The tomatoes we eat today are the most altered fresh food we serve at the table. The original tomato that arrived in Europe 400 years ago, pomodoro (golden apple), has now become large and red and has the highest dissatisfaction rating of any vegetable.
The heyday of breeding vegetables for gardeners ceased in the 1950s. The financial advantages of hybrid plant breeding for global commerce took over and continues to this day, that’s why corporately funded molecular biologists have replaced public plant breeding almost entirely.
Using secret hybridisation processes, the highly aromatic soft fruit we grow at home has been transformed into a slow ripening, rock-hard fruit capable of bouncing off the supermarket floor. Bottom line hybrid plant breeding only thrives because it’s unlabelled.
There is no special biological advantage to self-pollinating hybrids such as tomatoes, only a huge transfer of wealth and power to a few multi-national seed companies.
When you buy supermarket hybrids you are effectively voting for commercial agriculture, synthetic chemicals and huge CO2 pollution. By displacing home grown heirlooms with hybrids we have lost ownership and control of our seeds. Our seeds have become incorporated. So complete is the dominance of multi-nationals that they view the growing of heirlooms from seed that they don’t own as a threat.
Join the Diggers heirloom movement to not only grow better food for your family but to win back control of our future –
our seeds. Let’s un-incorporate them!