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illegal vegetables and how to grow themTim Hogg D I grew some very pretty beans this year. The plants had cream and white flowers and seemed to leap up their hazel stakes. I ate the tender green beans in salads and stir fries – but I’m leaving plenty to dry on the plant. Then I’ll collect the dry pods, shell the beans and store them for sowing next year. 14 Clean Slate o you like the sound of this bean? Want to grow it too? I could sell you some seed for a quid. Bargain? Sadly, though, the law does not permit it. It is illegal to sell my bean seed. Why? Do the seeds yield an illegal drug? Is it an invasive species likely to wreak havoc on our natural ecosystems? Does the plant contain some kind of hazardous toxin? No – it’s just a sweet, innocent, harmless bean, a Climbing French bean with the botanical name of Phaseolus vulgaris. But French beans come with cultivar names too, like ‘Neckar Queen’ and ‘Blauhilde’ and mine hasn’t got one. It’s got no birth certificate. This is the problem. Ever since the passing of the Seed (National List of Varieties) Act 1973, a vegetable seed can only be sold if it is on a special list. To get on the list it has to pass a DUS test. It must be Distinct (different from all other varieties), Uniform (all the plants grown from a pack of seed must be the same) and it must be Stable (the plants should not change from generation to generation). The vegetable seeds for sale today are all on the list. The ones your neighbour gives you may not be. What all this means is that there are fewer vegetable varieties on sale than there used to be. Old varieties are in danger of becoming extinct. Many seeds for sale are commercial varieties bred for characteristics needed by supermarkets – such as tough skins to survive transport – rather than sweet taste or nutritional content. Hybrid (F1) varieties are especially lucrative for the seed companies as they will not breed true – with F1 varieties you have no choice but to buy new seed each year. It is hard for small seed companies to survive when producing relatively small quantities of seed for the domestic gardener. Many have gone out of business since the 1960s, often having been bought out by larger companies. Hence many people today have a very limited idea of what vegetables look like. Tomatoes are uniformly red, beans are green, and carrots are orange. Not so in a heritage vegetable garden, where purple beans climb above stripy tomatoes next to yellow carrots. Vegetables are wondrous in their diversity of colours, shapes and sizes, as well as characteristics we cannot see, like resistance to pests and diseases. Having a wide vegetable diversity is fun and gives beauty to our gardens – but it’s also crucial for our future. Vegetables are our food. We need them. We need to be able to grow them whatever the future throws at us. The more diversity in our vegetables, the easier it is to find ones that will thrive in our own local conditions as well as cope in a future with an unstable climate and unpredictable pest and disease patterns. The loss of many of our vegetable varieties hasn’t gone unnoticed. In 1975 there was enough foresight in the Henry Doubleday Research Association (now Garden Organic) to set up the Heritage Seed Library (HSL). Gardeners could no longer ‘buy’ the seeds of their favourite vegetables – but maybe they could just borrow them? Surely that couldn’t be illegal? So the HSL gathered all the non-listed seed they could find and started lending it out. Members are sent their choice of varieties to grow each year and some are also ‘Seed Guardians’ who are trusted to save and return the seed, so replenishing stocks. The seed saving movement is not just about preserving old varieties, however. If we get new seed each year, grow it, eat it, and then go back for more it means vegetables are no longer evolving in our gardens. They become stuck in time. In contrast, every time we save our own seed the plants are evolving to perform better in our gardens. Even though we may be controlling them to keep the variety ‘pure’ there will still be mutations and some cross pollination to introduce new characteristics. These will be selected for or against. The variety will continue to perform better for us as we select the most productive, tasty or beautiful plants. If you save your own seed you will not only be preserving old varieties, but creating new ones for the future. Seed saving has become a strong movement in many places throughout the world, and seed swapping events are increasingly popular. At the 2007 ‘Seedy Sunday’ in Machynlleth, Syd Melbourne gave some of his bean seeds to the Heritage Seed Library. Syd had been given a handful of the beans in the 1970s by a friend who knew that the variety was no longer going to be sold. He has been growing and saving them ever since. So this is how I got to grow my very pretty beans – Syd’s bean, which he has named the ‘Melbourne Mini’. While growing them in the CAT display gardens we are recording their characteristics. Each stage of growth is monitored according to the ‘characterisation’ forms provided by the HSL. This could help us find out a lot more about it. It could be an old variety lost to the seed companies in the 1970s; it could be a variety still commercially available, or one held in the seed library. However, over the time Syd has been saving his seed it will have adapted to his particular garden conditions. It might perhaps be the only remaining seed of an old variety or his own strain of another variety. Either way, with the help of the Heritage Seed Library we will be saving the ‘Melbourne Mini’ for future generations. We are used to seeing vegetables flower and set seed – peas and beans are obvious examples, as well as plants that fruit e.g. tomatoes. Others we eat before the plant seeds. One of the many Although the question of genetic modification has been a controversial issue for some time, shops are now selling products that contain or have used genetically modified material in their production. That the biotech companies have managed this despite strong opposition from the public, or at worst indifference, is a severe blow to the concept of consumer choice. What reasons are they giving for the ‘need’ for GM crops that outweighs the dangers of their growth? What are these dangers? How does the patenting of crops and ‘suicide seeds’ affect farmers and whom does the law protect? Bio-tech companies design ‘improved’ varieties of plants that, they claim, will produce higher yields, help solve world hunger, compensate for dietary deficiencies and deal with population growth. They spend a lot of time and money designing such varieties and can then patent the seeds as their intellectual property. To make sure farmers buy from them year on year and do not save seeds from a previous harvest, thus stealing the technology, the designers embed self poisoning genes into the gene structure to prevent illegal copying in much the same way as IT software does. This is known as Terminator Technology or ‘suicide seeds’. Our ancestral farmers have been saving seeds and selecting a varied set of beneficial characteristics for over ten thousand years. Not only will this wide set of varieties be lost, many of which are specifically suitable for their local regions, but the skills will be lost, and the independence of farmers will be lost. The consequent dependence on agribusiness carries a catastrophic risk; should seed production be interrupted or lost, farmers would be left with nothing to plant. Pollen is an airborne transmitter of information; releasing unnatural and destructive genes into the biological kingdom has unknown consequences and could potentially jeopardise food production and plant life. Should the killer gene be transmitted to related species of plants this could have a harmful effect on all crops and wildlife. Terminator technology will result in crop uniformity leading to increased vulnerability to pests and diseases with no other crops to grow as backup. Use of crops that are resistant to pesticides will lead to an imbalance in the food chain. For example, birds that eat insects will be threatened because the plants the insects eat will have gone. The cost of seeds will be expensive to poor farmers and it is unlikely any benefit from any increased yield will outweigh the price of the seeds and should a crop fail farmers will need to take out loans. As well as the risks to the environment and our food production there are also the legal risks and consequences imposed on farmers. There is no legislation that requires biotech companies to pay compensation or clear up any damage caused by their crops. Where genetic material has polluted non-GM crops, the polluters have not paid damages. North American farmer Tom Wiley landed a contract to supply Japan with non-GM soya. On delivery it was discovered that the beans were contaminated up to 1.37 per cent with GM material. The contract was cancelled at a loss of up to $10,000 to Mr Wiley without compensation. Worse than this is the case of Percy Schmeiser, a Canadian farmer who had been using his own seeds for the past fifty years. His canola seed was genetically polluted with Monsanto’s GM canola through wind and pollination. Instead of Percy being paid compensation in accordance with the polluter pays principle, the courts fined Percy on the basis of Monsanto’s IPR case which argued that since the genes were Monsanto’s property their being found in Percy’s field made him a thief, irrespective of how they came to be there. http://www.soilassociation.org/gm http://www.genewatch.org/ Chis Moreton Clean Slate 15 advantages of being a seed saver is that you get to see the beautiful flowers of biennial vegetables too – pom-pom type onion heads, umbrella shaped carrot and parsnip florets, bright yellow brassica flowers, lettuce stalks shooting up 4 foot high. Some vegetables (called inbreeders) e.g. French beans, nearly always self-pollinate. This means that it doesn’t matter if you have a similar plant growing nearby – they won’t cross. Others are more promiscuous. These need to be isolated from similar plants. Some vegetables (called outbreeders) e.g. sweetcorn need to crosspollinate, but within their own variety. With these it is important to grow a large number of plants to prevent ‘inbreeding depression’. Seed collection techniques vary – large dry seeds like beans and peas can be shelled by hand. For small dry seeds there are methods such as winnowing, to remove the seeds from the chaff. ‘Wet’ seeds such as tomatoes need to be cleaned thoroughly before storage. However, some vegetables are really easy to save seed from, and once you start it can become addictive. CS ! " For advice on how to save seed and to join the Heritage Seed Library go to www.gardenorganic.org.uk/hsl Books Heritage Vegetables – the gardener’s guide to cultivating diversity, Sue Stickland, Gaia Books, ISBN-13: 978-1856750332 Breed your own vegetable varieties – the gardener’s and farmers’ guide to plant breeding and seed saving, Carol Deppe, Chelsea Green Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-1890132729 Additional material from Chris Moreton and Mel Harvey 16 Clean Slate # $ % $ & ' $ ( ) ( Dyfi Valley Seed Savers are based in Machynlleth. The group have energetic annual seed and seedling swaps and organise other gardening events throughout the year. This year the Seed Savers have launched a search for traditional and adapted Welsh vegetables, in order to bring together a collection of varieties that grow well in the wet and rugged conditions here. The aim is to chronicle their characteristics and history, and ensure that the diversity and heritage of Welsh vegetable varieties can adapt to changing conditions. If you save and grow your own vegetable seeds in Wales, we would love to hear from you. They could be vegetable varieties that have grown well in the region for generations, the product of a backgarden plant-breeder, or a traditional variety that carries a story in its name. Please get in touch with us at the address below with any information about Welsh vegetables or for more information about the seed search. Chloë Ward Dyfi Valley Seedsavers, Ecodyfi, 52 Heol Maengwyn, Machynlleth, SY20 8DT Phone: 01654 700 288 email: [email protected] Website: www.dyfivalleyseedsavers.co.uk