Download illegal vegetables and how to grow themTim Hogg

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
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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