Important Message from Al Kapuler

Both Peace Seeds and Peace Seedlings now have blogs for the posting of annual seed lists.
Hence PeaceSeedsLive.blogspot.com and PeaceSeedlings.blogspot.com are preferred destinations for the availability of our organically grown, open pollinated seeds. Some of our seeds come from public domain plant breeding and contribute to our work of supporting and developing a sustainable food system based on roots and tubers. Thus we continue to grow and select Andean South American and Pacific Northwest USA food plants that have been used for food for thousands of years.

For many of you Alan Kapuler needs no introduction.

For others who may not be familiar with his seeds, in my opinion he has one of the most exciting collections of seeds available.  Many are products of his own breeding work, or that of other public domain plant breeders.  In particular Alan is known for his work with corn, beans, peas, tomatoes, tagetes, and certainly other things too.  Both for beginning gardeners as well as the more advanced, their collection of seeds is a fantastic resource not to be overlooked.

Please consider supporting their work by buying, growing and sharing their seeds.

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.

Australian Seedsavers Portuguese Tour

Margarida of the Portuguese Seed Savers recently sent an email to a mailing list I’m on, telling everyone about the visit to their country by the founders of the Australian Seedsavers. One of the coordinators of the Australian organization is Kate, known to some of you because she has a blog and visited some of us in Europe too.

Anyway, the Australian Seedsavers met more than 400 people in Portugal. They visited food gardens at several locations and taught workshops on collecting and saving seeds, traditional plant varieties, edible seeds, permaculture, activism and kitchen gardens in schools.

You can read more about this in Portuguese here, or in English here.

A Seed for Change

Film maker Alex Ikonomidis recently sent me an email to tell me about his latest project, A Seed for Change.

All I can say is it looks great to me! I think if anyone would like to help out with a donation or tips or pointers, he would like to hear from you.