
The Open Source Seed Initiative - ciconia
https://osseeds.org/
======
nickserv
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/](http://kokopelli-semences.fr/)

~~~
benj111
In the Uk there's the Heritage Seed Library.

[https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/hsl](https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/hsl)

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ohazi
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?

~~~
bayesian_horse
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.

~~~
aitchnyu
Hybrid vigour, right?

[https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vigour](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vigour)

~~~
bayesian_horse
Hybrid vigor/vigour is part of it, yes.

Another factor is homogeneity of the offspring: parent lines are very much
homozygous. If one parent line is AA at one locus, and the other line is aa at
the same locus, the children will all have Aa. Meaning they have both versions
of the gene (which is usually good, especially in immunity and health) and all
have the same status. This means you can produce a couple of hundred piglets
grow to the same size in the same time which makes processing and marketing
them easier and cheaper.

Another factor is that some breeding goals are mutually exclusive. Piglets for
example drink milk from the mother, which means she must have good milk
production and other fertility related features, whereas the father can be
bred more for muscle growth.

And then there are other weird tricks breeders can pull. I believe in chicken
there are experiments with hybrids that hatch in different colors relating to
their sex, or don't hatch at all if they are the "wrong" sex.

~~~
saalweachter
Yep - "sex-link" chicks are one color for male and one color for female, at
time of hatching: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-
link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-link)

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bayesian_horse
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.

~~~
serf
>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_horse
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.

~~~
anigbrowl
Companies don't eat food and don't starve if they go without it so their
opinions as corporate entities are moot as far as I am concerned. If it is
more profitable to let people die they will do so.

~~~
bayesian_horse
Companies are owned, operated and regulated by Human beings.

I'm not saying "companies" have never done wrong, but I think your attitude is
way over the top. And there is no way an agricultural company will benefit by
tanking production.

What the OSSI wants to do is to put more power into the hands of farmers, and
thus avoid the farmers being squeezed by a near-monopoly of certain breeding
companies. It's really about prizes and margins, not about total agricultural
output.

Come to think of it, I guess the whole world has to be starving before there
is a large-scale food shortage in the US of A.

~~~
anigbrowl
Sure they are, but distributed consciousness and individual consciousness
isn't the same thing. A corporation doesn't have a body and that dichotomy is
often used by individuals to dissociate themselves from things they would not
be willing to do on an interpersonal level. This is a general issue with
organizations.

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cryptica
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.

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floki999
Very good, related, article in the New York Times:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/07/opinion/sunda...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/07/opinion/sunday/dan-
barber-seed-companies.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage)

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

~~~
joshvm
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](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.

~~~
saalweachter
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.

~~~
joshvm
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Union_for_the_Pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Union_for_the_Protection_of_New_Varieties_of_Plants)

[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gardening-
blog/2013...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gardening-
blog/2013/sep/26/eu-regulation-garden-plants)

[https://ec.europa.eu/food/plant/plant_propagation_material/p...](https://ec.europa.eu/food/plant/plant_propagation_material/plant_variety_catalogues_databases_en)

Some of the justification I can see is environmental/economical. As per my
sibling post - it's there to make sure that a rogue seller doesn't
accidentally or intentionally cripple national food production by introducing
a crop that is prone to disease and infects/crosses with everything.

However there is also "breeder's right" which is more debatable.

I'm not sure what actually happened (IANAL), the original proposal came under
a lot of fire from retailers and gardeners:
[http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlaw2.html](http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlaw2.html)

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

~~~
comicjk
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviated_New_Drug_Application)

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.

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nerd7473
I never have been big on planting, and didn't really know theee was an issue
with companies holding large amounts of seeds...

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vwyxp
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?

~~~
tathougies
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.

