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Heirloom seeds exposed

The New York Times carried a long article on heirloom seeds on Wednesday. It is both balanced and iconoclastic, but anyone reading in Europe, might, like me, have raised a metaphorical eyebrow at this paragraph:

But the “universities have basically shut down all their programs for home gardeners,” Mr. Gettle said. “Most plant breeders are owned by a few large seed companies. I wish they would develop more things for the home garden.”

You don’t get to be a large seed company by paying any attention to home gardeners who, in any case, say they want to be able to save their own seeds from year to year. Nevertheless, the NYT went on to talk about some of the backyard breeders and small, regional seed companies that are doing precisely that, developing varieties for home gardeners and smaller commercial growers. In the US, and many other places, the market determines what people can get. If the marketing claims made for heirlooms are sketchy, the New York Times will find people to say so. And if large seed companies are failing to satisfy some market segments, other suppliers can try to do better.

European growers and breeders still don’t have that luxury. Directives on conservation varieties do nothing to encourage future breeding efforts, they merely permit old varieties to be marketed under certain conditions. In England and Wales, at any rate, new varieties will still need to be formally listed on the Common Catalogue. As far as I know, the conservation directives so far have been implemented only in Ireland, 1 and a report assessing the value of the directives, due in late 2010 or early 2011, has not surfaced either.

Anyone in Europe wishing to grow unregistered varieties — whatever their motivation, and no matter how misguided they may be — has to find other channels. Of which, I’m glad to say, there seems to be an increasing number.

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Gardens of peace and reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The project isn’t just about food – reconciliation and the regaining of trust are equally important. We’re working with people who suffered a lot during the war and our main goal is to bring conflicting sides together. We’ve tried to make a secure space where thoughts and opinions can be exchanged freely; somewhere people can be useful to both the community and their families.

The secure space is in urban gardens. Great idea.

The link to the Community Gardens Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina is wrong in the article. You can find them at their website and on Facebook. Go support them, even just by making seed donations.

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The economics of nutrition

Or nutrition in The Economist at any rate. Three — count them! — nutrition-related pieces in that venerable organ today for your delectation. Here come the money quotes:

People’s spending choices are a good way to assess levels of hunger. “Using data on people’s choice of what to eat leads to an estimate of hunger that is about half as large as the estimate using the standard method.” Which “typically involves fixing a calorie threshold—2,100 calories per day is a common benchmark—and trying to count how many people report eating food that gives them fewer calories than this number.”

How much can farming really improve people’s health? Haven’t read this yet, but Jeremy says the article takes you round the block, from farming has no impact, to the right kind of farming has great impact. Sounds like quite a ride.

Why small doses of vitamins could make a huge difference to the world’s health. “Public money should be concentrated not on supplying cheap food but on providing for those who do not control what they eat: babies and children.”

Meanwhile, away from the world of think-tanks and economic analysis:

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Perennial grains: the road not taken

“The whole world is mostly perennials,” says USDA geneticist Edward Buckler, who studies corn at Cornell University. “So why did we domesticate annuals?” Not because annuals were better, he says, but because Neolithic farmers rapidly made them better—enlarging their seeds, for instance, by replanting the ones from thriving plants, year after year. Perennials didn’t benefit from that kind of selective breeding, because they don’t need to be replanted. Their natural advantage became a handicap. They became the road not taken.

National Geographic goes back to the fork and rounds up the perennial grain story. Nothing new for readers here, of course, but good to see it in the mainstream. And if you want to see one reason why perennial grains are a good idea, just look at the picture above the article. Easily worth 1000 words.