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Why Grow Heirlooms?<br />
quality: Decades of modern breeding in vegetable<br />
crops has yielded some useful varieties, but<br />
at a price: quality has been sacrificed to the producers’<br />
convenience in harvesting and shipping.<br />
Too often, crops have been bred for uniformity,<br />
or to ripen all at once (to facilitate mechanical<br />
harvesting), or tough skins (to allow the produce<br />
to withstand rough handling and shipping, sometimes<br />
thousands of miles!).<br />
Quality, taste, and even nutritional value have<br />
been the casualties of this trend. Increasingly,<br />
studies are showing that the nutritional values in<br />
factory-farmed produce are actually lower. Protein<br />
content in corn is one example. Old-style, openpollinated<br />
field corn, the type grown for feed or<br />
for milling into flour, often contains almost twice<br />
as much protein as the new hybrids. Studies have<br />
also shown higher levels of copper, iron and manganese<br />
in at least some open-pollinated varieties.<br />
performanCe: Heirloom varieties are often the<br />
product of many generations of careful selection<br />
by farmers and gardeners who knew what they<br />
wanted from their plants. If a variety has been<br />
carefully nurtured and its seed kept by generations<br />
of a family or in a small geographic area, it stands<br />
to reason that it must perform well in the conditions<br />
under which it has been preserved. By taking<br />
some care to choose varieties from your own area,<br />
or those that come from similar conditions, it is<br />
quite possible to select varieties that will be very<br />
vigorous and productive in your own garden.<br />
savinG seeD: A great advantage of heirlooms<br />
is the fact that, provided precautions are observed<br />
when growing a crop, seed may be saved<br />
for use in future years, and it will be true to type,<br />
year after year! You can’t do this with hybrids;<br />
if you save seed grown from hybrid parents, the<br />
offspring will show a lot of variation and, in all<br />
likelihood, be markedly inferior to the parents.<br />
In fact, careful selection in your own garden<br />
can actually produce a unique strain of the crop<br />
grown, resulting in even better performance under<br />
your own unique conditions!<br />
traDition & Continuity: Heirloom vegetables<br />
represent a priceless legacy, the product of centuries<br />
of work by countless generations of farmers<br />
around the globe. When we grow heirlooms, we<br />
are the living link in a chain stretching back sometimes<br />
many hundreds of years. We are taking our<br />
turn in a succession of growers, each generation<br />
of which cherished their favorite crops and varieties<br />
and lovingly preserved fresh seed for coming<br />
seasons. As the current custodians, we are endowed<br />
with the opportunity to make our mark, as<br />
well, because like previous generations, we maintain<br />
the varieties that we love the most. Heirloom<br />
seeds are our living legacy, bequeathed to us from<br />
the past, and passed on, in turn, to the future.<br />
By ranDel a. aGrella<br />
An heirloom seed saver since 1982, Randel offers heirloom<br />
plants in season on his website, www.abundantacres.net.<br />
He also manages our seed growing program.<br />
www.rareseeds.com<br />
Come out & learn from expert speakers!<br />
perCy sChmeiser is a long<br />
time equipment dealer and<br />
canola farmer from Bruno,<br />
Saskatchewan, Canada. After<br />
becoming embroiled in<br />
a lawsuit by big agricultural/<br />
chemical company Monsanto,<br />
he became an international<br />
spokesperson for the rights of independent farmers<br />
and the regulation of genetically engineered crops.<br />
In 1997, Schmeiser’s organically-grown canola crop<br />
was contaminated by Monsanto’s genetically modified<br />
Roundup Ready Canola. When he replanted his saved<br />
seed, as he had been doing for many years, Monsanto<br />
demanded that he pay $15 per acre for using Monsanto’s<br />
patented technology without a license. Schmeiser<br />
refused and was sued by Monsanto for patent infringement.<br />
In 1998, Percy Schmeiser filed a suit against Monsanto.<br />
While that went nowhere, there was more to come.<br />
In 2005, more Roundup Ready Canola plants appeared in<br />
Schmeiser’s fields, and they sent Monsanto a bill for $660<br />
in cleanup costs. Monsanto agreed to pay the costs with<br />
the stipulation that the Schmeisers sign a release stating<br />
they would not discuss the terms of the agreement. Seeing<br />
this release as a gag order, Schmeiser refused to sign<br />
and filed a lawsuit for that amount. In 2008, Monsanto<br />
settled out of court, paying the $660 without stipulation.<br />
In the meantime, for the next several years, the case<br />
against the Schmeisers travelled through the Canadian<br />
court system before finally reaching the Canadian Supreme<br />
Court. The high court eventually ruled in Monsanto’s<br />
favor, but declined to financially penalize the Schmeisers,<br />
basically making the ruling a draw.<br />
We welcome Percy Schmeiser to our line up of speakers<br />
at our spring planting festival in Mansfield, Mis-<br />
Ronnie Cummins<br />
Percy Schmeiser<br />
ronnie Cummins is founder<br />
and director of the Organic<br />
Consumers Association (OCA)<br />
and has spent a lifetime as a<br />
professional activist, currently<br />
focusing on food safety.<br />
The OCA is an online<br />
and grassroots non-profit 501(c)3 public interest<br />
organization campaigning for health, justice, and<br />
sustainability. It deals with crucial issues of food safety,<br />
industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, children’s<br />
health, corporate accountability, Fair Trade, environmental<br />
sustainability and other key topics. The OCA<br />
represents over 850,000 members, subscribers and volunteers,<br />
including several thousand businesses in the<br />
natural foods and organic marketplace. Its US and international<br />
policy board is broadly representative of the<br />
organic, family farm, environmental, and public interest<br />
community. It is the only organization in the US focused<br />
exclusively on promoting the views and interests of the<br />
nation’s estimated 50 million organic and socially responsible<br />
consumers.<br />
Make plans to hear Ronnie Cummins speak both at<br />
our 2013 spring planting festival near Mansfield, Missouri,<br />
on May 5-6, and our 2013 national heirloom ex-<br />
Learn<br />
everything<br />
from seed<br />
starting<br />
to seed<br />
saving!<br />
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