I think I may be fueling a fire.......

[Jim]

www.idigmygarden.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5889

Alan I dropped your name at IDIG. I hope you aren't upset. It was with the utmost respect for your work. Here is a copy of my post before it gets deleted.

"Even Heirlooms are likely stabilized hybrids. I just don't think it's responsible to say heirlooms are the only good choice. It kinds of makes all the work that people like Alan bishop, Kenneth Ettlinger, willboar farms, Tom Wagner, and countless others appear trivial. Look at the demand for the Tie Die tomato... I personally think the distinction between heirloom and open pollenated is the important one if we want to preserve the genetics of our food."

Jim

[PapaVic]

"I personally think the distinction between heirloom and open pollenated is the important one if we want to preserve the genetics of our food."

Clarkbar,

Please explain that statement. I don't think I quite understand what you mean. How exactly is the distinction between "heirloom" and "open pollinated" the important distinction with regard to "preserving the genetics of our food?"

Bill

[Jim]

I probably didn't make my point as clear as I wanted too. I think it's important to our sustainability that we maintain open pollinated and heirloom food lines. If shit hits the fan the manufacturing of hybrids wouldn't be practical. Am I making more sense. I'm not a writer or English major so I don't always communicate my meanings well.

[PapaVic]

Oh ... you're talking from the point of view of a survivalist? That if "the shit hits the fan" we'll be able to sustain human life on this planet as individual small farmers growing "heirloom" grains and veggies?

Corn (maize) plays out over several generations unless continuously cross pollinated to create hybrid seed. The world's population is quickly becoming dependant on corn either as a direct food or a feed in the production of animal protein.

I don't believe the current world population can survive without hybrid seed production for a variety of reasons. The world population is increasing. If "the shit hits the fan," and hybrid seed no longer is available for cultivars that can produce crops and withstand environmental conditions that in some cases are becoming plagues, those who cannot "sustain" themselves on "heirloom" varieties will roam the countryside ransacking those of you who can ... and it will all be over rather quickly.

But not to fret ... the world will go on ... probably cleansing itself over a few millennia of all the waste left by mankind ... well maybe except for the radioactive materials.

Bill

[Jim]

You're probably right Bill. I'm done thinking "shit hits the fan". It's too depressing.

[PapaVic]

C-bar,

I'm sorry. I'm not trying to depress you. In fact, I don't think it's all gonna come crashing down anytime soon ... barring an asteroid collision, say around 2112.

Otherwise, I think big agrabiz is the wave of the future and they will continue to produce hybrids designed to produce the massive amounts of grain and produce required to sustain 6 - 9 billion people ... or whatever the eventual global population grows to ... until some natural disaster or series of natural disasters wipes humanity off the face of the planet.

There may be ups and downs over the upcoming millennia ... but folks won't forget how to manufacture hybrids or use the technological advancement we have come to employ and depend on.

Yeah ... you can suppliment your lifestyles with a "sustainable" patch of ground. It's a worthy endevour. Go for it! Can't hurt a thing.

Bill

[Alan]

I have to respectfully disagree with you Bill

As a matter of fact I'm really glad that Clarkbar brought this up and I really appreciate the support clarkbar. It's funny that this came up today considering that much of my two speaking engagements over the previous two days was based on "survival ism" so to speak and the importance of self sustainability.

Corn does not "play out" over time as long as a large enough sample of corn is selected for seed to keep genetic diversity alive within the seed, over time corn can suffer somewhat from inbreeding depression which is actually easily remedied by a bit of hybridization.

Hybridization in and of itself is not a bad thing and I support the use of both hybrids and open pollinated seeds, there is really no reason not to support them, the only thing that I do not support is genetically modified seeds and or animals or the newer and even scarier prospect of synthetic life.

Even if one does not like to support the large ecology destroying and earth-persons disrespecting corporate seed and poison distributors hybrids often have advantages, ex specially in disease and insect Resistance, however taste and often times nutrition are sacrificed and hybrids are really only produced now days to perform well in "average" situations. That being said, if there is a hybrid you particularly like but don't like supporting the Monsanto and Syngentas of the world then by all means learn how to self pollinate and isolate you saves various filial generation seeds and come up with a good and reliable open pollinated variation of such seeds.

Now, if the "shit hits the fan" so to speak, and it will in time, it is my belief as a matter of a fact that right now in the present is the time to be thinking along these lines of a matter of fact. I do agree Bill that we will not be able to support the modern population and that is simply because the modern population relies too much on things to be easily handed to them with little to no real work involved, they expect the t.v., the doctor and the government to hand them everything, which is not going to happen.

However, living in a rural area and knowing how people still work in survival mode in my area, everyone having their own trade and talents that can be bartered back and forth there is a definite backbone which supports the idea of a tribal of even feudal era system of protection and community, it could in fact be argued that the human animal in it's current situation has created an entirely artificial Eco-system which it relies upon but which can easily be removed from it's "effectiveness" and replaced with systems much older and more established. Systems of agrarian culture and civilization that are anywhere from 4,000 - 8,000 years old much out dating the current industrialization of the past 150 years and working in the past to fend off invading marauders interested in their own self well being as well as developing systems agriculture, hunting, and fertilization that are 100% self sustainable and which will in time prove to be very important if human kind is to survive in a world which in continues to rape and destroy.

I do see your point Bill, it's a point that's been put into the public domain about agriculture for at least the past 70 years, a point which sounds basically as follows; without hybrid seeds and commercial synthetic fertilizers and fossil fuels we do not have what we need to survive. It is simply untrue.

There was a time prior to commercialized agriculture when planting a garden and saving seed was essential to survival and the time will come around again when that is very important. In Appalachian Kentucky for example there are families which do not and have not ever bought garden seed, their seed stores are in their closets or root cellars and that's where they will remain. Their fertilizer is produced on farm and little to nothing comes into their domain that is not natural or produced within a one mile radius of the place where they are born, live and die.

Going out beyond home saved seed we get into the old fashioned small local and regionalized seed companies which marketed varieties which did well and were adapted to the localities that the seed companies were marketing too, this was before the days of modern conglomerates and poisons marketed in bags increasing the rates of cancers and sickness from unnatural food.

The point which I am getting at here is that when dealing with open pollinated seed it is in fact unfair to say that they are inferior to hybrids, many old fashioned accessions that I have been collecting here in Southern Indiana which have been grown here for generations and have been adapted to our climate almost always outperform hybrids in one way or the other, that is not to say that in market farming that hybrids don't have their place because they do, but when your talking about survival and self sustainability the open pollinated selections that are native to your area in which you live can provide you with years of guaranteed cropping backed up by the proof of their history and the fact that people found enough merit in those varieties to hold on to them past the time when modern hybrids and corporate agriculture were introduced.

Now, going back into survivalist mode, this is something that has been on my mind for years and was passed on to me through conversations with many old timers in my area as well as in Appalachian Kentucky. Any man, woman, or child in this world knows that history does and will repeat itself and anything that you can imagine happening that is dire has happened in the earths history and will again happen. The fact of the mater is the earth goes through cycles of destruction and productivity as does the universe. Civilizations rise and collapse over and over again and the amount of time that humans have existed here is very short indeed but we have survived for a few thousand years using information and education passed down by word of mouth and without the help of synthetics, government or big corporation force feeding their monetarily fueled propaganda down our throats.

So, in closing what I am getting to is that yes in fact I am often compared to Chicken Little and I do know that humanity cant survive and will not survive everything. But there is a lot of information in this world about survival that has been lost over the past 150 years of industrialization and if for some reason the system goes down there are a lot of folks that will band together in Raul areas and take care of one another in caring environments doing what they have to do to survive.

A few years ago you may remember the blackout on the east coast, let me ask you a question, what would have happened if those lights never came back on? What if that happened all over the country? What if as scientists are now theorizing space itself is "electric" and a start close to us goes supernova, say goodbye to all the computer systems and electrical systems keeping this country going and say hello to survival ism.

I do agree that humanity would not continue on as it is and yes many people will die and yes there will be wars and yes people without will be hunting for people with, but don't ever underestimate ancient knowledge of survival ism and what small communities will do to take care and protect one another.


I would rather be prepared for it to happen then to not be prepared and that's part of what I am working on here at Bishop's Homegrown.

Clarkbar, trust me, now is the time in my opinion to be thinking of exactly these sort of things.

respectfully my opinion.
-alan

For anyone interested in this sort of thing plese feel free to check out my blog where I posted the paper I based my speaking engagements of the past two days on.

[johno]

Time will tell, but Alan is right that it IS possible to sustain and feed the world with organic methods and open pollinated plants. There are organizations that have been experimenting with this thought for decades (mostly in third world countries) and it is panning out. Quite the opposite of what the big agribusinesses have been telling us for the past century, of course.

It boils down to which scenario will we (the world's population) buy into? One is sustainable, the other is not. Agribiz will prevail only as long as everyone goes along with them. There are choices to be made every time someone is asked to use the latest "improvement." That means, though, that farmers around the globe have to be educated on their choices, and shown how to make nature's way work to their economical advantage.

Bill is talking about the future population. But there is a limit to how many people the Earth can sustain, period. At some point no hybrid or GMO technology will be able to keep up, nor any OP's. But that's another story. My hope is that we figure out a way to stabilize our world population before Mother Nature does it for us.

And just because hybrids produce more bushels per acre doesn't mean they produce food with equal nutrition as the open pollinated plants they were bred from. (Same goes for GMO's.) There are studies being done on this as we speak (imagine how far along we'd be with organic "technology" if a hundred years of intensive R&D had been done in this area instead of with the alternative!) In other words, you might have to eat more of the X hybrid corn (for example) to get the same nutrition as eating less of one of it's parents. But as long as you don't know that, you'll either A) eat the same amount of the hi-tech food and not get enough nutrients, or B) buy more because your body tells you to eat more. It's a win-win situation for the companies that develop and sell these foods. You lose, either way.

As with everything, there are exceptions, of course.

Alan hit on the idea that OP's that are adapted to the area in which they are grown perform well against hybrids. You can't expect a Siberian plant to perform well in the tropics, and vice-versa, as an extreme example of the point. If you expect OP's to produce well, they usually must be adapted to your environment. By the same token, it would only be fair (and productive/sensible) to compare adapted OP's with adapted hybrids.

GMO's should still be isolated in biodomes for long term health effects studies. (Studies on rats, etc., that have shown detrimental health effects have been ignored by the FDA and some foreign approval agencies.) Instead, we are the rats. It's expensive to develop GMO's, so the companies that pay for their development have to (want to) get them on the market ASAP to get profits rolling in to pay for them. That's just the way it works. Who knows, in the long run this may be the way our population dwindles to sustainable levels?

I'm not entirely against hybrids, though. They are a good way to create improved or new OP varieties. Also, as I said, there are exceptions. Some F1's are just too good to leave behind. But, with any hybrid, you must also maintain the parents. If the S*** hits the fan, we'll most likely still remember how to make hybrids, I just don't know if it will be efficient enough to bother with.

[PapaVic]

I keep seeing references to your blog, Alan ... but I can't find a link.

Bill

[Alan]

Sorry Bill, I meant to post the link here earlier and forgot to, I had it posted in the member links and blogs section and sort of took that for granted, anyhow, here it is:

homegrowngoodness.blogspot.com

I hope you don't take my reply the wrong way, it's just some things I've been thinking on lately and the misconceptions that have been touted for so long by the big conglomerate agri-business companies.

[PapaVic]

Alan,

Believe me, man, I don't take your opinion or your approach to horticulture and life the wrong way at all. I respect what you're doing very much and wish you all the luck in the world. Same with C-bar and Johno. Hell's Bells ... I was young and idealistic, even optimistic, years ago. Just got old and cynical along the way. Y'all keep the faith.

Bill

[Alan]

Thanks Bill I apreciate it friend.

[grunt]

In light of the fact that we have something over 10,000 recognized varieties of tomatoes (hybrid and OP), and they all come from just 8 original strains, I'd say we are stuck with both, unless every gardener/farmer starts doing adequate segregation to keep crossing down. We call them crosses, when they occur by accident in the garden, but they are just unintentional hybrids. The only thing I have against hybrids, is not being able to save seed from them, and get the same thing again next time. I have 3 "accidental hybrids" that showed up in my tomato patch this year, and will be trying hard to get them stabilized in the form they showed themselves in.
As for the likelihood of all the fans in the world taking on a brown tinge, I (like most of us, I think) waffle and hope. I sometimes feel like it's a sure thing, and sometimes don't think anything like the 30's (or worse) can happen again. And I always hope that the latter is the case. All of us seed savers IMHO, regardless of what we say we feel about the possibility, are acting as if the former will be the case. My seedbanking is an example of this. And my seed trading/sharing is an attempt to make my seedbanking an act of futility. I'm working very hard at making my seedbank useless.
The whole topic of agribiz is one I would as soon not start on. To a certain extent, we absolutely have to have them. Some of the things they are doing or trying to do, are absolutely unconscionable, and I just realized I'm getting into what I said I wouldn't start on. So I won't. Shutting down now, before I really start to run off at the fingers.
Cheers
Dan

[Alan]

See, that's what I love about our forum, we are all able to talk about very important issues with very differing opinions and still be able to respect one another while doing so, that is something that we have going on here that is rare all around the internet on most message boards. I would like to thank everyone in the soapbox over the past few days of intense posting for keeping everything so civil.

[canadamike]

Alan
I kind of vote on your side. And I would like to point out what Johno said about places in S_America and Africa where OP seeds can beat hybrid. I talked to you about John Jeavons once. Bountiful Gardens, out of California, is devoted to develop techniques and strategies for small farmers around the world.

Their work is also published in french, for it is a very important language in east Africa, and spanish, for south america. They are very active in both places. Google Bountiful Gardens OR JOHN jEAVONS and get some books. It is fascinating. They can double or triple many crops AND augment the CREATION of humus by 400%. iT IS BASED ON FRENCH INTENSIVE GARDENING, albeit inventively re-visited by J.Jeavons.