Every seed merchant prospers by selling highly priced hybrid seed that they now own which replaces open-pollinated heirloom seed, that we all own, with a low profit margin.
So the movement back to growing heirlooms represents a threat to their bottom line.
George Ball, the latest owner of America’s oldest and best known packet seed company, Burpee Seeds, is part of the immensely successful hybrid seed and plant breeding family company, Ball Seed. He wrote in the New York Times “….however as any astute gardener will tell you the benefits of the modern hybrid over the older variety are like those of a modern car over a 1918 Model T."
George is like many Americans, obsessed with modernity and has just released the first seedless tomato. When it comes to the car comparisons, the Model-T is actually more fuel-efficient than many of the modern American cars abandoned during the global financial crisis. So fashion changes and millions of Americans are returning to heirlooms in protest to the corporatisation of their food. Growing an heirloom tomato in America is now a subversive activity. What could be more threatening to the corporate world than growing our own food from seed they don’t own?
When Diggers conducted trials of heirlooms and hybrid tomatoes we found that hybrids developed for global food systems and pest prone monocultures were inferior for growing in backyards when compared for yield, flavour and length of harvest. The modern hybrid is so altered it is like comparing chalk with cheese.