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Worldwide Restrictions on Seed Saving

In my last post I mentioned that in many places in the world seed saving is banned or effectively banned. North America is an important exception.

Of course as gardeners we realize there probably isn’t anywhere in the world the police are going to show up in our garden to test the genetics of what we are growing and haul us off to jail. These laws are not really targeted at home vegetable growers, even if they might technically apply in some cases.

At the same time these laws, government policies, subsidies, trade agreements and so on, can have a big impact on the types of plant materials available to home gardeners, to those of us who want to make money from plant breeding or farming, or simply to those of us who want to eat better tasting or more natural varieties.

The complexity of all these laws and policies is mind boggling! In addition there is a lot of misinformation, mostly presented by corporate interests but also by people who misunderstand the situation and present their own interpretation. This all came up in the last post. Consider for example this bit of propaganda sponsored by seed company interests, explaining how it was a good thing that huge amounts of money was being poured into Iraq’s agricultural system in order to ‘modernize it’ (and destroy or patent all of their historical plant resources). Or consider this document that is apparently the law that bans farmer saved seeds in Iraq, but the average person couldn’t see that because it is so complex. By the way, thanks to Gardenista for providing these links.

In the last few years a new layer of complexity has been added, because many of the worldwide treaties addressing these matters have fallen apart, like the recent ‘Doha Round’. Failure to reach agreements on a worldwide level has meant an explosion in bilateral agreements between countries. For example did you know very important trade agreements were just reached between Japan and Chile as well as between Japan and Indonesia? These agreements are going to have a big impact on the biodiversity of these countries.

So complex is the situation, as well as the individual laws and treaties, that it’s simply not possible for any one person to read and understand them — not to mention keep track of them all. The only way any of us can familiarize ourselves with them is to let other people research the issues, write about them, then read what they wrote. There is no other way!

For this reason too, you will generally not be able to read much about these matters in mainstream media. Generally journalists are in the same situation as everyone else, and unless it’s their field of expertise, they are unlikely to be able to read and understand these documents. As a journalist, it’s also difficult to accept as fact someone else’s interpretation of something, because they are under considerable pressure to only work with very reliable sources and there is little leeway for publishing small misinterpretations. So much of this information is ‘soft’, and a vague combination of facts and opinions. Also the volume of information being dealt with is so great, much of it not relevant, and it just doesn’t fit within the scope of normal news items.

The soft nature of this information doesn’t make it any less important!

If mainstream media won’t cover these stories, who will? A very good source for this kind of information as it relates to agricultural biodiversity is GRAIN. Grain is an Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), and a number of NGOs publish similar information. Other NGOs include Greenpeace and many others.

If this information isn’t going to come from NGOs, it’s probably going to come from blogs!

Why should you care?

If you live in Europe:

Currently farmers are allowed to save their own seeds under very limited circumstances. They must be considered a ‘small’ farmer. They must only grow and save seeds from permitted varieties that are on official lists. They are not allowed to save seeds from GM or hybrid varieties. They are not allowed to trade or sell saved seeds, can only be used by the farmer who saved them and only for replanting. Farmers are not allowed to breed their own varieties.

There are moves underway to close even this smallest of loopholes.

If you live in the US:

Currently patents can only be awarded on plant varieties, but not the genes contained within them (an exception to this is genes within GM varieties which are patentable). If you are a professional or amateur plant breeder, this means you are free to create your own varieties as long as they result from combinations of genes from two or more distinct varieties. This means for example you can create a new tomato by cross-pollinating two different tomato plants, but you would not be allowed to create your own variety by selectively saving seeds from just one kind of tomato. You can patent any new varieties you create, but this takes considerable money and time.

Even if you don’t choose to patent your new varieties, you are still free to sell them, you would just not have any protection in case someone else decided to save seeds and resell them. It’s also a risk someone else would try to patent them.

There are proposals to change the law so the individual genes would be patentable. This would mean anyone who wanted to create a new variety would have to identify all the genes contained within their plants and make sure no one had previously patented them, or get permission from the patent holders to use the genes.

This would potentially put anyone trading seeds over the Internet or other ways, in the same legal position as people who illegally download music or movies.

Regardless of where you live:

There are probably other proposals underway that could have a big impact on the varieties available to grow in your garden, and your ability to trade seeds with others.

What can you do?

One of the best things you can do is spend time to research some of these issues as they relate to you. You can link to other posts or rewrite the information yourself on your own site. If you rewrite the information, you need to do your best not to materially change the content. You don’t want to start Chinese whispers! If you do post something wrong, and someone points this out, you should be responsive when it comes to correcting or removing it.

The other thing you can do, is become involved in growing some of the varieties at issue and posting about them. For example, in the previous post I talked about growing Iraqi historical varieties and blogging about them, in response to the coalition forces banning their use by farmers.

Most importantly, you can keep yourself informed about these matters, so when the opportunity comes to do something you can do it in the most informed way possible.

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Making a Difference with a Tomato and a Blog

The Tomato

Hanna of This Garden is Illegal recently posted a review of an Iraqi tomato she grew with seeds from Baker Creek Seeds. She said:

“It may sound silly, but since there is nothing I can do to help those people, I thought the least I could do was try their tomatoes”.

This post and comment has just brought to mind a flood of memories from the last year and a half of blogging, and made me think again about some of the reasons I decided to start this blog. I decided it was time to reflect back on some of these memories.

First for those of you who don’t already know, until the latest Gulf war, Iraq had one of the largest collections of ancient food crops anywhere in the world. Being the part of the world where civilization began, the history of it’s biodiversity goes back a very long time. Under the best of circumstances a war is an almost insurmountable threat to this sort of biodiversity.

Many of us know of the doomsday vault being built in Norway to preserve the world’s agricultural biodiversity in case of catastrophe, and just like this is being designed to store the seeds at a very low temperature, the same thing is necessary to store seeds in Iraq. When the bombing starts, and the power goes off, do you think anyone is standing up and saying power should be diverted from hospitals to the freezer units in order to protect the seeds? In addition to freezer units, ongoing work by scientists together with support staff is needed to keep the seeds going and viable for crop production and during times of war there are simply no resources.

All this would truly be bad enough, if the US and other members of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ had not also imposed a ban on growing these traditional varieties or saving their own seeds. Instead farmers are obliged to purchase seeds from approved sources which are mostly US and European seed companies that emphasize patented, GM and hybrid varieties.

It’s funny how sometimes people can look at a ban like this, and brush it off, in a sort of Pulp Fiction way. Perhaps questioning if the ban really exists, or assuming there are some loopholes. Make no mistake, the ban is true, total and absolute. It is intended to make a direct replacement of traditional seed varieties with commercial varieties. By it’s design, there are no loopholes.

Together with this ban are subsidies to farmers who do grow commercial varieties, because otherwise food production in Iraq would come to a standstill. How many farmers do you think there are who are prepared to both flout this ban, and give up the possibility to receive a large subsidy?

It’s also worth mentioning this ban seems to have taken the entire seed saving community by surprise. When the war was brewing, it seems no one anticipated such a disaster would take place or that the multinational seed companies could get away with such a seed ban. It appears to have left the seed saving community scrambling to find Iraqi varieties in order to protect them from being lost, with the hopes that someday they can be repatriated.

Many people find it hard to understand how a ban like this could exist anywhere in the world. I think a lot of people would in fact be surprised to know that this kind of ban is actually very common. North America is one of the few places in the world that does not have such a ban. Such a ban covers all of Europe, and was just introduced in Turkey. Many places in Latin American have such a ban.

A ban on non-commercial food crop varieties was considered in the US during the Clinton years. The proposal was to create a ‘white list’ of approved varieties, and anything not on this list was to be considered an ‘invasive species’. Anyone found cultivating an invasive species was subject to having their plants immediately destroyed, at their own expense and without any legal recourse, and also subject to a fine and jail term. This was never passed, but from time to time there are renewed efforts to revive it.

So what can we do?

The answer to this question is very difficult. After Hanna purchased a packet of seeds for an Iraqi tomato and grew it in her garden, she discovered something very important. She discovered her climate in Ohio is not the same as in Iraq, and the tomato didn’t grow well or taste good. Like I just mentioned, considerable work is needed to make a tomato like this a viable crop in a climate like Ohio.

Someone with experience in what they are doing would need to grow at least a hundred, maybe several hundred of these tomato plants and selectively save seeds from the best ones in order to create a new variant of the tomato. This process can take a number of years, and in the case of Iraq could involve hundreds or thousands of unique varieties of plants, not just a single tomato. Even for a company like Baker Creek taking on just one variety of a plant in this way and offering it for sale is a massive undertaking. Baker Creek deserves a lot of credit for doing this. I make no secret of the fact that I have no plans for a similar project myself. There is only so much one person can do. In addition, no one can blame Hanna for not wanting to grow a mealy tasting tomato in her garden.

As one person there are limits, but there are things you can do. Just like Hanna did, you can show you care by buying Iraqi seeds from companies who sell them. Hopefully, you will also grow them and blog about them like Hanna did, maybe even save some seeds and share them with others. By doing this you first of all send a message to companies like Baker Creek that if they invest the effort into saving Iraqi plant varieties, their customers will reward them by buying the seeds. In addition, there is a high degree of political embarrassment that can be achieved.

During the covert war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the Reagan administration was hugely embarrassed over the widespread interest in Nicaraguan coffee that developed. An embargo on this coffee was put in place, but then people found ways to circumvent it. It’s true the Sandanista’s were making money on this coffee, but in many ways the political embarrassment that so many people were going out of their way to purchase something from a country that was an enemy of the US was just as damaging. The same thing can be achieved if people start growing Iraqi vegetables in their gardens.

By growing other heirloom varieties and learning to save your own seeds, you can dramatically increase the impact of the statement you are trying to make by growing Iraqi varieties. It shows you have a much deeper understanding of the situation. If you have the ability to do growouts of large numbers of plants and selective breeding, so much the better!

The Blog

Of course the other thing you can do to increase the impact of growing Iraqi vegetables is to blog about them.

Perhaps there are some people who have a blog because they like speaking to a large number of people at the same time, but one of the very special things I find about blogging is how it puts me directly in touch with so many people on a one to one basis. Search engines in particular are critical in this process, because they can find the few words or phrases that make you a unique person, and put you in contact with someone else looking for you.

Of course with any blog the most important people to be in touch with are your own community. A blog that just stands on it own doesn’t have any support base or credibility. In my case these are blogs of fellow gardeners.

With Bifurcated Carrots, one of the groups of people I was most surprised to be in contact with was scientists. Several of whom have left comments or sent me emails. As a blogger, it’s a very big complement to be contacted by a scientist and told what you are writing about is interesting, because it is somehow connected with what they are doing.

More than once I’ve also been criticized for writing the things I have, because they were unscientific. I’m a blogger, not a scientist! If what I wrote was scientific, I would not maintain contact with the people I do, and I am not a scientist anyway. I would say the same thing to any other professional who said my writing would be considered unprofessional in their field. At the same time, such criticism is very welcome and I take it as a complement.

One of the scientists who contacted me was in Iran. He manages a large collection of agricultural related plants. This was about a year ago, at the peak of the sabre rattling over Iran’s nuclear program. He was understandably concerned about the safety of his seed collection, the possibility of a US invasion and had probably found my blog because I had written about what happened to Iraq’s agricultural biodiversity. I spent some months trying to find a way to help him or put him in touch with someone who could, but in the end it came down to I was just one person and was not the right person to help him. Just like the Iraqi tomato, there’s only so much one person can do.

Several farmers have contacted me because of things I posted about, or because they wanted to order seeds from me. Most seem to understand the topics here, but others seem to be a bit more confused. One of my favorite requests was from Pakistan and was would I please send samples of ‘seeds and pesticides’. It’s clear a lot of people in India and Pakistan have been reading things I posted about them.

Media

It’s been interesting to me to see how journalists and mass media in general have reacted to my blog. Some journalists and media outlets have been supportive, and some not. Most have just ignored me.

A few other blogs run by well known journalists have made supportive posts, and provided links to this blog. CNN linked to my post on Aspartame, because it was in connection with a story they carried.

The Anonymous Readers

At some point I began to notice a large number of ‘anonymous’ people accessing my blog. These are people who’s Internet (IP) address didn’t resolve to anything decipherable. I started to look into who some of these people might be with tools like ‘whois’ or ‘traceroute’.

A number of them turned out to be Russian computer hackers.

The first real one of these mystery blog readers was pretty easy. It was someone with a hugely fast Internet connection, that was requesting nearly the entire contents of my blog every half hour. It was not just requesting the contents of the web interface, but also requesting the same information through all of the RSS protocols as well (rss, rss2 and atom). It was making these requests from a rotating pool if IP addresses so large, that only a government could have secured so many of them. I tracked this down to a company specializing in US military contracts, located next to a US army base in San Diego. This was obviously one of the US intelligence gathering agencies that our tax dollars fund.

Several other included government agencies, like the Dutch government. It included some people located within the UK and Belgian/Flemish parliaments.

Some other anonymous readers had corporate connections. Many others I didn’t bother to investigate or couldn’t find anything about them, so I have no idea who they are.

The Bottom Line

There has been something of a revolution on the issue of eating natural and local foods, thanks in a large part to Michael Pollan and many others. It’s clear the issue of gardening is part of this revolution with heirloom gardening and seed saving being an important part of it.

There are now more blogs than I have ever seen before discussing seed saving topics and stating the intention to trade with other bloggers.

There are a lot of ways as heirloom gardeners we can and have participated in the world around us.

Simply put, there are an awful lot of ways we can make a difference with a tomato and a blog!

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Pesticide Residues in Europe

Europe has one of the strictest limits for pesticide residue on fruits and vegetables. Environmentalists sometimes refer to it as the standard all countries should aspire to achieve. Many people would be surprised to know that in fact there is increasing evidence Europe has a serious problem with pesticide residues.

While this post is specific to Europe, it would not surprise me to find that most countries in the world have similar problems for similar reasons.

Combinations

Of course all pesticides go through a testing phase as part of their development, to determine their safety as well as establish safe levels of exposure to the environment, farm workers and consumers. One of the major weaknesses of this testing is combinations are never considered.

Pesticides are often classified according to the nature of their toxicity, for example you have neurotoxins, carcinogens and hormones. What happens when you combine a neurotoxin with a hormone? Two different carcinogens with a neurotoxin? This is never considered when testing pesticides, not for people or the environment.

Grapes for example are one of the most pesticide intensive crops, and 35 different pesticides are commonly used when growing them. For oranges, this number is 49.

In a test performed November 2004, Dutch consumer web site Weet Wat Je Eet (know what you’re eating) tested 30 samples of supermarket grapes and 42% of them had higher than allowed levels of detectable pesticides. They found an average of 4.3 pesticides in each sample, and a maximum of 12 in any one sample. The worst scoring supermarkets seemed to be mostly discounted German chains like PLUS. In other tests, chains Aldi and Lidl have also scored poorly on pesticide residues. To be fair, there were certainly other supermarket chains from other countries that scored poorly as well.

Testing for Residues

One of the problems is testing for these residues in the EU is at a very minimal level. Very much the ‘what we don’t know can’t hurt us’ attitude is taken.

When testing is performed, it is extremely unusual for more than one pesticide to be tested for at a time. That means if a farm uses 35 different pesticides to grow their grapes, if it is tested it will only be for one arbitrary pesticide, and if it passes this test the grapes are considered to be within EU pesticide residue limits.

The only wide spread testing I’m aware of, for multiple pesticides, is done by consumer organizations after the fruits and vegetables are on sale at the supermarket.

Centralized Processing and Distribution

It’s simply the nature of nearly all of our food that it comes from more than one source and goes through a centralized processing system somewhere. If you buy a liter of milk it doesn’t come from one cow. Farmers from many places combine the milk from all of their cows into one vat, which is then packaged for retail sale and distributed to supermarkets. The same thing is certainly true with our fruits and vegetables.

Not only does this distribution system more or less guarantee any contamination is spread through the entire system, but it makes the idea of testing for only one pesticide residue seem all that much more ridiculous. If testing for one pesticide is done on a particular farm or in a particular country, and tests for a different one are performed someplace else, after the products are combined clearly no meaningful testing has been done.

This distribution system nearly guarantees if 35 different pesticides are commonly used to grow grapes, and you buy a bottle of wine, it will almost certainly contain traces of all 35 pesticides.

Subsidies and Eastern Europe

Until recently almost no pesticides were used in the the former Soviet Block countries now in the EU. In the last few years the agricultural subsidies to these countries has increased sharply, and is apparently encouraging increased pesticide use. Tests performed on products coming from these countries show steadily increasing pesticide residues.

Another problem with subsidies is the trend in toward decreasing direct payment to farmers, but at the same time often different subsidies are available for things like pesticides. If a farmer finds him- or herself in a situation where highly discounted pesticides are available, and their use may result in even a small increase in crop yields, they may be tempted to use them much more intensively.

Certified Organic

If you really must shop at the supermarket, and think the way to address the problem of pesticides is to throw money at it, then buying certified organic products is always an option. By choosing certified organic products, you are supporting large farms at the expense of small ones. You are also not avoiding the problems of centralized processing and distribution, and since the use of ‘organic’ pesticides is often allowed you frequently don’t eliminate all of the environmental damage caused by traditional pesticides or all of the risks to your health. Certified organic food is also often among the most energy intensive food available. Organic standards are increasingly becoming watered down and less meaningful, and this trend looks set to continue. But if you must, this is a possible way to reduce your exposure to pesticides.

When you go to the store and buy certified organic products, you should think of yourself the same as a tourist from a rich country visiting a less developed one with a big pocket book. Unwilling to learn and adapt to local ways and customs, and insisting instead on spending lots of money to achieve the same standard of living you enjoy at home. By spending lots of money on certified organic foods, to avoid thinking about and becoming more connected with what you eat, you are simply cheating yourself and avoiding the experience of eating truly high quality foods. By promoting certified organic food to all of your family and friends, you doing little more than acting as a spokesperson for large agricultural interests.

What Can You Really Do?

Grow your own fruits and vegetables.

Buy locally grown products from people you trust.

Choose fruits and vegetables that aren’t usually grown with a lot of pesticides, in particular:

Avocado
Kiwi
Plums
Passion Fruit
Mango
Black Currant
Cherries
Fennel
Asparagus
Belgian Endive
Red Cabbage
Green Cabbage
Cauliflower
Mushrooms

Avoid ones that are normally high in pesticides:

Mandarins/Clementines
Lemons
Grapefruit
Oranges
Grapes
Currants
Apples
Lettuce
Hot Peppers/Bell Peppers
Endive
Stalk Celery

Contact your EU Agricultural Ministers, possibly through local organizations. If you are in Holland, follow the link above to Weet Wat Je Eet. Tell these politicians we need meaningful testing of pesticide levels, and foods that exceed them should be promptly removed from the market.

In case you thought we all lived in a democracy and your opinion mattered, think again. Apparently our European MPs don’t want the pressure of public opinion so votes on these matters are generally taken in secret. Secret parliamentary votes are undemocratic. Be sure to tell your politicians they should make their positions public so it’s clear who can be supported in future elections. Silence means they can’t be supported.

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Interesting Blog — Junkfood Science

I recently came across an interesting blog called Junkfood Science.

This blog written by Sandy Szwarc is not a ‘normal’ blog in that you can’t leave comments and it’s clearly not run by an amateur. Sandy appears to be a well established journalist. This blog is also very North American (mostly United States) in flavor, and may not be of great interest to people not living there or who otherwise don’t have roots in the area. This blog also has very little to do with gardening.

What I find interesting about this blog is that while written mostly from the perspective of a health professional and nutritional specialist, it has a very similar tone and point of view as this blog has to biodiversity, gardening, agriculture and processed food. Most of the topics she addresses on her blog have a direct counter part with something discussed over here.

I think it’s a very interesting blog to read along side this one!

Also, if you are interested in learning more about the US health care system, I recommend Michael Moore’s latest film Sicko.