written opinions of the Advocates-General are the works of a single author and are consequently generally more readable and deal with the legal issues more comprehensively than the Court, which is limited to the particular matters at hand. The AGs opinions are advisory and do not bind the Court, but they are nonetheless very influential and are followed in the majority of cases…

So the opinion that came out concerning Kokopelli is not binding but very important.  It has the possibility to greatly influence the future of EU Seed Law.  As I understand it, it was requested by Kokopelli’s lawyer as part of their trial in France.

It’s also important to point out this Advocate-General might change her mind, or another Advocate-General might issue a conflicting opinion.  Nothing is certain.

It’s also important to understand that this opinion was issued at the EU level, so has the possibility to influence similar court cases across Europe.

What Was in the Opinion

What the opinion said was very important.  It addressed specifically the part of EU and related French Seed Law that requires food crop varieties be categorized according to so-called DUS (Distinct, Uniform and Stable) criteria, and then listed in official seed lists.  The opinion specifically excluded all other parts of EU Seed Law.  It has to be said that this is certainly the most contentious part of the law.

What’s currently being discussed by the EU Agriculture Ministers, NGOs and others like me, is if a good fix for the current law would be to simply make listing varieties optional and legalize unlisted varieties.  While this seems to be favored by the Agricultural Ministers, most of us in opposition don’t agree this is a real solution.  As long as there are lists of varieties categorized by DUS, these will always be in competition to farmers and others who grow and sell unlisted varieties.  Unlisted varieties in this case will become second class, a situation similar to the US and Canada.  It was of particular interest how this was addressed in the Advocate-General’s opinion.

First of all the Advocate-General said it is not legal to interpret EU or French Seed Laws as meaning you cannot sell unlisted varieties.  YOU ARE ALLOWED TO SELL UNLISTED VARIETIES.

Secondly, the provisions of EU Seed Law that refer to the DUS standard are NOT VALID.

The Advocate-General then went on to use very strong language to back up this opinion; biodiversity, the principle of proportionality, freedom of enterprise within the meaning of Article 16 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights European Union, free movement of goods within the meaning of Article 34, principle of equal treatment within the meaning of Article 20, restriction of consumer choice.  She really seemed to have a good understanding of the issues at hand, at least from the point of view of agriculture and biodiversity.  She addressed many of the issues from multiple points of view.

This is potentially a very important ruling.  A big thanks is due to Kokopelli’s lawyer who argued this case, Blanche Magarinos-Rey.

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EU Seed Laws Struck Down by High Court…(not yet!)

[update:  I’ve been told this is a prejudicial opinion, thus not yet the ruling of the court and not yet a binding decision.  Hopefully we’ll have a more concrete ruling later.]

Yesterday an EU Advocate-General sided with French seed organization Kokopelli on the provision in EU law prohibiting the sale of unregistered varieties.

In reference to EU seed laws and related French regulations, the Advocate-General said they

“violate the principle of proportionality, free enterprise, free movement of goods, and the principle of non discrimination.”

The Advocate-General said the official seed catalog has

“nothing to do with plant health”

and

“it is up to farmers to decide which varieties they grow”

the Advocate-General added

“the fact that farmers are confined to the listed varieties greatly reduces genetic diversity in European fields.”

Unfortunately the original opinion was written in German, and as of the time of this post had not yet been translated into English.  You can read the opinion in a variety of non-English languages here.

Almost all of Kokopelli’s arguments were upheld, and most of the opposition’s arguments were not.