Outside on my front porch, I have transplanted two young tomatoes and two basil plants into standing pots. I had previously seeded my two gardens with mustard (to kill weeds) and hairy vetch (to add nitrogen to the soil) and had no room to plant food crops this year. Although I had not done it myself, I appreciated the work someone had put forth to germinate seeds and raise these tomato and basil seedlings to small plants for my use. As small as my gesture is to produce food, it – along with farming efforts worldwide – is meaningful and important. People have to eat.
Unfortunately, our need to consume food does not end with the sowing of seed. There is a long line of post-production processes that must occur (long for the Chilean bottle of wine, short for the local CSA share) from harvesting and storing, to preserving, transporting and selling before food reaches our mouths. Nevertheless, it all begins with the planting of seed.
This essay is the first installment in a four-part series on seed issues – why they are important and relevant to our daily lives. Below, I wish to briefly introduce a few issues focused on what Jack Kloppenburg calls the “irreducible core of crop production” – the seed.
The seed industry, like many global industries, is currently undergoing tremendous organizational changes such as vertical integration, buy-outs, take-overs, and consolidation. Right before our eyes and yet to the notice of few, the supply of seeds is becoming concentrated in fewer hands who continue to expand their reach. The seed company Seminis controls over 20% of the global vegetable seed market (tomatoes, spinach, etc.) according to their own website and is owned by the sustainable agriculture movement’s antithesis, Monsanto.
There has been little discussion if such a concentration of power over our food system is a beneficial situation. If plant seeds truly are “humanity’s common concern” as the UN treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture declared, then shouldn’t we discuss how to use them for the proper public good? And what does use for the proper public good entail?
Despite a general trend towards a few seed companies dominating seed production, we also are witnessing a resurgence of small private seed companies – companies with the motivation and maneuverability to tailor their product to the needs of local producers and consumers. And in the public seed realm, the Pacific Northwest – comprising the three states of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon – is blessed with a strong public seed industry for small grains and legumes.
In this series, I will provide a snapshot of the local seed industry, both public and private. I will be drawing from the resources of non-profits, most notably the Organic Seed Alliance (www.seedalliance.org), whose website contains numerous publications on saving seeds, conducting on-farm variety trials and links to similar organizations as well as companies offering organic seeds. Another excellent resource on this topic is First the Seed by Jack Kloppenburg. Borrowing his title from the motto of the American Seed Trade Association, First the Seed is a social history of plant breeding, seeds and biotechnology.
With this series, my intent is to provide you with a sense of the important issues facing something we often take for granted, the seed. Having worked in plant breeding since 2003, I am deeply concerned about control of the world’s seed supply, and I welcome this opportunity to educate others.
Julia Piaskowski is a graduate student in plant breeding at Washington State University. She works with wheat when she is not entertaining her 6- month-old daughter, Suzka.
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