In a much more rigorous way, he basically says what I did below on multi-gene resistance. It’s just not that simple.

I think you’re probably right, there is competition in the way you say.

While health care is being debated in the US, and the issue of a need for a public or non-profit insurer to compete with the existing health insurance companies, it makes me wonder if we need something like that for the seed companies. There are so few seed companies by now supplying mainstream farmers, and I don’t really see a lot of genuine competition between them.

I’m not in a position to say much about how they are currently used, but I can certainly offer some of the reasons why seed companies are not interested in offering them.

Since most seed companies sell both chemicals and seeds, their business model is very much tied to selling these two things together. There is simply less profit is selling varieties that don’t need chemicals. There are sometimes direct or indirect subsidies that offset the costs of these chemicals, meaning farmers often don’t mind using them.

There are different ways in different places seed companies can use to protect their intellectual property, and these methods often aren’t available for existing or order varieties, rather they would need to create something new. In addition, many existing varieties are not suitable for commercial production, would require investments in time and money and for whatever reason they may not think this is worthwhile. Perhaps they are looking at the situation financially now, doing the calculation of the costs of investments and not expecting to see an increase in profit if they did something else.

I don’t know about in the US, but here in Europe, farmers are not generally in a position to demand varieties. Mostly it’s the seed companies that create varieties, and the farmers have to buy them. I suspect this is the case in many places in the world.

Anyway, I think if someone could find the answer to you question, they would make a fortune. Unfortunately, no one has figured it out yet.

Being the kind of person I am, I think the root of the problem lies with issues of biodiversity. Instead of trying to create the ultimate multi-gene resistant tomato, the answer is three-fold.

First global warming, changing weather patters and general climate degradation all play major roles in plant diseases. I think we need to address this, and recognize it’s one of the most important underlying problems behind this and many other plant diseases.

Secondly, large mono-culture swaths of diseased potatoes grown without proper rotations appear to be the major hosts of late blight. If we deal with this, we will have considerably less of a problem.

Finally, late blight is not a single plant disease. It’s a very regional problem, resistant plants in the US are not necessarily resistant in Europe, and so on. It’s also a very rapidly evolving disease, and now that different strains appear able to combine it’s DNA (sexual reproduction), it looks set to be even faster evolving. It’s just not going to happen that we find a single totally resistant variety, a solution is only going to come by being able to rapidly produce new varieties on a regional basis. This probably has to come down to the level of individual gardens, and people will need to know how to breed and select their own varieties.

I think this all applies to both tomatoes and potatoes, as well as many other plants.