Message-ID: <s535edf5.011@crs.loc.gov> Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 11:39:11 -0400 From: Jonathan Sanford <mailto:JSANFORD@CRS.LOC.GOV> Subject: A Seedy Business -Reply To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
Mother Jones is quick to suspect a conspiracy to fleece the public when it condemns the invention of one-generation seeds. It is true that farmers have traditionally saved some of the seed from one year to plant the following year. This is a good practice when one has a stable seed that is well adapted to local conditions. However, the advent of hybrid seeds renders this practice untrustworthy and potentially dangerous. When hybrid seeds pollinate each other, they produce a wide variety of offspring. Some of these may be great seeds; others will be disasters. Farmers who save these seeds to plant are taking a gamble. They don't know what the next year's crop will be like. And they don't know what kind of new seed they are producing if they continue this practice year after year. The resulting crop may be less desirable and less abundant than either the original hybrid seed or the traditiona seed it replaced.Obviously, Mother Jones doesn't tend her own garden. Otherwise she'd know these things from reading the seed packages.
Jon Sanford