Paradigm – A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality.
Paradigm shift – A radical change in thinking from an accepted point of view to a new one.
I’ve always striven to be a good organic gardener: compost, mulch, and no chemicals. I’ve incorporated permaculture, natural farming, and regenerative agriculture techniques into my gardening, and tried to expand my understanding of soil chemistry and soil biology. Even so, there’s been a subtle common theme throughout my gardening blog posts for the past several years: poor germination. I’ve wracked my brain trying to figure this out. What have I been doing wrong? Is it the soil? The growing conditions? Our southern heat? My compost? Not enough water? The cats using the garden beds as litter boxes? I haven’t been able to figure it out and it’s been discouraging.
The other day, I received a review copy of a new book and read this:
“When I plant seeds obtained from the industrialized seed system*, it is common for 75% to 95% of the varieties to fail.”
Joseph Lofthouse, Landrace Gardening: Food Security
through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination
There it was—in stark black and white—the thing that I haven’t even wanted to admit to myself, seed failure! What a relief to know I wasn’t alone. And now, thanks to Joseph’s new book, I’m beginning to understand.
*First, I’d like to clarify something. By
industrialized seed system, he’s not just referring to commercially produced hybrid seed. He’s referring to seed that has been selectively bred for genetic “purity” through the deliberate, now standard process of isolation and inbreeding. It can be hybrid seeds, but the same process is how heirloom and open-pollinated seeds are produced.
The result of this seed breeding system is the hundreds of beautiful garden seed varieties that we drool over in seed catalogues. But therein lies the problem. All those varieties come at the cost of an extremely narrow gene pool and loss of vigor and adaptability. I deeply appreciate the desire to preserve our heritage species and varieties, but by doing so we are losing life-saving biodiversity in our seed supply. The more gene specific the vegetable variety, the less it is able to adapt to a different growing region.
This is what I’ve been experiencing in my own garden. When I compare my early gardens to the germination rates of the past couple of years, it’s obvious it’s become a significant problem in only a few years.
This isn’t just a problem for the home gardener. This is a commercial problem as well, and on a global scale. How many times have you heard that modern industrialized agriculture is the only answer for producing enough food to feed the world? That organic farming can’t do the job? The reason why this is believed is found in this article from
Independent Science News, “
Stuffed or Starved? Evolutionary Plant Breeding Might Have the Answer.” Here are some of the key points:
“Today, much of “institutional” plant breeding, . . . has as its objective industrial agriculture (the only one that according to some will be able to feed the world), . . . (and) is based on the selection . . . of uniform varieties.”
“One of the reasons for the difference in productivity between conventional agriculture and organic farming is that, in the latter, lacking suitable varieties, the same varieties are grown that are selected for conventional agriculture; these varieties find themselves in a completely different situation from the one for which they were selected, and therefore produce less.”
Industry’s answer is genetic modification and more chemicals. Except that it isn’t fixing the problem. The real answer? (from the same article).
“The method consists in creating plant populations by mixing seeds previously obtained by crossing different varieties, and letting them evolve . . . This offers the possibility of adapting the crop both to long-term and short-term climate change, but also to control weeds, diseases and insects without resorting to pesticides.”
Joseph Lofthouse calls these landrace seeds.
“Landrace: A locally-adapted, genetically-diverse, promiscuously-pollinating food crop. Landraces are intimately connected to the land, ecosystem, farmer, and community. Landraces offer food security through their ability to adapt to changing conditions.”
Joseph Lofthouse, Landrace Gardening
What Joseph’s book is offering, is a new gardening paradigm. In it, he provides a clear explanation and practical plan for the home gardener. I will have a full review next week, along with news about a giveaway at
Permies.com. (Stay tuned for all of that). But if this information is exciting to you as it is to me, you might not want to wait that long. You can get Joseph’s book now at
Amazon.com.
Source:
https://www.5acresandadream.com/2021/06/a-new-paradigm-for-gardening-seed-saving.html
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