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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!hao!kpno!ut-sally!riddle
From: riddle@ut-sally.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.garden
Subject: Re: seed shortage?
Message-ID: <16@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-Sep-83 11:33:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.16
Posted: Mon Sep 26 11:33:40 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Sep-83 00:08:25 EDT
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 43


     As more of an admirer of the beautiful gardens of others than a
serious gardener myself, I almost hesitate to contribute to this newsgroup. 
I hope that this results in the comments of some of you who know more about 
the subject than I do.

     I haven't heard anything about a seed shortage per se, but I have
heard that there may soon be a real shortage in the diversity of seed
v a r i e t i e s  available both to gardeners and farmers.  The fear is
that the seed industry is controlled more and more by a few concerns
which are in turn owned by giants with a strong interest in the chemical
pesticide and fertilizer industries.  This means that they aren't inter-
ested in selling seeds suited to organic techniques.  In addition, more
and more varieties of fruits and vegetables are subject to something
akin to a copyright or a patent, generally in the hands of the big seed
companies, so that smaller operators can't propagate and sell the seeds
they are interested in.

     All of this is related to the more general question of biological
diversity in domestic plants.  Prior to modern horticultural techniques,
the seed stocks used by farmers in societies all over the world were
much more genetically diverse than they are today.  One of the goals of
a breeder of plants is to come up with pure strains carrying desirable
characteristics in the hope that every germinating seed will yield an
identically big, hardy, tasty plant.  Unfortunately, when this is combined
with monocrop farming where huge plots of land are planted with a single
crop, the result is an open invitation to a well-adapted parasite.
Therefore we have an even greater dependence on pesticides, herbicides,
and other chemicals designed to offset the side effects of the -icides.
The monotone nature of the resulting ecosystem means that the few wild
species of plants and animals which are suited to it reach plague-like
proportions while the bulk of the rest are snuffed out.  In addition, 
interest in a narrow range of domesticated seed stocks means the extinc-
tion of all the others: for a crop plant, of course, an end to culti-
vation means an end to its existence.  The issue is one of serious con-
cern to environmentalists and biologists who fear that we may come to
rue the day when we sacrificed the diversity of the plant world for a
short-term string of bumper crops.

                                    -- Prentiss Riddle
                                       {ihnp4,ut-ngp}!ut-sally!riddle
                                       riddle@ut-sally.UUCP