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SEEDS For thousands of years storing seeds has been an essential part of the survival preparations made by millions of prudent people fearing attack. Seeds are hopes for future food and the defeat of famine, that lethal follower of disastrous wars.

Beginner Vegetable Seeds Bean, Lettuce, Pea, Pepper, Tomato. These vegetables offer the beginning seed saver the best chance for successful seed saving. They produce seed the same season as planted and are mostly self-pollinating, minimizing the need to be mindful of preventing cross-pollination.

Experienced Vegetable Seeds Corn, Cucumber, Muskmelon, Radish, Spinach, Squash/Pumpkin. The experienced seed saver's vegetables produce seed the season they are planted but require separation to keep unwanted cross-pollination from taking place.

Expert Vegetable Seeds Beet/Swiss Chard, Cabbage Family, Carrot, Escarole/Frissee, Onion, Radicchio/Endive, Turnip/Chinese Cabbage. The expert gardener's vegetables normally require more than one year for seed production and mandate separation to prevent cross-pollination.

You Grow Girl |Harvesting Seeds If you can grow plants, you can produce your own seeds. There are however, a few things you may want to know before you get started.

Basic Seed Saving is now On-line! We have responded to requests from around the world to make available on the web the most important seed saving information. Find specific seed saving instructions for 27 common vegetables, definitions for useful terms and concepts and a step by step tutorial for beginners. We are looking for volunteer translators to expand this section to other languages.

Seed Production Guidelines Any discussion about tree seed production must consider the adage "garbage in equals garbage out". If you plant junk seeds you will inevitability harvest junk trees. Junk refers to inferior tree seeds derived mainly from inbreeding, collected from a narrow genetic base and uncontrolled hybridization. Junk also arises from indiscriminate seed collection from non-superior trees.

Genetic Engineering and the Privatization of Seeds In 1998, angry farmers burned Monsanto-owned fields in Karnataka, India, starting a nationwide "Cremate Monsanto" campaign. The campaign demanded that biotech corporations like Monsanto, Novartis, and Pioneer leave the country. Farmers particularly targeted Monsanto because its field trials of the "terminator gene" - designed to prevent plants from producing seeds and so to make farmers buy new seed each year - created the danger of "genetic pollution" that would sterilize other crops in the area.

The Heritage Seed Library run by the HDRA in Britain aims to conserve as much biodiversity as it can and make as many varieties of vegetables available as possible. About 700 varieties in the collection, mostly vegetables. Seeds are supplied to volunteer Seed Guardians who cultivate threatened varieties of vegetables in their gardens. A Seed Swap section encourages informal exchange of rare seeds. The Library also publishes the quarterly newsletter Seed News covering plant genetic resources.

SeedSaving Resources -- This comprehensive site is a "one-stop-shop" of Web resources on plant genetic resources, seedsaving and seed swapping, and worldwide sources of organic, heirloom, open-pollinated and non-GE seed and plants.

The Seed Exchange email list has nearly 700 members from around the world, including university agriculture departments and research stations. Moderated list, no advertising, members' email information kept totally private. To subscribe send a blank email to: [email protected] with the word SUBSCRIBE as the subject of the message.

Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S) of Tucson, Arizona, is a nonprofit organization that works to conserve the traditional crops, seeds, and farming methods that have sustained native peoples throughout the southwestern US and northern Mexico. "We promote the use of these ancient crops and their wild relatives by gathering, safeguarding, and distributing their seeds, while sharing benefits with traditional communities. We also work to preserve knowledge about their uses. Through research, training, and community education, NS/S works to protect biodiversity and to celebrate cultural diversity. Both are essential in our efforts to restore the earth."

"Biotech has bamboozled us all -- Studies suggest that traditional farming methods are still the best" Guardian, August 24, 2000: "If anyone tells you that GM is going to feed the world," Steve Smith, a director of the world's biggest biotechnology company, Novartis, insisted, "tell them that it is not... To feed the world takes political and financial will -- it's not about production and distribution." Mr Smith was voicing a truth which most biotechnology companies have gone to great lengths to deny.

"Ten reasons why biotechnology will not ensure food security, protect the environment and reduce poverty in the developing world" -- by Miguel A. Altieri, University of California, Berkeley and Peter Rosset, Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy

"Will Biotechnology Feed the World's Poor?" -- "One of the biggest myths perpetuated by the biotechnology industry is that genetically engineered crops are likely to provide a solution to world hunger" -- Tom Campbell, Development Studies Centre, Kimmage Manor, Dublin, Ireland

"Genetic Engineering and World Hunger: Food? Health? Hope?" -- "Ensuring food security worldwide requires an approach that is the opposite of that promoted by Biotechnology companies". 16,000-word article from Britain's The CornerHouse, debunks the GE companies' claims that genetic engineering is the key to feeding the world's increasing numbers of people, that it will help to restore a healthy environment and prevent further degradation, and that it will provide farmers and consumers worldwide with more choices and opportunities.

The Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) is at the forefront of the battle against GE crops and biopiracy

"Plant Breeders Wrongs -- The Biopiracy and Plant Patent Scandal of the Century": On biopiracy, read RAFI's report "'Plant patent' offices in several industrialized countries are knowingly granting plant variety monopolies to plant breeders for cultivars actually bred by farmers in at least 43 Third World countries." Lists 147 "dubious" plant variety claims.

The Captain Hook Awards -- For Outstanding Achievements in Biopiracy: Biopiracy refers to the monopolization (usually through intellectual property) of genetic resources and traditional knowledge or culture taken from peoples or farming communities that developed and nurtured those resources.

Friends of the Earth International "GMOs are without a doubt the least democratic and most unpopular new technology since nuclear energy, and their potential to catalyze global ecological and social disaster is terrifying."

The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology was founded in India in 1982 by Dr. Vandana Shiva, scientist, author and a leading opponent of GE crops and biopiracy.

Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN) GRAIN is an international non-governmental organization which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge.

Biotechnology and Biosafety -- a large collection of reports, articles, publications from the Third World Network

"Genetically Engineered food -- Safety Problems" -- Physicians and Scientists Against Genetically Engineered Food is demanding a moratorium on GE food.

The Union of Concerned Scientists "asks hard questions about the risks and benefits and whether other alternatives would accomplish the same purpose [and] whether each product will move agriculture toward sustainability or whether it might block progress in that direction".

The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods -- Campaigns, Action Alerts, information, resources, online bookstore and more:

Against the Grain: Why poor nations would lose in a biotech war on hunger -- The promise [of biotechnology] of more abundant and more nutritious food appears to hold out the hope that hunger and disease can be alleviated. With potential like this, who wouldn't be in favor of genetically engineered crops? For starters, many of the people they are supposed to help. -- Sierra Club

"World food 'under threat'" -- Environmental groups said patenting by multinational corporations threatens food security and access by farmers to vital genetic resources. And they argued US efforts to block a new worldwide treaty on plant genetics would be every bit as damaging to life on Earth as Washington's refusal to implement the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. -- BBC News, 25 June, 2001

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