Agricultural Biodiversity

You might think I'm preaching to the choir here, since most of you are probably growing some heirloom  varieties and if not saving your own seed, supporting the companies that do.  But there could realistically come a time when it will be illegal to sell seeds of these old varieties.  The Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) is a worldwide royalty system that originated in Geneva, Switzerland.  It was created to protect patents on hybrids, but at the time it was still difficult to prove genetic similarity in court.  (Today the biotech companies that own and control most of the seed companies use a marker gene that is spliced into the DNA of the plant.)   Instead of admitting the futility of the effort, European legislators compiled and published a Common Catalogue.  This catalogue lists all varieties that were deemed legal to sell as well as outlining fines for violators.  This catalogue became the law in the European Union and overnight 1,500 vegetable varieties that were not on the list were in effect outlawed.  Traditional varieties grown for generations were no longer legal.  Imagine being forbidden to grow Brandywine tomatoes.  It is estimated that three quarters of the the vegetable varieties in Europe were extinct by 1991, due to efforts to enforce these plant patenting laws.

In Canada, The Seeds Act prohibits a farm from selling a crop variety that isn't registered.   In 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that genetically engineered microorganisms (GMO) were patentable.  The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office took this a step further declaring that all life forms could be patented, from seeds to animals to human cells.   They made this move without any exchange with Congress or the court system.  So thousands of years of saving and acclimating seed is in danger of being wiped out to protect biotech company's profit margin.  Remember these companies are producing hybrids, so it's not the propriety of their seed that is threatened, it's their monopoly in selling it.

There has been resistance, especially in the Third World where the food supply is still heavily dependent on the ability to save seed.  But now that it has been established that pollen from Terminator plants can drift and cross-pollinate with non-Terminator crops, a farmer may not know that his seed has been killed until it fails to germinate the following season.

You probably all remember the boycotts in Europe against GMO foods.  They actually had some effect.  The large supermarket chains did refuse to allow GMO ingredients in their products.  The U.S. has been very reluctant to allow labeling of these

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