NATIVE SEED SEARCH - ancient & modern fertililty trends

(from a 1998 live-panel report in Tucson, AZ)

Most seed growers in U$ & Europe were bot up buy huge multinational corps in ‘70s & ‘80s. So the Native Seed Search group began working hard to locate, collect, test, use & distribute ‘native seeds’ to all interested farmers & gardeners. They have grown rapidely with awareness of organic & native seed sources, along with natural farming movements like Permaculture & Biodynamic gardening. They found a 6% loss of seed native sources/year in 1980s. However, now there are dozens of small local natural(not hybrid)seed savers in U$, has risen to 200 companies that offer 6,000 varieties of seeds now available, including many rare/airloom species, now grow & saved by growers.

Many native Indian seeds have disappeared & are being collected by many growers, to plant the vital varieties grown for centuries locally by tribes. Mega buck Argibiz farming has reduced the varieties grown for food in most industrial cou��nties, with mono-row croping, chemicals & mass markets competition. Traditional food sources & small family farms are replaced with modern scientific mechinized agriculture, that’s ugly, wasteful, polluting, unhealthy & not sustainable with mother nature.

The beauty & vitality of Organic native seeds continues to inspire the collectors to gather, save & grow these ancient species of food & fiber crops, that were known for centuries, often only locally by their farmers. Most native Indian gardeners, herbalists & farmers are now dead, & their children are modernized, not interested in growing their own food crops. Their youth are big-science/biz educated, apathetic to nature & greedy consumers now. So its up to us nature lovers to gather & grow native seeds, now rare on Indian ‘reseverations’. Drout, errosion, floods & storms have also reduced the supply sources of some native seed plants.

Native seeds diversity of food plants has peaked in last decades, & is dropping, even endangered to extinction, if we don’t save enuf seeds now. The mass migrations of farms-to-city movements has flattened to diverse family farms of evolution into markets grids of comodities for big profit.

However the local cooperative family farm movement is returning with the back-to-the-land movements, as we learn how to grow our own foods.

Ethnobotony is the ‘new’ natural earth science that studies, learns & uses all kinds of plants for food, fiber, medicine, etc, of hi nutriction, fertility & strength. We are evolving with plants, seeds & natural eating, into more healthy lifestyes, needs & loving bioregional energy cycles now

sharing resources, the hippy/family rural version of eco-communism here. Meanwhile the chemokill farming industry is collecting & hybriding seeds to control their farmarkets, with plant genetics & massive chemosystems. 3 million plant species were known & most used for decades. Now deeper studies guess at ove 100 million species alive & growing on earth, many used by humans & animals. Bioindustries are research�Åing & grabbing up many native rainforest & rare species to grow & make/synthesize chemicals/medicines from for corperate profit. The prolifferating diseases of humans, germs immune to drugs, mass pollution & mysterious illnesses are stressing & suffering millions, addicted to chemomarkets food crops.

The ‘great Green Revolution’ since WW2 has converted millions of small natural farms in dozens of countries into gigantic agribiz farms. This has demineralized the soils & polluted the water cycles in those bio-regions & users of water & foods, with reduced/denatured nutrition. No wonder millions of U$ take vitamins to fill our needs for food energy now!

The ‘remineralizing’ soil, lands & food movements are correcting this eco-tastrophy now in natural/organic food growing & healthy markets sources. But the big food markets are unaware of seed purity, sources & the effects of chemofa�ƒrming on their health in cities of normal toxins now. Some biotechnics are hybriding seeds to patent to control their markets, as they experiment with new strains & species that grow faster, bigger, more colorful to sell to ignorant buyers of fast/fancy foods.

However the natural farm & gardening movements are saving vital seeds, using compost & many organic growing systems to reinhabitate our lands. Like the ‘rock dust’ remineralizing of depleted soils(seas)increased the growth of plants on land & in water. Even kelp is used to fertilize the land feeding the plant roots to grow more energetic foods & fibers to use now. Plantseeds continue to evolve, naturally & industrially, competing for the buyers bucks. But nature always cooperates, no matter how artifical the civilized world becomes. One deep question is: will a major eco-spasm, earth-shift or global cataclysm make natural seed survival

a critical need for our evolution.�