Your Guide To Green

"All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today". Unknown Author

"We really don't know how long seeds can last," explains seed expert Bill McDorman. "But we know for sure that they can last many decades. There are actually reports that a handful of Kamut (a grain) seeds found in a Pyramid in Egypt from 3,000 years ago were planted and now are growing gluten-free kamut. And blue corn seeds discovered in an old clay bowl, thought to be hundreds of years old, grew a good crop of blue corn."

Preserving seeds has become a passion for McDorman, President of Seeds Trust Inc. and High Altitude Gardens, who says, "It is a timeless ritual and one of the most fundamental things humans have ever done. Beyond that it is just magical."

For approximately 10,000 years individual gardeners and farmers created and sustained our rich genetic heritage according to McDorman. "Now gardeners and farmers can play an important role in helping to preserve this genetic diversity by learning to save their own seeds from varieties that perform best in their own mini-ecosystems. This will assure diversity in the same the way that diversity was promoted and protected instinctively throughout the history of agriculture."

Encouraging all farmers and gardeners to collect and save their seeds, McDorman also cautions them about purchasing strictly organic seeds. "Nearly 99 percent of all seeds are not organic, so if people decide they will buy only organic seeds they actually will be helping to destroy 99 percent of the diversity."

He recommends buying what you want to grow and growing it in an organic manner, completely without chemical treatment. In other words, McDorman says, "Don't' throw the baby out with the bath water. We need to do both - preserve genetic diversity and make every effort to grow organic." Explaining that it is not difficult, McDorman suggests starting the process by saving seeds from your favorite self-pollinating plants. "Most people enjoy working with the seeds from tomatoes, beans, lettuce, peppers and peas." He goes on to emphasize the importance of everyone doing their small part "because saving seeds and growing our own food is the only real food security we have."

In a quiet, non-threatening demeanor McDorman lays out his concerns, "In just one generation, we are on the verge of losing much of the agricultural diversity it took humankind 10,000 years to create. As late as 1900, food for the planet's hungry was provided by as many as 1,500 different plants, each was further represented by thousands of different cultivated varieties. Today more than 90 percent of the world's nutrition is provided by just 30 different plants and only four (wheat, rice, corn and soybeans) provide 75 percent of the calories consumed by man. Where once diverse strains strengthened each local ecosystem, currently, a handful of 'green revolution', super-hybrid varieties are 'mono-cropping' farms and gardens worldwide."

Narrowing the options like this creates a vulnerability issue. McDorman explains that because diseases or pests eventually attack individual varieties, the strength of any ecosystem is a function of its diversity . He notes, "If one variety of potato is planted, as was done in Ireland in the mid 1800's, the result is likely to be its loss. The Irish potato famine could have been averted if many different varieties of potatoes had been planted. In 1970, fifty percent of a genetically uniform corn crop in the Southern United States, worth more than a billion dollars, was lost to a single disease. Today potatoes are grown in Ireland and corn in the Southern United States because disease-resistant varieties were found and planted and it is vital to continue this process."

Botanists often look for varieties resistant to new diseases in the Vavilov centers or, according to McDorman, "centers of genetic diversity," where our food crops once originated. These centers around the world are now being planted with the same handful of "green revolution" hybrids. For example he explains, "The genetic center for wheat found in Turkey is in danger of being planted completely with hybrids by the end of the decade. Thousands of native and heirloom wheat varieties are disappearing and will be unavailable to botanists looking for varieties resistant to the plant diseases of the future. The modern world is facing the prospect of feeding the hungry billions with a genetically uniform agriculture and little or no diversity to sustain it."

McDorman's personal answer to the problem of disappearing genetic diversity in agriculture was opening Seeds Trust, Inc., in 1984 in Ketchum, Idaho. "It was a conservative, long-term plan to help support and increase the priceless diversity now being squandered." The company has relocated to Northern Arizona and is well known for its Siberian tomato varieties and its drought-tolerant, native landscape focus. His High Altitude Gardens company is devoted to sustainable agriculture and preserving the genetic diversity of crop plants as well as native grasses and wildflower seeds.

For more information on collecting, and storing seeds visit www.seedstrust.com