The Open Source Seed Initiative

https://osseeds.org/

by ciconia • 7 years ago

317 51 7 years ago

osseeds.org

flimflamm• 7 years ago

Is this some US specific problem? At least in EU we don't have this kind of lock down problems for seeds.

joshvm3• 7 years ago

Actually we do have odd laws. You can circumvent them, as some sellers do, but they exist nonetheless.

Real seeds is a British company that sells exclusively non hybrid heirloom seeds. Good stuff and loads of weird crosses. However, they're not allowed to sell them to the public because they're not on an approved list of varieties. s So you pay a penny to join their seed club and essentially agree that you won't start a business selling crops.

http://www.realseeds.co.uk/terms.html

In the EU, there is actually a list of 'official' vegetable varieties. And a law governing seed sellers, which states that if a variety isn’t on the official list, then seed companies cannot ‘market’ the seed to anyone. In an immediate sense, this law only affects us, not you - because there are no laws at all governing the buying of seed or what vegetables anyone can grow. Selling unlisted seed? - that’s against the law. Buying unlisted seed? - that’s completely fine! So we should stress that for you it’s perfectly legal to buy any seed you like, plant it, grow it, and do whatever you want with it.

saalweachter2• 7 years ago

Do you know the history of the "allowed seeds" law? I assume greed is in there somewhere, but there's usually some other bizarre or novel justification for that sort of law.

aitchnyu2• 7 years ago

Whats an "approved list of varieties" for commercial crops? Sounds ominous.

hobofan2• 7 years ago

That's not true: https://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/en/patent-cases

cryptica• 7 years ago

Seems interesting. It's a shame that it has to come to this. Government regulation should be focused on the safety and well being of the majority of producers and consumers, it should not focus on how to help a small number of corporations to capture value from the system; that is not the job of the government.

ohazi• 7 years ago

Is this currently "only" a legal problem, or are the GMO crop companies able to produce seeds that produce sterile crops?

I'm sure this has already been done to death, but... Cheesy sci-fi plot where genetically engineered crops crowd out all the reproducing ones, and then humanity starves to death when evilcorp loses their ability to produce the seeds?

Could we maybe not go down this route, please?

serf2• 7 years ago

Is this currently "only" a legal problem, or are the GMO crop companies able to produce seeds that produce sterile crops?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_techno...

It's possible to do, but most folks say that they won't ever implement it. The UN has a moratorium on GURT use.

bayesian_horse8• 7 years ago

It's not about GMO, but about conventional breeding.

There is a concept called hybrid breeding, both for animals and plants. The "final" product, the seed for the farmer, the piglet raised for mass production, is bred from two parent lines, one for the male part, one for the female. Both are relatively inbred so they are mostly homocygotic. Their offspring, because of Mendelian genetics, is mostly heterocygotic, but very homegeneous, which is a great thing, industrially speaking.

However, a farmer can't just raise those piglets and breed them on his own. Not because of patents or licenses, but just because the offspring would be all over the map, genetically. And probably less profitable. The breeding companies need a complicated system to develop these lines and provide their customers with the best seed/livestock. That takes a lot of money and effort.

anigbrowl3• 7 years ago

For some functions of 'best'.

aitchnyu2• 7 years ago

Hybrid vigour, right?

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vigour

turbinerneiter2• 7 years ago

I don't know about GMO, but regular crops are sterile because the are hybrids. They also are not really sterile, the seeds just don't have the beneficial traits of the original hybrid.

Xylakant• 7 years ago

Quite a few crop plants are actually sterile. Cavendish Bananas for example (the kind you get to buy everywhere). They don't have seeds. Sweet oranges are another example.

perlgeek• 7 years ago

Cheesy sci-fi plot where genetically engineered crops crowd out all the reproducing ones, and then humanity starves to death when evilcorp loses their ability to produce the seeds?

How would crops that don't reproduce on their own crowd out crops that do? That doesn't really sound like a realistic scenario.

ryacko• 7 years ago

Crops are only more successful than other species because of an artificial environment with pesticide and irrigation.

There could be GMO crops that don't need anything manmade at all, but that'd be a waste of calories in plant growth.

djakjxnanjak• 7 years ago

I heard a similar scenario as a plan to kill mosquitoes. I’m not sure how it’s supposed to work but a lot of smart people seem to believe it’s possible.

chr12• 7 years ago

Many seedless plants can still reproduce by other methods. So having a seedless variety of strawberry for instance would be quite nice.

Thinkx220• 7 years ago

What bennifit would be gained by having seedless strawberries?

bayesian_horse8• 7 years ago

Breeders have "the power" to do all these licensing and patenting shenanigans because they are creating superior seeds. Farmers choose to use these restricted seeds because they make more money that way.

This effort of "open source seeds" is comparable to communal breeding, which hasn't been competitive to these breeding companies. It takes time and effort to develop these breeds, and an Open Source Seed Initiative would have to somehow replicate this advantage, probably by individual farmers taking a hit on returns from not using the most marketable seedstock in order to work on those lines.

serf2• 7 years ago

Breeders have "the power" to do all these licensing and patenting shenanigans because they are creating superior seeds.

'the power' also comes from lobbying and gaming the political system; it's not just product efficacy.

That's like saying John Deere has 'the power' to restrict right-to-repair because they make such a superior product, which is demonstrably false. They spend a large effort on securing their products' place in the market via legislation, propaganda, and the threat of discontinuation of service to the lower rung purchasers of their products. All of which are tactics which are effective for profiteering, but not that great morally or ethically -- especially given that we're talking about an industry that is attempting to feed the world with regards to this threads' discussion.

bayesian_horse8• 7 years ago

Do you have any idea about agricultural breeding?

There are some fundamental factors which are hard to overcome. Mendelian genetics more or less dictates that hybrid breeding schemes are superior, in the big picture, to line breeding. But those schemes require long term organizing and capital investment.

Which is why companies have any say in breeding at all. The Open Source Seed Initiative would need to replicate this through cooperation in a community.

Farmers don't have big margins. They can't afford to waste money on crops that underperform, for whatever reasons. They can't afford to lose money on produce that isn't marketable for whatever reason.

nickserv3• 7 years ago

There is a catalog of varieties allowed for sale, all others are banned.

It takes a lot of money and lobbying to have a variety on the allowed list.

So farmers are forced to use certain varieties if they want to sell them, not because those varieties are inherently superior.

In fact some ancient varieties are better adapted to the local climate than modern one size fits all varieties, but because farmers are not allowed to sell them have almost disappeared (noncommercial growers and associations have kept some going).

deogeo2• 7 years ago

There is a catalog of varieties allowed for sale, all others are banned.

Is this for the US or EU? And it's the first I heard of this, do you have a source? I recall there was some awful EU seed initiative that imposed a heavy regulatory burden on all seeds, effectively making sure only those with large capital backing them could be marketed. But then some exemptions were made for 'small' sellers or somesuch, and the media promptly forgot all about it..

pergadad• 7 years ago

Actually often there is an abuse relation going on, certainly in developing countries where farmers don't know in the beginning that the "better" seeds they bought won't give them fertile seeds to reuse the next year - so they become dependent on buying new seeds each year.

kissgyorgy• 7 years ago

This is really cool! I hope this will happen with medicine at some point in life...

comicjk• 7 years ago

Most medicines are already "open source" in the sense that their patents have expired, the details are known, and any chemistry lab can make them. The problem is selling them legally as medicine! A generic medicine needs FDA approval confirming that it is biologically equivalent to an already-approved drug, which requires a human trial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviated_New_Drug_Applicati...

This process is apparently easier in the EU, but both systems are so complex that it's hard to tell exactly what makes it easier.

nickserv3• 7 years ago

For those in Europe, I've had good success growing seeds ordered from the Kokopelli association, which has been doing this for 20 years.

The trick is to find varieties adapted to the local climate, for example ancient varieties from your region no longer commercialized.

http://kokopelli-semences.fr/

benj1112• 7 years ago

In the Uk there's the Heritage Seed Library.

https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/hsl

vwyxp• 7 years ago

Sooo am I the only one who thinks if you spend millions on creating a special breed you should be able to control who gets to use it? Otherwise where's the incentive for me to spend the money?

tchaffee• 7 years ago

In what way does open source prevent you from attempting to do that?

n4r9• 7 years ago

You don't have to believe otherwise to support this initiative as far as I can tell. It's not about restricting the rights of the patenters but rather giving farmers an alternative choice.

tathougies• 7 years ago

Of course you should be able to patent it. You should also be able to give it away for free. You should not be allowed to ask the government to prevent other people from doing what they want with their seeds.

floki999• 7 years ago

Very good, related, article in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/07/opinion/sunda...

nerd7473• 7 years ago

I never have been big on planting, and didn't really know theee was an issue with companies holding large amounts of seeds...

The Open Source Seed Initiative

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