April 2025

Seeds

• Sacred Seeds
• Seeds & Food Safety
• The Seeds On Your Plate
• Seed Starting – Prectical Guide

Every year in March, the COOP, where I buy my food, offers organic seeds of vegetables and flowers. Some are heirloom seeds, some hybrid, but none are GMO. When I buy seed packs in the spring, there is little surprise about what will grow in the summer, mainly because even the heirloom seeds of today are so far removed from their ancestral origins, so tamed, domesticated, and predictable.

Seeds & Food Safety

following season, a smaller number of crops developed.

These crops were adapted to the farm environment where they were collected, meaning the area’s soil, weather, and pests. Seed collection was the farmer’s insurance policy. Even if one season was a crisis, he had what he needed to grow the following season.

When you don’t have a supermarket, that kind of insurance that guarantees that you can feed your family is vital.

Seeds developed differently in different landscapes of the Earth. The tomatoes that evolved at the top of the Andes mountains were different from those that developed in Central America.

Evolving alongside the entire ecosystem, seeds interacted with soil minerals, bacteria, farm animals, and humans. They became the foundation for the diet and the focal point of everyday life.

Seeds are a cultural heritage passed from one generation to another through the festivals of sowing, harvesting, and caring for the land.

Heirloom, Hybrid, and GMO

What is the difference between heirloom, hybrid, and GMO seeds?

Heirloom strains are developed by natural pollination, meaning that either the wind or an animal, usually an insect, carries pollen from one plant to the other. Because you can’t control the wind or the insect carrying the seeds, heirloom plants were a surprise. Sometimes, it was an awesome surprise; Some of the juiciest, tastiest tomatoes are heirlooms. Other times, it is not a huge success.

The natural way of plant reproduction produced by the heirloom strains is responsible for much of the diversity of the plants on Earth.

Today, farmers who want to conserve heirloom strains don’t rely on insects but instead carry the pollen from one heirloom plant to their brother or sister from the same strain.

Hybrid happens when you pollinate one plant with the pollen of another from the same crop but a different strain. For example, if you pollinate one tomato that has a long shelf life and can travel well with another tomato that is ripe early in the season.

Hybrid breeding of plants started centuries ago. It is how we moved from grass to the grains we know today as wheat and rye.

GMO plant production doesn’t happen in nature; instead, it happens in the laboratory and involves the manipulation of the genes of the plants. When you control the genetic information of plants, you create uniform plants.

Agricultural biodiversity

Agricultural biodiversity is the term used to describe the extent of genetic diversity in the global food system.

In the last one hundred years, 75% of the global food diversity has become extinct. For example, between 1804 and 1904, 7,098 varieties of apples were documented in Canada, and about 68% of them were lost since then.

At the same time, we lost 50% of cabbages, 91% of the field corn, 94% of peas, and 81% of the tomato varieties no longer exist. 60% of the remaining gene pool of crop plants is not conserved or studied, and 90% of them are not being used commercially.  

A century ago, millions of Americans were saving seeds from their backyard garden or farms. They were the guardians of keeping plants varied. This is no longer the case.

Why is agricultural biodiversity important?

Biodiversity is essential for supporting life on Earth because it allows ecosystems to better adapt to dramatic environmental changes.

Unpredicted changes to the environment, such as disease, draughts, or too much rain, and pests, can have a detrimental effect on crops, leading to a famine.

We talk about global warming and climate change, but right under our noses, another crisis is happening. This crisis brought about by giant agribusiness threatens the food system and can jeopardize the Earth and our lives.

From diversity to monoculture

People always traded seeds, but these trades were made between neighbors. It was only in the second half of the 19th century that commercial seed companies developed in Europe and North America.

Large-scale seed commerce changed the power balance between farmers, and seed suppliers, and between nations worldwide.

When farmers stopped collecting seeds, they faced bankruptcy if the growing season didn’t go well and they didn’t have money to invest in seeds for the next season.

In times when a huge seed company threatens to withhold seeds from farmers in another country, they weaponize seeds.

The case for local seeds

Farmers in India have been collecting and reseeding cotton seeds from their farms for hundreds of years. They were small farmers who struggled with pests and draughts but were proud of their heritage and could feed their families.

In 2002, Monsanto convinced the Indian farmers to stop collecting seeds and start buying Monsanto GMO seeds. Monsanto promised the farmers that the seeds would generate plants that could withstand pesticides and herbicides, ridding them of pesky pests and increasing yield and profits.

GMO seeds are protected by a patent, meaning you can’t collect seeds from your crops. You have to buy seeds every year. This means that if you have one year of failed crops, you are out of money for seeds for the following year.

Farmers in India became indebted to Monsanto. Their debts grew like a ball of snow rolling downhill. Over two decades, nearly 300,000 farmers in India’s countryside committed suicide. 

The greed of rich people in one continent ruined the lives of families in another. A whole way of life full of meaning that was passed from father to son for generations was lost.

Humans have a role as the guardians of the garden, the creator of meaning through culture. It is when seeds become transactional rather than reflecting the wonder of life when we seek to control rather than be part of creation that we risk losing the foundation of our life on Earth, the seeds.