The Plowboy Interview Kent Whealy

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WHEALY: Many of the vegetables that were dropped during the first half of this century were replaced by superior varieties, but that hasn't generally been the case for at least the last 20 years. Of course, the seed companies lead us to believe that their new hybrids are superior, that they're more vigorous and more highly productive than the "old standbys" . . . when in most cases the "improved" seeds are simply more highly profitable to market. After all, if I buy a pack of standard tomato seeds, I can save my own seeds from then on . . . and never have to order that particular vegetable from the supplier again. But if I want to keep planting a hybrid vegetable, I must go back to the company every spring for more seeds. So, as more and more of the hybrids push out the standard varieties, my choices become more and more limited . . . and I become more dependent on the seed companies!

Then, too, many of the corporations that have bought out seed suppliers also manufacture pesticides and fertilizers . . . and a company that's selling those products isn't likely to put very much effort or money into developing disease- or pest-resistant crops! So although a good many of the newer hybrid vegetables may be adapted to general conditions, most of them also need regular doses of pesticides and fertilizers to live up to the high-yield standards for which they were bred.

Furthermore, studies have shown that hybrid vegetables aren't always superior to the older standard varieties. For example, Dr. Ernest Kerr, of the Simcoe Research Station in Ontario, has performed thousands of such tests. He's found that while hybrid corns are markedly more productive than are the standard varieties, that is not the case with such crops as tomatoes and peppers. In fact, Dr. Kerr is quoted as saying that the best of the standard tomatoes have never even been equaled by any of the hybrids.

A lot of the older varieties that we're losing are also far superior to the hybrids in a particular locale. Far from being obsolete or inferior, each one is truly the cream of the crop . . . the result of millions of years of natural selection, thousands of years of human preference, and usually about a decade of in tensive breeding and testing. In many cases a particular type of vegetable has been grown in the same area by a family for over 150 years and—as a result—is extremely well adapted to local climatic conditions, and quite resistant to the specific diseases and pests that occur in that geographical region.

PLOWBOY: Late in 1980, Congress passed an amendment to the Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970. Along with other concerned gardeners and botanists, you campaigned vigorously against the amendment, warning that similar laws in England have created an all but intolerable situation there. What exactly happened in Britain that many people fear will be repeated here?

WHEALY: Let me go back a few years: I started keeping an eye on that situation when the "Plant Breeders' Rights" legislation—as it's called in the United Kingdom—was passed in 1974. The British government implemented the new law a step at a time, and the action culminated—in 1980—in the wholesale outlawing of about 2,000 vegetable varieties! That drastic action was taken because it had been found to be almost impossible to handle court cases based on the original patenting law . . . that is, to prove that someone had pirated a particular type of tomato, for example, and was growing and selling it. So the English government simply decided to outlaw all the older varieties, and catalog the new legal ones. It happened so quickly that many gardeners didn't know where to turn. Varieties they'd been growing all their lives suddenly weren't for legal sale anymore, and a person could be fined up to $800 for raising "contraband" vegetables! These laws are now being enforced in all Common Market countries.

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