In article ,
"tstovall" wrote:
"Billy" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"tstovall" wrote:
Does anyone know of a mail order source to buy a varieity of vegetable
open
pollinated seeds. I am wanting them for my 'just in case peak oil is
true'
kit.
Thank you,
Tom
"Peak Oil" isn't going to be like a door being slammed shut. There will
be a long period where we are lied to, while prices go up and up. We
will be encouraged to keep consuming, keep creating debt, buy till it
hurts because we are America and our way of life is a beacon to the rest
of the world. We will be told that peak oil just requires more tax
breaks to oil companies for exploratory drilling. Then we will,
unexpectedly, hit the wall.
Meanwhile, you want heirloom plants.
It's easy to see the prices going up and up. The peak may have already
occurred. Crude in 2000 was 28 USD a bbl. 2004 it was 54. 2008 is yet to
come and go, but so far a bbl is up to 137. It's getting harder to ignore
the impact of more demand than supply and that will continue to worsen with
China and the other developing nations industrializing at a rapid rate as
well as the earth's population continuing to increase.
And, the government does nothing and doesn't even educate its citizens of
the impending dangers of a society run by oil, when oil production continues
to decrease. The easy oil is in decline. It will get more expensive to get
less.
With the disasters in health care, credit, the profit-making
war-machine, oil, housing, nutrition (obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular
disease), energy, and honesty in the media (I'm sure I left some out),
it makes you wish that we had politicians with our interests in mind.
(I'd like to remind everyone that the tightening of bankruptcy laws
preceded the credit crunch by three years. Obviously, someone is keeping
an eye on us).
Meanwhile, I want heirloom plants. Yes, I thought I asked that question on
the correct NG.
You bring attitude and you shall receive attitude. YOU asked for open
pollenated plants. Gary Woods responding post told you to avoid F1 and
hybrids and I was making sure you understood that open pollinated
and heirloom were the same thing. Where are you taking umbrage? I also
believe that you asked in the correct news group but you still need eyes
to see, ears to hear, and a brain to understand.
There are things that individuals can do to help themselves
when the fabric of our civilization changes and one of the most important
safeguards would be for those that can grow, to have heirloom seeds to sow
and save from year to year and to leave to the next generation.
I hope I don't offend your sensibilities, if I mention that saving seed
that comes true requires separating similar plants, sometimes by quite a
distance. Planting seed from a zucchini that was grown next to a
crookneck, or a pattypan, probably won't come true. Same with corn and
many other plants. I'll even further risk offending your sensibilities
by recommending "Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for
Vegetable Gardeners" by Suzanne Ashworth, and Kent Whealy.
http://www.amazon.com/Seed-Growing-T...deners/dp/1882
424581/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212161574&sr= 1-1
Tell me, please, why you think this is trivial?
Pray, my little friend, what ever gave you that notion?
Citation please.
Tom
p.s. thank you all who gave me places to buy heirloom seeds!
They have, like, this neat search engine now, ya know, called "Google".
If you can find your web browser (it will be called something like
"Internet Explorer", "Opera", "Safari",or "Firefox", ya know;-). There
will be a little window marked "Google", or go to
www.google.com and
type in "heirloom seeds, purchase".
Then comes, like, the hard part, ya know.
You need to, like, pick the ones that, ya know, you want;o) Maybe, like,
you could ask the newsgroup what vegetables you like. Cool huh?
Sorry, if I offended your sensibilities, but sometimes
I' a wee cranky after my first cup of coffee.
You might find "The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America's
Underground Food Movements" by Sandor Ellix Katz to be of interest.
(The following is an excerpt from pages 44 and 45.)
Dependence upon ever-growing corporate entities for something as
basic as seed is not pretty. Alfonso Romo Garza, the billionaire who
masterminded the consolidation of Seminis prior to its sale to
Monsanto, bragged to the Wall Street Journal: ³Seeds are software.
And we have the seeds.²(1) That would now make Monsanto the
Microsoft of food. Do we really want to be that dependent on a single
corporation for our ³ operating system"?
Monsanto and the nine next largest seed corporations control more
than half of the world's commercial seed supply.(2) ³ What you are seeing
is not just a consolidation of seed companies," explains Robb Fraley,
Monsanto's executive vice president and chief technology officer, ³ it's
really a consolidation of the entire food chain.²(3) Fedco
(
http://www.fedcoseeds.com/) decided to
drop Monsanto's seeds and announced in its 2006 catalog that the company
was ³ getting off the seed grid. . . .We do so because Monsanto
epitomizes the road down which we no longer choose to go ... the road
that leads to our complete surrender of control of our seed and
therefore of control of our food system."
Expansion of the legal concept of intellectual property underlies
corporate control of seeds. Intellectual property law deals with
proprietary interests in innovations such as inventions, as well as
abstractions such as words, ideas, sounds, and images. Over the past few
decades, laws around the world have been rewritten to protect the
intellectual property rights of plant breeders, allowing breeds to be
patented and constraining ways in which farmers may sell, trade, give
away, and even plant saved seeds. ³ Quite clearly a monopolistic patent
regime cannot be established as long as farmers have the alternative of
their own zero cost, reliable, time-tested, high-value seeds of their
traditional varieties of indigenous agro-biodiversity," points out
Vandana Shiva.(4) What has traditionally been viewed as a natural
right-saving seed as an integral element of local agricultural
practice-is being transformed by globalizing corporate interests into a
legally granted (or denied) privilege.
In order to prevent farmers from ³ cheating" the patent holders by
saving and replanting seed, the seed industry, in cooperation with the
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), has developed what is known
as ³ terminator" technology, seeds that generate self-sterilizing plants.
The disclosure of this technology in 1998 created an international furor.
For now, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity has
imposed an international moratorium on terminator technology, but it
has been repeatedly challenged.(5) The technology exists, and those who
stand to profit from it are likely to persist.
³ Biotechnology essentially aims to eliminate sexuality as a means of
passing on genetic material," contends Peter Lamborn Wilson. ³ Capital
has now reached the theoretical stage of commodifying the life process
itself. The principle of intellectual ownership of nature-the final
enclosure-seems to have become the basis for the global world order
and its economy.²(6)
Increasingly, national governments and other, even less accountable,
international regulatory institutions have been imposing plant-breed
protection laws that deny the traditional right to perpetuate seed. . .
footnotes
1. Quoted in Nabhan, Coming Home to Eat, 149.
2. ETC Group, "Global Seed Industry Concentration-2005," Communique 90
(September/October 2005),
www.etcgroup.org/article.asp ?newsid=524.
3. Heike Ferrie, "Schmeiser vs. Monsanto,"
http://percyschmeiser.com/Ferrie.htm..
4. Vandana Shiva, "The Indian Seed Act and Patent Act: Sowing the Seeds
of
Dictatorship" (February 14, 2005), Znet,
www.zmag.org/content/prinLarticle. cfn'i?itemID=7249§ionID=56.
5. ETC Group, "Canadian Government to Unleash Terminator Bombshell at
UN Meeting: All-out Push for Commercialisation of Sterile Seed
Technology"
(February 7, 2005),
www.etcgroup.org/article.asppnewsids498
6. Wilson, "Avant Gardening," 17.
7. Stephen Leahy, "Canada: Monsanto Victory Plants Seed of Privatisation"
(October 5, 2004), Inter Press Service,
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp ?idnews=25740.
8. Shiva, "The Indian Seed Act and Patent Act: Sowing the Seeds of
Dictatorship."
9. Coalition Against Biopiracy, "Captain Hook Awards for Biopiracy 2006,"
www.captainhookawards.org/winners/2006_pirates, accessed June 21, 2006.
10. ETC Group, "Whatever Happened to the Enola Bean Patent Challenge?"
(December 21, 2005),
www.etcgroup.org/documents/GenotypeEnola05.pdf .
Now I'm waiting on the library to take a closer look at "Seed to Seed:
Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners" by Suzanne
Ashworth and Kent Whealy. There may be no other choice, except for the
"terminator" gene.
http://www.amazon.com/Seed-Growing-T...deners/dp/1882
424581/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200082197&sr= 1-1
--
Billy
Bush Behind Bars
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