Seed Freedom Fortnight

Seed Freedom Fortnight

2-16 Oct 2012

Some of you may not know this but there has been an insidious move by a few companies over the last few decades to make whole country's agricultural business their business!

They have produced chemicals and fertilisers that only lead to more chemical and fertiliser dependency and to wrap the whole up in a nice oligopoly package they have also patented seed.

They OWN the seed.

The farmer must buy the seed, he can not save the seed and he risks financial ruin should his seed become accidentally cross pollinated with their seed thus making it the company's seed.

You may have heard of Monsanto in America. What you may not realise is that some of the dirtiest work by these oligopolies is occurring in struggling third world countries. 

We are losing seed varieties every year but it is most important that you start saving seed now. Seed adapts and evolves for the area it grows in. If we lose that, we lose the ability to feed ourselves. We become instead reliant on a system that holds all the cards and reduces diversity.

We lose our freedom from hunger and independence.

Please, each one of you, in your area, save your seed and buy only local heirloom/open pollinating/GMO free seed.

In this fortnight get together and swap seed.

That's what we did to wrap up our Living Better group last month.

After we finished the cakes we had a sit down and shared seed.

I gained beetroot, lupins and peas and NZ yams.

I swapped multi-headed sunflowers.

This Saturday I will also take to market some Turks Turban pumpkin seed.

Hope you watch the video; Dr Vandana Shiva has been fighting for seed freedom for decades and Costa is own special Australian gardening legend.