PDC LESSON 3.0 SEEDS – SAVING

 

                              

PERMACULTURE COURSE AGRO-ECONOMY

PDC LESSON 3.0 SEEDS – SAVING

 

SEED – SAVING, why bother saving seed?

Five vegetable seed companies control 75% of the global vegetable seed market. These multinational seed companies develop, breed and market chemically dependent hybrids and genetically modified seeds. This of course is in their best interest. It’s hard for a multinational company to make money out of seed that can grow by organic means. There are no herbicides to market, nor artificial fertilisers to coach the plants to grow lush and abundantly.

Open-pollinated seed cannot be patented but genetically modified seed can.

 

Instead of millions of farmers and gardeners across the world producing billions of locally adapted seed varieties, we have a handful of seed companies selling a handful of varieties. On a global scale, it is dangerous to reduce the diversity of our food base. It will become harder to find pest and disease resistant varieties adaptable to our changing climates. For the home gardener it means having your own locality adapt to a one size fits all. This seed will be grown in countries where labour is cheap, and your own local climatic conditions will need to be like the local conditions those seed were grown in!

 

For those of us who wish to garden and grow our own food without pesticides and artificial fertilisers, it is often difficult to source seed of crops that have proven themselves in local climates. This situation is only going to grow worse as the seed companies are intent on swallowing up the available open-pollinated and local varieties and replace them with chemically dependent and G.M. seed.

 

Crossing two genetically different varieties requires a considerable amount of hand labour. Therefore, a lot of the seed production is in places where there are minimum wages such as Chile, Taiwan, Kenya, and Indonesia. A kg of hybrid seed cost $12,000 in Australia about fifteen years ago. So broadly speaking this is the situation where we are heading with our global food supply.

Text from the roots, Elisabeth Ferkonia (Aus.) PDC studied with Bill Mollison, From the Seed Savers’ Handbook By Michel and Jude Fanton





 

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