Plant selection goes hand in hand with population growth. When man first domesticated
plants 8000 years ago he kept the earliest, the best yielding and the most disease-resistant strains for planting back the next season. This unbroken chain of evolutionary improvement has provided us with well-adapted regional strains of vegetables, now called garden heirlooms, which are incredibly productive, for all our culinary and cultural needs.
Depending upon our English forebears for culinary vegetables has given us one of the poorest inheritances a country could have. William Robinson, a famous English gardener, wrote in the introduction to the classic Vilmorin book The Vegetable Garden, 1885: ‘We are meat eaters because our fathers had little to eat… Men killed and cooked; there was little else worth eating. A few generations only have passed since our most common vegetables came from the continent … The vegetable kingdom is usually represented by a mass of ill-smelling cabbage and sodden potato.'
Fortunately, recent immigrants from Europe and Asia have enriched our choice, bringing seeds of their favorite peppers, eggplants and herbs with them. It was not until our exposure to the 12,000 varieties under cultivation at Seed Savers Exchange in the USA, that we realised the poverty of our vegetable inheritance. Varieties that have been grown for hundreds of years in America never reached our shores. American groups such as Seed Savers exchange, who preserve our garden inheritance, are surprised heirloom seeds are a new introduction to Australia. For what's new is old.
At the turn of the 20th century most families grew their own vegetables and fruit – we knew what we were eating because we grew it ourselves – but as people moved from the country to the city, more and more began to buy food rather than grow it themselves. Specialised growers, who were market-orientated, sprang up close to the cities and chose higher-yielding varieties for commercial sale. The profit motive became, for the first time, the major criterion for plant improvement.
It was the advent of supermarkets and refrigeration after 1950 that swung the balance from consumer-chosen strains to producer-driven ones. Out-of-season crops such as tomatoes, capsicums and melons were grown in warmer climates and shipped thousands of kilometres. New strains with tougher skins were bred to slow the ripening process and increase shelf life.
The new supermarket tomato, for instance, had to be both box and contents so flavour and freshness were sacrificed for shelf life and texture! Plant breeders convinced themselves that ‘new equals improved', so the older standard varieties disappeared as new hybrids took over.
In meeting the particular needs of supermarket vegetables, hybrids became so altered as to be almost useless for gardeners. Gardeners want early crops and late crops and continuity in between, but above all, tasty crops. Industrial agriculture wants crops that can be harvested all at once and shipped without loss over long distances. What garden writers often don't realise is that hybrids rely on the genes of heirlooms, including those for early harvest and disease resistance. It is also totally unjustified to pay a premium price for seed that was never designed for the needs of gardeners.
Most seed breeders and scientists are convinced that hybridistaion does mean an improvement, and they invariably say, ‘But old varieties have no disease resistance', as if bio technologists could invent the gene! Of the 200 heirloom tomatoes we have grown, we have had only one crop failure. If heirlooms were susceptible to disease, they obviously wouldn't out yield hybrids in trials! Heirlooms have developed disease resistance over hundreds of years of selection; the weakest failing and the strongest succeeding, as it is with all biological life. It stands to reason that the newest hybrid varieties have had less time to adapt, and so have less ability to succeed through decades of climate change. Because mono cropping is such an unnatural growing process, modern varieties are more prone to pest attack, whereas a bio diverse backyard is virtually pest free.
Multinational seed breeders colonise seed in the name of hybrids or Genetically Engineered Organisms, so when gardeners buy commercial hybrids they are transferring their biological inheritance at a huge price. The story of heirloom vegetables is not ‘nostalgia in edible form'; they deserve to be grown because they are clearly the best performers in the garden. Many of the world's finest gardens are more than 400 years old and we would be wise to be cynical about any ‘Johnny-come-lately' seed breeder claiming that new is better. Modern seed breeders have a vested interest in ignoring the past, so they perpetuate the myth of hybrid superiority.
Today, only four per cent of the food grown in Australia comes from our own backyards. Economic rationalism has almost destroyed the wonderful biological diversity of our heirloom garden seeds. The food we buy might look the same as the food we grow, but it has unprecedented amounts of synthetic fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides. All these changes to our food have been forced upon us; we, as consumers, have never been consulted.
The advent of genetically engineered food (GE) is a revolutionary change to our food that offers no nutritional improvement, but is designed specifically to increase the profitability and market power of global seed and chemical companies. This second producer-driven change will see the incorporation of pesticides and herbicides within the DNA of the new food. If the ingredients and chemicals were properly labelled, like our processed food, some would be defined as pesticides.
Heirloom varieties are a gardener's inheritance. We don't need new varieties, because we have an inheritance 100 times as rich and diverse as the commercial market. Heirloom varieties are not fragile or exclusive, but available to all, and are capable of better yields and earlier crops than commercial hybrids.
We encourage you to grow them and become part of a vital preservation campaign. You will be growing not only the tastiest vegetables in the healthiest way, but you will retain control of your food, which is as essential to us as pure air and clean water.
Seeds are the basis on which our lives depend. We will promote their diversity and free availability, and fight all attempts to own or destroy our inheritance of open pollinated heirloom seeds.
We oppose genetically engineered seeds that promote the use of chemicals. We support sustainable agriculture.