I used to buy my seeds from William Dam Seeds, in recent years their shipping costs have risen so much that I decided to stop. Instead I’m getting seeds from smaller places like Solana in Quebec and the Cottage Gardener in Ontario. Both sell heirloom seeds and have extensive lists of tomatoes. I could quite easily have spent my entire garden budget on tomato seeds.
The other good thing about these smaller seed companies is they don’t try to upsell you with garden books, gloves, hoses, hand shovels, organic herbicides, pesticides and hand cremes. Come to think about it, this other stuff is why their shipping costs are exorbitant. A ten dollar hand shovel weighs a lot more than ten dollars worth of seeds.
Neither of these seed companies are listed on the safe seed resource list. It is a list of seed companies that have signed a pledge saying their seeds are not genetically modified (GM free). Scroll down near the bottom of the page to see the seed companies in Canada that have signed this pledge.
Most varieties of seed are F1 hybrids, bred for a specific attribute. Seeds collected from F1 hybrids will not have the same attribute as their parents. If you want that attribute you have to keep rebuying the seed. I’ve written more about F1 hybrids over here
What Is An F1 HybridMonsanto, an agricultural, biotech giant, is a world leader in the genetic modification of seeds. I first heard about the company in conjunction with roundup ready canola and alfalfa two of the biggest crops in the BC Peace. These particular varieties of alfalfa and canola had been modified so as to resist roundup, ( a systemic herbicide), also produced by the Monsanto company.
On March 30 2011 a group of Canadian and US farmers filed a suit against Monsanto saying they needed to protect themselves against patent infringement should their crops ever become contaminated with Monsanto’s genetically modified seed.
The first hearings of this court case are happening today in New York City. Gayla has written more about this over here. Scroll down to the end of her post for a list of things you can do to avoid growing genetically modified seeds.
I am trying out heirloom seeds for the first time this year. I received a bunch courtesy of Seeds of change. I can't wait to see how they perform.
ReplyDeleteI've never heard of the safe seed resource list before but was pleasantly surprised to find the tomato seeds I just bought came from a company on that list (Heritage harvest seed in Manitoba). I'm a bit shocked to find the Monsanto case is still before the courts. It feels like this has been dragging on forever and in the meantime fields are being contaminated by the day.
ReplyDeleteMelanie, i am glad you wrote this article, only a very few people know about that. It is good that farmers in advance countries like yours have the courage and willingness to fight the giants, it might be the other way in our circumstances. We might suffer from erosion of genetic resources if big commercial farms already succumbed to the lure of profit.
ReplyDeleteTina- That's great, I hope you like them.
ReplyDeleteMarguerite- I sure it will go on for years and I'd be surprised if GMO seeds (F1 hybrids) were banned. We the consumer need to keep buying and saving our own heritage seeds. This year I'm going to try saving tomatoes seeds and peas. And seeds from the some of the carrots I left in the garden over winter :) I always try to save some potatoes for next year.
Andrea- I'm sure there are some farmers who run large agribusinesses in Canada and the US who like Monsantos roundup resistant crops. And I bet they have a bigger say in what will happen than the small farmers who are protesting them.