Seed Saving illegal in France Kokopelli fined for protecting diversity

Protecting biodiversity is illegal, at least in France, following the last court decision made by the state against a small non-governmental association called Kokopelli. Kokopelli is a small association selling seeds to gardeners like us. We are using their seeds because they sell old varieties of plants and vegetables that are becoming more and more difficult to find.  Seventy five percent of vegetable diversity has been lost in the last seventy five years. All the seeds sold by them are open pollinated which means you can save your own seeds from their seeds (the basic idea behind preservation and conservation of the biodiversity). Growing from seed ensures a large gene pool so the plants can withstand many different climatic extremes.  When one variety of Tomato fails one year for instance another will thrive.
Of course, large sellers of seeds prefer to sell F1 hybrid to keep the gardener dependent.

In that context, Baumaux (a large seller of seeds) attacked Kokopelli for unfair competition and at the end (as the court case was in multiple rounds) the large seller won. They won due to the stupid regulation that forces to sell only seeds being listed in an “official” directory.

It’s a bad news for the preservation of biodiversity… what can we do ? Save Share and Grow out your own local seeds  and only buy open pollinated seeds and vegetable seedlings.  This is a grave decision and it is up to the people to be vigilante and pro-active in our approach to this.  Seeds are free and cannot be owned by anyone.

Maya Seed Saving Indigenous Peoples Saving their Corn

The board members of the Chiapas School kneel in prayer for the survival of their mother seeds of corn and the success of their students who have just graduated. They are also asking for help from the creator to give them strength to continue their resistance.

Mother Seeds in Resistance from the Lands of Chiapas in Mexico is both educational and practical. The project encourages indigenous students to assume responsibility for learning the science and culture of their ancient corn, information passed down from their Mayan ancestors for thousands of years.

In addition to collecting and preserving these vital original seeds, students are researching, recording, and studying a vast amount of agricultural and cultural information from these farmers. This data includes the types of soils and mini-climate most suited to each seed type, recipes for preparing each type of corn, as well as ceremonies and stories associated with each variety of corn. The Zapatista Education System’s seed bank management is integrated as a continual relationship between the farming families and the schools; between the high-tech freezer and the traditional milpa. Collecting, learning and guarding their heritage is a learning process for all students. The entire community of adults and elders who plant and harvest corn to live, are therefore the principal teachers of the students and the education promoters who have replaced the government’s teachers in the autonomous schools.

Mother Seeds in Resistance from the Lands of Chiapas is also a response to the threat posed by the contamination and displacement of indigenous corn varieties by the genetically engineered and high input varieties from the industrialized north that are flooding rural Mexico in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Mexico, which is the center of origin of corn and carries the world’s greatest diversity of corn, banned cultivation of transgenic corn in 1998. However, the ban is only on the cultivation not on the import of corn seed. Five million tons of North American corn, almost all transgenic, is imported every year. Transgenic corn was found growing in Oaxaca in 2001. Then in 2002 Mexican scientists reported that 12 percent of the plants they sampled from Oaxaca and Puebla were contaminated or were transgenic varieties. The alarming situation forced the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico City to check all of its corn stocks for contamination.

The Zapatista spirit is made visible in Oventic. It is a spirit of autonomy. It is a spirit of resistance to the global system that sneers at them and wants them gone. It is a spirit of dignity as they resist, and as they walk, creating their own path before them.

Every garden needs a Bee Hive

 

Three-quarters of all flowering plants rely on another organism to perform a critical step in their life cycle: pollination. In fact, about one-third of the world’s food supply comes from crops that depend on bees, birds, bats, or other creatures to carry pollen to complete the fertilization process. When there are not enough wild pollinators in the area, farmers often lease thousands of colonies of bees to do the job.

In recent years, however, there have been reported shortages in the number of pollinators available for agriculture, and studies showing a population decline in certain pollinator species have prompted concerns that ecosystems could be disrupted. To raise awareness of this issue, the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign, representing dozens of agencies and organizations in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, was formed. As part of its efforts, NAPPC requested that a National Research Council committee assess the status of pollinators on this continent.

The committee quickly discovered that data on North American pollinators paled in comparison to the information that has been gathered in Europe, where researchers have definitively documented declines and even extinctions. Nevertheless, enough data existed for the committee to find “demonstrably downward” population trends in some North American pollinators.

The evidence of a decline is most compelling for the honeybee, which is widely used for pollination; about 1.4 million colonies are needed to pollinate 550,000 acres of almond trees each year in California, for example. The number of honeybees in the U.S. is dropping, in part because of the toll taken by the non-indigenous varroa mite, a parasite first discovered in America in the 1980s and one that has proved stubbornly resistant to pesticides. To gain a better understanding of the extent of the honeybee decline, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service needs to collect more accurate data from the beekeeping industry, the committee said.

The shortage of honeybees is severe enough that last year it forced almond growers to import honeybees from outside North America for the first time since 1922, when the Honeybee Act banned such imports for fear they may introduce non-native pests and pathogens. Such fears should still be a concern, the committee warned, and USDA should support research to develop new pest-management and bee-breeding practices.

Among wild pollinators in North America, there is evidence of a drop in the abundance of several types of wild bees, especially bumblebees, as well as some butterflies, bats, and hummingbirds. But for most pollinator species, a lack of long-term population data makes assessments exceedingly difficult. A shortage of taxonomic resources and an incomplete biological characterization of most pollinator species further complicates efforts to catalog their numbers and diversity. The committee recommended that the United States, Canada, and Mexico establish a pollinator-monitoring network, beginning with a rapid, one-time assessment that can be used as a baseline for future comparisons.

The reasons for wild pollinator declines are not well-understood, although habitat degradation and loss have played a role, and climate change may be a factor as well. The bumblebee, like the honeybee, has suffered because of a recently introduced non-native parasite. The consequences of these declines in non-agricultural settings are not well-understood either. Few plants rely on a single pollinator, but rare and endangered plant species may be more vulnerable to extinction.

Too little is known about the basic taxonomy and ecology of most pollinators to design large-scale conservation and restoration programs at this point, the committee determined. But there are some simple steps that people can take on their own, such as planting native flowers to enhance pollinator habitat.   – Bill Kearney

Local Seed Saving

Localising food production is the way of the future for food security. Collecting swapping and growing localised strains of vegetables ensures food for everyone. Join up with other keen gardeners to share local knowledge and save seed. You will find that you only need a dozen or so localised varieties to ensure enough food to sustain your family. As you gather knowledge and skill at making compost, saving your seeds and cultivating your garden your confidence will grow. It is not difficult. Good seed gives reliable results and along with knowledge of soil building will ensure food production with high nutrient content.

Learn how to make good compost. There is plenty of literature on the subject and enough resources around you. I am a great advocate of gardening with no budget, more through necessity than want and I gather grass clippings and mulch from all manner of sources. Most of my neighbours throw piles of grass clippings on the back paddock and I collect it and add it to my compost pile. I noticed a big pile of mulch today and you’ll be sure I’ll be going back for a bag or two.

Vegetable matter, leaves, seaweed, comfrey, yarrow, liquified animal manure and cardboard can all be added to the compost. Look around you for sources of compost material.

Obviously living the country as I do it is a lot easier to find material, however living in the city need not deter you. They still grow trees in the city and with a little imagination and research you can find ingredients for your compost. Dont waste any vegetable matter.If you see any neighbours that have vegetables growing stop and chat with them. Maybe you can swap seed. It is a great way to cross the multicultural gap and meet new people.

Gardening is a healthy addiction and will reward you with nutritious beans and greens for your soup pot and tomatoes that taste like they did in grandmas salad.