So you may be wondering what is Seedy Saturday anyway? Well its an event organized all over Canada by local organizations such as Island Natural Growers and supported by Seeds of Diversity.
There are a few of main objectives – one is to educate people on seed saving and encourage the exchange of seeds between seed savers – especially food seed. It also provides an event for local organic seed producers and other companies to sell their products. And of course its a great social event.
But there is another reason, which is also supported by the Salt Spring Seed Sanctuary, which is to keep some of our heritage seeds in the public domain, actively being grown by real people. This makes it much harder for someone to patent these seeds and restrict their use. And if you think that the idea of patenting seeds it bizarre (like patenting life itself) its the tip of the iceberg. Some of the large industrial-agricultural-chemical companies are genetically modifying seed and applying patents. And then aggressively prosecuting people who save patented seed, assist in saving their seed or even end up with patented seed growing on their land by accident – think I am joking – just do some research on Percy Schmeiser (although he is one of the lucky ones who managed to stand up for himself)
And in case that's all that prosecuting is still too much like hard work the next step is to introduce Terminator Genes (nothing to do with cool scf-fi featuring the governator) to grow plants where the next years seed isn't viable even if you do save it. You might want to check out this film.
So what's do I think is wrong with all of this – well I am uncomfortable with any kind of genetic modification.
GM to allow increased use of pesticides/herbicides is one of the big ones – and this leads to even more chemicals on your food, even more loss of beneficial bugs and biodiversity and may eventually lead to weeds and bugs that are resistant to the chemicals anyway.
The introduction of terminator genes is truly frightening. Ever since the dawn of modern agriculture the ability to use seed to produce more seed for next years crop has underpinned human success. Its easy when we buy our food pre-prepared or pre-packaged in the store to forget where it came from, but even the most heavily processed foods started out as a seed – maybe corn or soy. And even the meat you eat was fed on grain from seed. So if we can't save seed what then – are we forever committed to buy it from the people holding the patents? And what if it goes wrong – cross pollinates to other crops etc. Food shortages, riots, famine….?
Do we really want the future of our food production in the hands of large organziations – in this era of too big to fail banks (read so big we can do what we like and get away with it) do we want too big to fail agri-chem companies controlling the seed that provides all of of our food. I don't – the concept is called food security – i.e. maintaining the ability to grow our own food – independently of big corporations, government etc.
The movie Food Inc is a great watch – less focus on slaughter house horror and more on human behaviour horror!
So anyway that is what Seedy Saturday is all about – learning about seeds and growing food, saving seed, keeping seed out of the hands of the corporations and maybe saving our future.
So what did I do for Seedy Saturday? Well I baked all organic/local apple pie and sold slices – seemed like the obvious anti-establishment gesture to me!
But seriously just getting involved is a great start! Educate yourself on where food really comes from, how it is processed, who controls it and what it means to you.
We also really like the movies Food Matters and Processed People (similar message from different producers on how you really are what you eat…)
Eat Well. Duncan.