Inernational Seed Issues

[Jack Kloppenburg]

Seedy Friends,
Think local, think global! Act local, act global!
Maybe time to bring international issues in front of the Forum.
I've been working on this stuff for a long time. Lots and lots to say.
Most recently, I've been working with farmers in Kenya on a constitutional challenge to the Kenyan seed law that actually criminalizes the sharing and breeding and sales of farmer-developed varieties.
Check this out:
https://defendingpeasantsrights.org/en/kenyan-farmers-challenge-the-constitutionality-of-seed-law/

If people want to hear more about this and related topics, I can oblige.
Want to know about open source initiatives in other countries(Germany, Italy, Kenya, Argentina)? Want to know why farmers-developed varieties are illegal in the European Union unless they are included on the Common Seed Catalog? Want to know what in the world is the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture? Want to know what the Nagoya Protocol is and how it affects access to seeds in the USDA germplasm collections?

Got stuff you'd like to know more about? Let me know. 

Cheers to all.

Jack

[Tim DH]

Hi Jack,
   Where are you based?
   Here in England we had some laws about seed, introduced a few years ago, which looked like they were going to be a problem. I seem to remember one supplier, Real Seeds (https://www.realseeds.co.uk/) used to have a 'work around' where you paid 1p to become a member. I think this meant that they were then technically not selling to the general public, so exempt from the law! I can find no reference to this practice on their website now. So I guess everyone, from the top down, just ignores the law. (Real Seeds are a government registered seed merchant.)

   In practice, as far as I'm aware, the only law around growing things which is actually policed is the prohibition on growing Cabbabis sativa.

Tim DH

[Jack Kloppenburg]

Hi Tim,
Sorry for the delayed response. My CPU heat sink/fan failed and it took me a couple of days to get my computer back up! I am in Madison, Wisconsin, USA and am a long-time analyst of seed issues. 

The restrictive seed laws that I referenced in the article on Kenya are modeled on the EU practice. In the EU, no seeds may be legally sold (in substantial quantity) unless they are of a variety listed in the "Common Catalog." To be approved for the catalog, these cultivars must be "distinct, uniform, and stable" (DUS) and they must undergo testing for "value in cultivation and use" (VCU). These and other rules have greatly constrained the breeding and marketing activities of any but established and large seed companies. Only a few small companies like Real (which is an OSSI Seed Partner, by the way) operate in the EU, and the do indeed - as you point out - operate under the radar. Recent push-back on the EU seed laws is crating a little more space for "conservation varieties" and organic varieties, but there are still very substantial limits on the volumes that are permitted to be sold.

By contrast, the USA - ironically - has VERY strong IPR/patent laws, but has NO common catalog/national list, NO requirement for variety registration, NO DUS or VCU requirements and very simple and cheap requirements for selling and marketing seed. That is why OSSI thrives and why there are so many small, independent seed companies in the USA and so many independent /freelance breeders.

Of course, the UK has left the EU, and this opens space for a change to the UK's seed laws. Will that happen? I don't know. To stay up with what is happening in the UK, check out
Seed Sovereignty - https://www.seedsovereignty.info/
For what is happening in the EU more generally, check out
Let's Liberate Diversity - https://liberatediversity.org/
Arche Noah - https://www.arche-noah.at/english/
Association for Plant Breeding for he Benefit of Society (APBREBES)- https://www.apbrebes.org/

All of those organizations are have the same overall objective that OSSI does: FREE THE SEED!

Cheers,

Jack

[Steph S]

Hi Jack,

The biggest international seed issue on the table for me right now are the restrictions on sharing seed across borders, and specifically tomatoes.   This problem has arisen in the past couple of years due to the new virus Tomato Brown Fruit Rugose virus, which caused restrictions to be put on import of seed.

I have two sibling tomato varieties that are now past F7 so reasonably stable, and wanted to pledge them and distribute through the (never for money) seed network that I'm a part of and which is centered in the USA.  There are a couple of reasons I haven't started the pledge process - one is the international distribution issue, and the second is that our summers have radically changed in the past 3 years, and new problems that is disease issues specifically Early Blight which was never a serious problem when temperatures rarely reached 30C, and if they did it was over in a week at most, allowing the plants to recover.  So conditions have not been ideal for producing a large batch of seed, even if I could distribute it through my usual channels.  This summer I'm doing trials for EB resistance, hosting some visitor varieties bred for disease resistance, and doing some tentative crosses although I don't know yet if these plants are actually more resistant to EB than my own.  However after turning it over in my mind many times, I know the Skipper and the Rodney are core to my work, bringing earliness, cold tolerance, some shade tolerance (cloudy dark place) as well as being selected for great taste and non-red color.  They were always intended as breeding material, with the potential to bring good basic traits including taste and earliness, some shape genes, etc.  So I want to pledge and distribute these.

If not for the heat-related blight issues, I would've already talked to the CFIA and come up with a budget/plan to get them tested for ToBRFv or whatever the acronym is, and what is required to make a one time seed batch that is allowed into the US and to the network where people will grow out the seeds.

Meanwhile (and just to make this a longer more gnarly post!) I've been turned away from the post office after some very unpleasant arguments involving a large binder full of rules, to deny me postal service on vegetable seeds of any kind, to fellow breeders in the UK, Europe and USA.  It's become a giant hassle, which was previously a common courtesy between breeders.

I realize that there are reasons for rules, and that asking for seed to be screened for disease is a norm among exchanges for professional breeders which is perfectly acceptable.  However it becomes onerous for independent breeders who are doing this for the love of it and not supported by large institutions with formal protocols and budgets for the exchange of their seed with someone else.

Probably a fool question, but, is there anything that could be done to facilitate international exchange of breeding material for the free seed network.

[Steph S]

Just wanted to add a tiny rant about rules.

The strict rules on virus testing (and or weeds seed content) properly apply to large seed lots intended for commercial grows.  This makes perfect sense.  You do not want a large commercial grow of virus (or weed) infected material, which renders the food growing area contaminated with virus.  All of the language and the requirements for testing apply to large seed lots for commercial grows.  As they should.

What we need is some language that acknowledges the stewardship of gardeners/independent breeders who are not at all likely to cause virus infestations, more especially because every plant is getting the individual attention (if the seeds passed muster) and anything virus infested would be spotted and rogued.  These rules are not intended for us but they do affect us.

It is a fact that our food supply is not tested for virus.  I may be more likely to get the latest V by composting a bad pepper than I am by exchanging seeds, nationally or internationally.

The rules do not support "free the seed" ethics.   
"Free the Seed" has to apply to everyone who grows vegetables, not only to some big farm enterprise.

[Tim DH]

Steph is right about the stupidity of the regulations. Think about the huge HUGE amount of tomatoes shipped around by Supermarkets. There is a much higher probability of virus crossing borders by that means than by any other form of seed packaging!

I spent about eighteen months trying to get my hands on some viable Japanese Citrus seeds. Finally, the solution was to buy some very expensive fruit from a specialist green grocer.

Some of my Yuzu & Sudachi seedlings below.

[Jack Kloppenburg]

Thanks, Steph and Tim.

Yeah, just as the EU-style registration of varieties for national "lists" is an obstacle for freelance breeders, so are phytosanitary regulations also often an obstacle, especially for international exchanges. An example is the way in which the wonderful Dwarf Tomato Project's USA-Australia collaborative breeding activities (https://www.dwarftomatoproject.net/)have been seriously reduced by enhanced enforcement of seed exchanges. Yes. Steph, I've often thought that the exchange of "freed seed" between open source seed initiatives could be useful not just for enhancing breeding diversity, but as a concrete action to publicize freeing the seed.

Of course, for changing the rules, you have to get organized and lobby the relevant government. Not easy. but maybe we can make a start. I've think that there are MANY small seed companies, freelance breeders, and seed activist groups that are not now well connected and that we ought to be more than the sum of our parts. Together we might be able to change some things. Last Tuesday a bunch of people got together here in Madison, Wisconsin, to discuss creating a coalition to do just that. Our target is putting things together for a large meeting at the February 2025 Organic Seed Growers Conference in Portland, OR. I'll report more on this as it develops.

So that's for North America. For UK, I'd suggest that Tim get in touch with the UK Seed Sovereignty folks -  https://www.seedsovereignty.info/.

Jack