The Tale of Two Food Systems
FROM SEED TO FORK
Our modern human palates seek adventure and exploration, and, although we prefer local, we still want what we want no matter what the season. Our tastes and behaviors have evolved and we want flavorful, organic and sustainable even when we have to buy at big grocery stores or wholesalers. We want a sustainable retail supply chain that conserves ecological balance and benefits the farming communities wherever they might be in the world. We try, but much of what we imagine to be sustainable is quite misleading. Diversity is sustainable and our commercial food system is not.
If you dig down a little deeper, beneath “organic” and “sustainability grown” labels and claims, there is a big loophole, an erosion of agricultural biodiversity, regionally and worldwide, beginning with the first link in the food chain: the seed. Yes, the food we eat and the values we hold all begin with that tiny little seed.
The use of heirloom seed varieties will continue to maintain diversity in our horticultural gene pool. Modern seed types are often the same as those grown by commercial producers, and these commercial seed varieties have been bred for characteristics like vegetables ripening at the same time or lasting longer in shipping that are useful to large commercial producers but stifle biodiversity. Furthermore, evidence suggests that nutrition in many commercial fruit and vegetable crops has been declining for decades as most commercial seed has been bred for yields over flavor and health.
Until the early twentieth century, open-pollinated seeds were the only kind of seed available, and farmers the world over saved them, adapting varieties to certain climates and conditions in the process. But during the 1970s, petrochemical and pharmaceutical companies began buying up thousands of small, family-owned seed companies. In the decades since, our world seed supply has been hijacked by a handful of multinational biotech and chemical companies using intellectual property laws and plant patenting to commodify the world seed supply, making it virtually impossible, even a crime, for farmers to save their own seed, while they maximize profits by eliminating farmers’ rights. Four seed companies now control more than sixty percent of the global market. These companies offer only the most profitable lines of seeds for sale and abandoned the rest, posing a major risk to our food supply made vulnerable by genetic uniformity. The Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s is a dramatic example of the dangers of genetic uniformity.
We’ve all heard the biotech battle cry that the world food supply needs to double or triple in the next century; crops need to withstand climate change, widespread hunger and be more drought and pest resistant; and that the companies have the answer to it all through genetic manipulation and hybrid breeding.
So why must a plant be genetically manipulated or a patented hybrid to survive and feed the world? I don’t believe that’s even the Gene Giants’ and Big Ag’s point; rather it’s money, greed and all things big business. Their cry of how to feed the ever-growing world population is nothing less than a plea to expand their fortunes. “New technologies don’t have to be socially useful or technically superior in order to be profitable. Once the market is monopolized, how the technology performs is irrelevant,” as the ETC watchdog group brings to light. All we need to do is to take a quick look back at plant evolutionary history to understand how nature can cope with these problems.
Once an aquatic alga, the plant evolved to live on land and produce seed. Genetic manipulation by humans had nothing to do with it. Producing seed was a huge challenge for land plants. In its aquatic environment it was easy because a seed was never in danger of dehydrating, and the seed embryo would receive water and nutrients directly from the surrounding environment. But on land, a plant had to evolve to endure dry conditions and survive in an environment where water and nutrients existed in the ground. Seeds conquered these challenges by safeguarding their embryos and a store of nutrients within a hard, protective seed coat. Plant evolution was in full swing. Now that the first great challenge was conquered, plants moved on to defend themselves against a changing environmental condition (something that they are just as proficient at today without the help of genetic manipulation), called alternation of generations. Alternation of generations is a unique adaptation separating plants from other living inhabitants of earth.
Several theories are believed to account for the evolution of alternation of generations in plants. One theory has to do with having the “best of both worlds” in terms of variation in a population, enabling it to cope with challenges. It makes it possible that only one parent plant contributes the hereditary material in reproduction if that parent has thrived well in its current environmental conditions. If not, two parents can be involved, and a mixing of hereditary material occurs. This results in offspring that vary from both parents and from one another. This could be beneficial in a changing environment where some of the variable offspring are likely to be suited to that environment. Miracles do happen and plant adaptation is one of them.
The birth of a seed is truly amazing. An embryo develops inside a female structure after fertilization, creating a tiny plant inside a plant. The male structure, stamens, produce the pollen that fertilize the female plant ovaries, carried by wind, bees and other insects. Not only can seed plants colonize new places on the landscape through their very inventive dispersal methods, they can also reproduce at different times or lie dormant, waiting for the perfect environmental conditions.
Open pollinated plants adapt to climate change and other stress factors through natural biological evolution, and adapt rapidly because, unlike us, they can’t jump on a plane and leave town. When climate becomes too hostile, plants must adapt. It is their evolutionary history. Unlike hybrids, open pollinated plants become adapted to the area in which they are grown. Therefore, if we are to strive towards true food freedom, it must rest on a foundation of open pollination. Patented gene technologies will not help survive climate change in the long run, but what they will do is concentrate corporate power, drive up costs, inhibit public research and further undermine the rights of farmers and gardeners to save and exchange seeds.
The only type of plant breeding that makes headlines these days is genetic engineering, while plant breeders using natural, traditional methods have been overlooked in the local food movement. They are the ones that will lead us into a stable food security, and a delicious one at that. Without them, we wouldn’t find myriad colorful and tasty heirlooms to delight over at our farmers’ markets. Growers like Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seeds, who specializes in lettuce and kale varieties, are saving heirloom varieties and using traditional breeding practices of crossbreeding, methods used by humans for 12,000 years, crossing plants for useful traits like disease resistance, color and taste.
There needs to be more transparency in our fresh produce seed sources so that we can avoid supporting firms that threaten the resilience of our food systems. By demanding more informative labeling of our fresh foods, the same grassroots movement that fueled the rise of organics in the marketplace will make a difference nudging Big Ag and biotech to listen, to change, and to provide a brighter future for our food.
There are things we can all do to offset this course. Supporting more democratic seed systems starts with buying from a seed company that aligns with your values, growing and saving your own seed, and choosing foods grown from reliable seed sources. When considered collectively, our choices are globally important and our choices will make a difference. Demand does influence supply and just like the organic movement, it will initiate change.
Organizations like Seed Matters, an initiative that’s dedicated to improving and protecting organic seed, and Seed Savers Exchange, where rare, heirloom and open-pollinated varieties of seeds have preserved and protected in their seed bank at Heritage Farm since 1975, are dedicated to saving our food heritage and assuring food security in the future. Open Source Seed Initiative is dedicated to maintaining fair and open access to plant genetic resources worldwide by offering a new way to save and exchange seed that ensures the seed will remain free of patents, licenses and other restrictions.
Territorial Seed, Fedco Seed, Wild Garden Seed and many others dedicate their catalogs to these open pollinated heirlooms. Buying local, choosing heirlooms, saving and sharing your own seeds and even creating your own community seed exchange is the best way to reclaim our past and protect the future of great food.
