Sowing Seeds of Diversity

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The good news is that new seeds are appearing on the market at a rate of 10 percent each year. From 1991 to 1994, 1,794 new varieties have been made available to the home gardener. But this is as deceiving as it is promising—the increase is concentrated in relatively few plants. Crops such as corns, garlics, lettuces, hot peppers, potatoes, and squashes have shown a 200 percent or more increase in varieties since 1981 while the rest of the vegetable kingdom continues to decline. (Remember we're still losing that 6 percent a year mentioned earlier—gene sources we can never regain.)

In the last decade, seed diversity has moved from an environmental issue to a political one. The need for control and ownership has prompted seed industry conglomerates to begin patenting their varieties as proprietary. Imagine patenting a living, breathing life form as if it were an invention or commodity. "This is not like patenting a mouse trap or a new hair dryer; we're talking about world food security," says Hope Shand, research director for the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI). Since 1981, RAN has been studying the impact of intellectual property—new laws granting ownership of life forms to patent holders—and how this threatens farmers, agriculture, and genetic diversity.

"The most alarming trend is that farmers are losing control over their own seed," adds Shand, "even from their own farms". When a farmer, particularly in a developing country, finds non-hybrid seed, he must often sign a contract stating that he relinquishes his right to save seed from his crops because they are under patent.

Breeding for the Long Term

Not all hybrids are inherently evil. It's the first-generation hybrids offered by the large commercial companies that we have to worry about. Some conscientious plant breeders, like those at Seeds of Change, cross varieties to yield more flavorful, nutritious food plants by breeding through several generations beyond the first. These become more stable with each generation until they are open-pollinated varieties whose seeds can be saved and replanted, showing some diversity in successive plantings; some are bred through enough generations to become stabilized hybrids, with seeds that will reproduce identical to the parent plant. This is how plant breeders initially created the traditional varieties we know today.

"This doesn't make sense anymore for the big seed companies," says Kent Whealy, director of Seed Savers Exchange, a grassroots organization that for over 20 years has led the struggle to preserve genetic diversity, tracking the status of every nonhybrid available in the United States and Canada since 1981. "Why bother breeding through several years when you can breed a first-generation hybrid, keep the parent a secret, and have people come back every year for more seed?"

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