David made four lecture tours to Australia after sending us hundreds of previously unknown varieties to trial, and Dr Will Truman implemented more than 500 Australian trials over a 3-year period up at our farm in Seymour.
The corporate seed owners of modern seeds would claim that heirlooms don't have the disease resistance of modern varieties. Well, of the 200 varieties of tomatoes we trialled, only one succumbed to disease, which amazed those in the seed trade who continually parrot the view that heirlooms don't have the resistance of modern hybrids. The absurdity of this statement becomes clear on reflection.
Firstly: where did the genes of modern varieties come from if not from these original varieties?
Secondly: heirloom varieties, being perhaps 100-200 generations old (because annuals need to be sown year after year), have survived adverse growing conditions over a far greater number of generations than modern varieties.
Thirdly: the disease resistance needed by modern varieties needs to be extraordinary because modern agriculture is based on monoculture-style growing systems, while plants thrive in biodiverse systems, and so pests and disease spread rapidly in such unnatural conditions.
The alarming point about the film Seed: The Untold Story is that the avaricious nature of the American seed industry goes back more than 120 years. This group introduced the first public relations lobbyists that now contaminate our political process.
These lobbyists paved the way for corporate food processors who corrupt our food supply and threaten our health; processed foods not found in nature with high-sugar, high-fat ingredients that are the cause of the obesity crisis. These multinationals won't self-regulate and it needs a massive, unified force of consumer disgust to even obtain honest labelling.
These are the companies that produce fruit juices removing the most important ingredient — fibre — and adding sugar. They so alter our most precious food, milk, that there are now more than 15 different types: low fat, high fat, high calcium, skinny, condensed, full cream, light, A2, organic, powdered, baby formula, etc.
In the last 20 years corporations have taken complete control of our food supply. We, the consumers (who are no longer the growers), are the only species in history to lose control over our food supply and still survive — but for how long?
Gardeners taking back control
The rescue of pure, publicly owned seeds, the only food choices not contaminated by corporatism, is gaining pace.
In 1991 Diggers made contact with the SSE in Iowa and began a life-long crusade to restore heirloom varieties for Australian gardeners.
Seed catalogues that continue the rescue
Seed Savers Exchange, USA
Kent Whealy cofounded the Seed Savers network that became the source of most of Diggers’ unique heirlooms (Clive Blazey is an honorary advisor). The catalogue is an amazing record of varieties the American immigrants brought with them that succeeded after generations of families adapted them.
Baker Creek, USA
A pioneer seed explorer who has, over the last 20 years, sought out heirlooms from forgotten peasant cultures, as well as including Seed Savers Exchange varieties.
Baumaux Seeds, France
This catalogue has a huge collection of seeds, hybrid and heirloom, as well as plants and ornamentals. Not driven by any heirloom rescue zeal, but it does keep these varieties alive.