This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, today we have another exciting episode for
you, and I’m still here at the Eco Farm having a great time, just got out of a talk
on permaculture, and I learned something that, I don’t know on one level terrified me,
and on one level infuriated me that seed saving is illegal in the United States. I mean, I
know many of you guys might be conspiracy theory people and all this stuff, and you
know, I wanted to go directly to the source, we have Neal Thopper[?] here, and he’s a
lawyer, and he’s working on this case so that people can share their seeds freely,
so Neal is it true that seed sharing in the United States is illegal?
Maybe, it depends. Alright well that’s a lawyer answer for
you! [laughing] You want a straight answer they tell you maybe, so first off, let’s
define what is seed sharing according to law? Sure, well seed sharing actually doesn’t
specifically have a definition in law, but seed libraries are places where people go
to get free seeds, and they can grow their own food and at the end of the season donate
seeds back to the library, it’s an opportunity for people to have more food security, to
have access to healthy food, and it offers us a way to keep a tradition going that we’ve
been doing for thousands of years. And in some places, seed libraries have been approached
by departments of agriculture recently, specifically in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Nebraska, and
Maryland, and have been told that they’re violating the state seed law.
What? Like it’s a seed library, what if they shut down all the libraries and we couldn’t
read Catcher in the Rye? I think they did that once. But, so this outrages me, so why
are they doing this? Yeah, it’s confusing, but the state seed
law says that if you sell or distribute seeds you have to comply with some labeling requirements,
germination testing requirements, and all this costs a lot of money, and seed libraries
generally operate out of public libraries and so they don’t have a lot of money, in
fact they’re nonprofits for the most part, and so seed libraries in these states are
being required to comply with these laws which is having the effect of basically shutting
them down because they can’t pay for these tests. And we don’t think that they really
need to, so we think that this law is actually unnecessary. But that’s what’s happening,
and so seed libraries are kind of at risk right now.
So where does this all end? Like what if I wanted to take and share my seeds with other
people or even sell them, would I have to get germination testing and I could no longer
just give you some seeds without being in violation of these laws if they want to define
laws to the individual person instead of a seed library? Could this happen and is this
true? Yeah, right now that’s what’s happening
in a few states for people who were using seed libraries. But, we’re working to change
that, and so we’re advocating, we’re working with a couple of organizations here and nationally
to save seed sharing and to change laws, and so one way that we’re doing that is by having
an online petition at saveseedsharing.org, so if you can have people please sign the
petition so we can build support for seed libraries, so that when you give me seeds
we’re not actually breaking the law anywhere. Yeah I want to encourage you guys right now
to open up a new window, I’ll put a link down below, I’ll put a link right below
the video to go to this website to sign it right now, also at the same time to let me
know that you signed it, give me a thumbs up on the video if you believe that people
should be able to in seed libraries that are free of charge working out of libraries and
just basically giving people seeds should be able to do this without government intervention.
You know, it’s my belief that we need to be able to control the food system and as
our forefathers that came to this country, they would grow things they would share the
seeds, give it to others, people would exchange seeds for hundreds of years, we’re now not
able to do that, now why do you think this is happening?
Yeah, that’s a good question. So far it’s only been the state departments of agriculture
who have visited the seed libraries and, you know I can’t say necessarily that I’ve
heard anybody else is behind it, but I have my suspicions that there are other forces
at play. Well sure, he’s a lawyer, he can’t say
anything, I can say anything I want [inaudible] America, hopefully and I still have freedom
of speech I think. [laughing] You know, it’s quite possible that big companies like starts
with an M and all these other big agricompanies that want to control the seed supply have
made one call to their buddies to have people start hassling people that are wanting to
do real things like share seeds. The one way besides signing the petition that you guys
could be an activist against this is start saving your own seeds, and sharing them with
everybody, and if you haven’t already, start a seed sharing library so how can somebody
get more information about the project that you’re doing and how to start a seed sharing
library? Yeah so, the petition is at the same website,
but if you want to start a seed library, go to seedlibraries.net, and that website is
curated by Richmond Grow seed lending library which is sort of a replicable model of seed
libraries that’s been an inspiration to a lot of people, and there’s resources there
for how to start a seed library. Yeah I want to encourage everybody out there
to, if you don’t have a seed lending library in your area, start one even if you’re a
small home gardener you have five plants and you have seeds, you could start a library,
you can also once you start a library you can actually request seeds from big seed companies.
A lot of times maybe at the end of the year they have extra seeds they’ll just donate
to your seed library, because what are they going to do? Throw out the seeds and have
them go to waste? I mean let’s talk about that, in the law isn’t there some part of
the law where you’re supposed to throw away the seeds?
Yeah so right now the way the law’s being interpreted in those states, the only way
that seed libraries are allowed to operate is if they buy in commercial seed, and they’re
not allowed to take seed from one year and carry it into the next year, which means that
they would have to throw away their seed and have new seed each year, and that kind of
defeats the purpose of what a seed library is. It’s a place to preserve genetics and
to locally adapt seeds, and you do that by sharing and saving seeds across seasons.
Awesome. Yeah so, number one thing you can do to rebel against this is start saving seeds,
start a seed library, share your seeds with others and get people excited about growing
their own food because if people continue to just keep buying food at the grocery store,
we’re going to be sucked into this mass consumption society, and I want you guys to
be producers and grow some of your own food, instead of consumers. So any last words that
you have today to share with my visitors about this topic or anything else they should know
regarding this issue? Yeah, I think exactly what John said, start
growing seeds and start sharing seeds, and if you want to start a seed library and if
there isn’t one, then get active and talk to your city councilors and tell them that
you want to be a more resilient city and that seed libraries are something that cities should
support and states should support. Absolutely, I mean I worked at a library when
I was going through college, and I think I would have rather worked at actually a seed
library it would have been much more fun [laughter]. But the seed libraries actually they can run
without even anybody working at them, they just have them there, and they have envelopes,
and you could check things out and hopefully once you check something out then you come
back at the end of the season you make a deposit back in so that the community could have its
own local source of resilient seeds and wide genetic diversity of seeds. So once again
what was that website so that people can find that and sign that petition?
Its www.saveseedsharing.org. And how can somebody find out more about you
and the organization that you work with? Yeah so I work with the Sustainable Economy’s
law center, our website is www.theselc.org, T H E S E L C.org.
Awesome, all right. Well thank you so much. Thanks a lot John.
And I hope you guys get infuriated by this, but more importantly get infuriated number
one, sign that petition, give me a thumb’s up, number two start saving your own seeds,
spreading them out to others, and number three, start your own seed libraries in your own
communities to get these seeds out to more people and flip off the powers that be that
are not letting people do this legally by law.
So now we’re with Rebecca from Richmond Grow seed lending library, and we’re going
to talk about something very important to you guys here at Eco Farm, I mean I’m running
into all different kinds of really cool people that, and they’re doing their own individual
really cool work, and I wish I could interview them all, but I’m just bringing a few of
them to you guys, and so what I want to share with you guys today is how you can start your
own seed lending library. So, Rebecca what is a seed lending library for my viewers out
there that may not know what it is? So seed lending library is a public place,
it could be a community center, it could be a library which is where ours is located,
and people from the community can just come down and borrow seeds for free, and then we
provide free education. They take seeds out, they take them and put them in their own home
gardens, learn about seed saving and then return some of those seeds for other people
to borrow. That’s an excellent idea, it sounds like
literally like a library because at a library you get the book, you can read it, then you
return the book. Yup.
But I think it’s even better because now you actually, once you get the seeds you get
the grow them, and then you bring back extra additional seeds.
It’s like adding an extra chapter to a book. That’s—oh my gosh it’s like one of those
books when I was a kid, it’s like if you think this topic, if you think the book wants
to go this way then flip to this page or this page, and then I don’t know, kind of crazy.
It is that way, but whenever you save seeds you’re actually becoming a plant breeder,
and making those seeds more locally adapted so when we’re saving seeds locally they’re
going to be more adapted to our soils to our climate, which is going to be increasingly
more important in a time of erratic climate and climate change.
Yeah I mean that’s really happening right now from what I hear. So seed lending libraries
are definitely a solution, because people are always complaining to me “John, where
can I get some free seeds?” You know I mean seeds are so expensive, some of those heirloom
varieties I mean, seed packets are a couple of bucks a packet, but if you buy the seeds
once you grow them out open pollinated seeds, you could have your own source of seeds, but
I want to be able to make gardening available to everybody no matter if they have resources
to order the seeds or not but just also to be more resilient. So Rebecca, how can somebody
start a seed lending library no matter where in the country or in the world for that matter?
Well we have all the resources that you need at seedlibraries.net, you can go on and it’s
really easy, you can basically you get your people together, you get where your site’s
going to be located, you get seeds, we started with commercially donated seeds from companies
that we had alignment with, and we also got seeds donated from the local horticulture
department, and then just partnered with a public library, and right now because so many
communities have done that, at seedlibraries.net you can go there and you can download all
of the resources, all of the educational material, we have a great organizational structure that
really helps people growing like super-easy, so we have our drawers labeled like super-easy,
these are the seeds we want everybody to start with, so your beans, your peas, you tomatoes,
so like every home gardener should be saving those seeds, and we can really develop a lot
of resilience and locally adapted varieties really quickly in our own communities by starting
to save those varieties. So Rebecca, how many seed lending libraries
are there in the nation at present time and how can somebody find one to find out if they
already have one in their area so that you guys don’t have to start one?
Great question, so we have about 350 in the United States, in about 46 states. And those
are the ones that are currently open, there’s a whole bunch more that are in process, and
if you go to seedlibraries.net under our “Create a library” page, we have a sister libraries
page for all the ones that are open, so you can actually go there and it’s all organized
by state, and you can see are there other ones and it’s great because if you’re
interested in starting one you can see if there’s people around you or if there’s
people in a similar bioregion, so maybe you could even get some locally grown seed that
another library has in excess. Yeah that’s awesome, so say you live somewhere
and there’s a seed lending library three hours away, you can go there and get some
seeds, find out how they did it, come back to your area and then start your own library.
So what states actually do not have seed lending libraries?
Hmmmm. You said there’s like---
Yeah there’s about 46, I’d have to look at the list again…
So there’s like four… But I think Utah was one of the ones that
didn’t have one, Washington, DC which isn’t a state.
Right. But I included that in the list, Maryland
which is my home state, they preemptively have some concerns with the state department
of agriculture that they kind of said that there were some issues around seeds shouldn’t
be shared through a library and so that… What?
Preemptively stopped a bunch of seed libraries from opening, there were about 20 public libraries
that were in the process and that’s put a little chill on that, so…
That’s not acceptable to me. [laughter]. It is not acceptable to the people of the
communities either, so we’re working to educate the state departments of agriculture
about the value of local seed. So could it be defined as illegal in some
places? The interpretation is up to question and we
definitely don’t feel like it’s illegal, but the laws were really written for commercial
seed production, and we’re not commercial so the scale is very different you know, and
I think the laws are really important and valuable to protect farmers and protect, you
know if you’re growing out five acres of a particular broccoli for market, you want
that to be what it is and have a high germination rate, that’s very different when you’re
going to a public library and sharing seeds with your neighbor which is something we’ve
done for 12,000 years, and to have that, that’s a very different thing it’s around food
security, it’s around creating local resilience, it’s around rescaling our community to grow
locally adapted seed that’s going to really save that genetic diversity that has been
so important in terms of just the development of culture and community and so, we’re really
hoping to kind of preserve that and encourage that through the seed libraries [inaudible].
Why is it important to save and share local seeds versus seeds you get from a seed company
in Montana? Are there seed companies in Montana? [laughter].
There are actually, and we’ve actually gotten some really great original seed, my original
seed teacher’s up in that area in Idaho and so being able to grow seeds locally, they’re
going to become adapted to our soils, they’re going to become adapted to our climate, and
then we have the issues around food security, it’s like what better way to have that food
security if you’re growing it yourself, and not only that, because you can become
really a producer, where it’s like you grow the seed and you let some of it go to seed,
and now you’ve got, you’re giving seeds away, you’ve got enough lettuce seed for
your whole block and neighborhood, so it’s really this creating a culture of abundance
and a culture of sharing. I have this wonderful seed that I got from my neighbor on my block
growing the same bean for 25 years that’s been in this family for multiple decades,
you know great great aunt Rosie’s Italian pole bean, and it’s like, he might be the
only person that grew that seed out before me, you know I mean it’s like now there’s
two of us that have that seed, and it’s like, it’s got cultural significance, it’s
adapted to our funky climates in Richmond, California, and so it’s really—we’ve
lost our connection to our food, and by saving those seeds, and by sharing those stories,
it’s really about reconnecting to the stories, so when you go to the farmer’s market, don’t
just get beans, ask them what variety they are. When you go and you plant you own things
out, it’s not just a bean, you want to know the story, you want to know the history, and
if you can find things that are grown locally that have connection to your culture, that’s
really where it’s all about. So last question for you today Rebecca, so
is that bean seed available at your local seed lending library? And once again, what
was the website of the seed lending library so that people could start their own seed
lending library? So yeah, great great Aunt Rosie’s is going
to be made available this summer for the first time in our community, and we definitely want
to get it out to people’s hands that really are going to protect it and make sure that
they grow those and return those because we want to build a stock up that becomes part
of our cultural heritage on a big scale, and once again if people want to start their own
seed library it’s seedlibraries.net, and so we have create a library, all the resources,
and find your own sister seed library, and then also the activism piece around the save
seed sharing campaign. So I’m going to encourage you guys to check
out that website and start a seed library near you if you don’t already have one.
I really hope you guys enjoyed this episode, got infuriated, and are more importantly going
to take some action, once again my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, we’ll
see you next time, and until then remember, keep on growing.