A Blow to Seed Security and Seed Libraries

Our friends from Seed Freedom LA gathering for our first
press conference/rally in 2013

Only a few days from our rebuff at the Los Angeles City Council, a few interesting facts come to the surface that make the story a whole lot more 'interesting,' as in "may you live in interesting times" supposedly an old Chinese curse.  As I begin to write this, I cannot even title it.  I have smoke coming out of my ears and as I realize that Seed Freedom LA was defeated as a part of a much more broad campaign to take seeds from the hands of individual citizens and concentrate our food growing in the clutches of agri-business. 

I wish to introduce you to an essay by Britt Bailey who introduces a new twist to thickening plot on the Environmental Commons page.  I'd like you to go that page and read the whole essay, it covers more than I want to get into right here, but it shows that California's AB 2470, passed in our last legislative session, is part of a national trend where many state legislatures have passed bills so similar that the wordings are almost identical. In all cases they ban municipalities in that state from enacting laws that govern seeds.  

These states include Pennsylvania, Iowa, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Georgia, Oklahoma, Florida, Indiana, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, West Virginia, Ohio, Kansas, and California.

And just to fluff out our lesson on seed sovereignty being under attack, I include here a link to California's AB 2470.  Just read it and absorb the power grab this bill holds!  It literally sets in place for the Secretary of Agriculture to create lists of plants that shall be grown in California as well as other equally heinous provisions.  

The secretary, by regulation, may adopt all of the following:

(a) A list of the plants and crops that the secretary finds are or may be grown in this state.

Of course today, it looks rather innocuous and dull, but I find this concept a disturbing possibility, especially if it is only one of many laws throughout the nation.  This could effectively mean the loss of all our heirloom crops; the secretary might mandate only GMO crops be grown, it just doesn't pass the smell test.

If we are to have a sane seed (food) policy, this law must go and in it's place a law that makes seed libraries a part of a public policy against the loss of seed sovereignty and creates the legal framework for us to continue our work in making sure our world is seed and food secure.

david