Amy Greenwell Garden Hosts Seed Exchange in June
Eia Ke Ano Mua…Eia Ke Ano Hope - The Seed is First…The Seed is Last
Captain Cook, HI… The 5 th Annual Hawai’i Island Seed Exchange will be held at the Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden in Captain Cook, Hawai‘i, on Saturday, June 16, 2007 , from 8 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. This yearly event is a way for farmers and gardeners island-wide to share saved seed, cuttings, roots, hulis, and plants of food crops that do well in their home gardens and farms. Admission is free.
This year we “honor” air and its role in agriculture and human life. Dr. Elizabeth Tam, Chair of UH School of Medicine , and Meterologist Barry Neal will speak on “What’s in our air?” along with our expert farmer panel who will connect air and agriculture. Ken Love and the Tropical Fruit Growers will display, host a tasting, and speak about “Growing Tropical Fruit From Seed.” Alvin Yoshinaga, Seed Ecologist at UH Manoa, will speak on “Home Seed Saving-The Basics.” Kumu Keala Ching will once again guide our opening ceremony that will begin at 8:30am .
Attendees are encouraged to bring an “offering” of fruits or vegetables from your garden to share following the ceremony. Newcomers to gardening are welcome. The entire community is encouraged to participate in the “Seed Festival” to promote biodiversity, local food security, and home food production for all!
Nancy Redfeather is a teacher and gardener in Kona and Coordinator of the Hawai’i Island Seed Exchange. She and her husband Gerry Herbert are developing a 1.2-acre organic/sustainable experimental and educational mini-farm in Honalo. She writes: Agriculture begins and ends with seed. Varieties we buy and use regularly for our farms and home gardens have evolved through countless generations of plant breeders, farmers, and gardeners selecting the best qualities and passing them on. I mused on that thought this morning as I cleaned my pea seed. Rolling small round green balls of “Tall Telephone” shelling peas from their brown papery jackets with my fingers, they tumbled out of their dry beds into a glass bowl on my lap. According to the definitive Seed Savers Exchange “Garden Seed Inventory,” The “Tall Telephone” was developed for home and market gardens in 1878 by a Mr. Alderman, 130 years of use in both temperate and tropical gardens. This type of hardiness and diversity is rarely seen today in the modern hybrid seed, and bless his heart he didn’t need a patent, and so it remains in the “commons.”
Similarly, the University of Hawai’i deserves the “Golden Fruit Award” for its work on the Kaimana lychee, an unpatented lychee that is by far the best for home or commercial orchard production. UH went looking for a lychee with a smaller “chicken tongue” seed on an “annual bearing” tree. They planted out thousands of seeds and selected and selected until they found the perfect one. Although this method of breeding and selection seems to be a dying agricultural art, when contrasted with biotech’s dial-a-gene technology, it creates real agricultural products which can be used by local farmers and backyard producers to enhance food production and food security for Hawai’i ’s communities.
Kona can grow amazingly hardy viable seed. Our cooler drier winter days and nights are perfect for tropical seed growing. Organic or conventional seed production is a niche crop that returns high value for the relatively small area needed for production. While not simple, the potential for farmers and gardeners to grow tropical vegetable, herb, or flower seed for market is there, considering there is only one seed grower in Hawai’i , UH Manoa. Hawai’i is typical of the trend occurring in home and market seed production today.
Of the nearly 5,000 non-hybrid (open-pollinated) vegetable seed varieties that were offered in 1984 in catalogs across the US , 88% of the varieties had been dropped by 1998. John Jeavons estimates that we have lost 95% of all vegetable varieties that were grown in the US in 1900. While new varieties continue to be developed by seed breeders, open pollinated varieties available to the home or market gardener continue to dwindle in favor of hybrids and GMO seed, which cannot be saved or reproduced “true to type.”
“Open-pollinated” means that the plant’s children and grandchildren will be like their parent, so that their seed can be selected, saved, and replanted for generations. This is one of the “foundations” of sustainable agriculture for the future and one that is rapidly being replaced.
According to a recent report by the ETC group in Canada , buyouts and consolidations of the world vegetable and grain seed industry continue at a dizzying rate. Monsanto’s latest purchase of Burpee Seed (largest US producer of home garden seed), Seminis (world’s largest vegetable seed producer), and Delta & Pine Land (world’s largest cotton seed producer and developer of the “terminator technology”), give the gene giant unprecedented status in the world of seed. Now, a mere handful of transnational corporations, the world’s largest pesticide and chemical companies, are in control of much of the world’s seed. The top three companies are the high stakes players in GMO (genetically modified organisms) seed research and development in the Hawaiian islands .
Monsanto, Dupont (Pioneer Hi-Bred), and Syngenta conduct experimental GMO field trials and grow out “parent seed lines” on Maui , Oahu , Molokai , and Kauai . Some of our state’s best farmland is currently devoted to GMO field trials and production, at a time when even the legislature is looking to a more secure and sustainable source of food and energy production for the state. Only Hawai’i Island is GMO free (except for UH Manoa’s GMO papaya, “Rainbow).
When ownership of seed is tightly held by a few corporations, the world’s food supply becomes vulnerable to the whim of market maneuvers. Corporate boards have obligations to their shareholders, not local food security. In contrast, Santa Fe County , New Mexico , has adopted a Resolution in Support of a “Declaration of Seed Sovereignty.”
This living document identifies 20 “where as” statements--guidelines for seed saving and seed development within the county. The final statements affirm farmers “rights” to develop and preserve farm saved seed free from “genetic contamination,” and revitalization of seed development and saving through local projects and programs which honor and encourage local food traditions, development of family farms, and seed saving and sharing in the community.
For further information about the Seed Exchange call the Amy Greenwell Garden at (808) 323-3318 or email agg@bishopmuseum.org. To contact Nancy Redfeather, email nancyredfeather@yahoo.com
This project is funded under the Native Hawaiian Culture and Arts Program. The views and conclusions in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the U. S. Government. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute their endorsement by the U. S. Government. This project is also an initiative under the Office of Innovation and Improvement of the U.S. Department of Education. Education through Cultural and Historical Organizations, also known as ECHO, provides educational enrichment to Native and non-Native children and life-long learners.
-pau-