6 ms·

The Open Source Seed Initiative

317 points by ciconia 7y ago

flimflamm 7y ago
Is this some US specific problem? At least in EU we don't have this kind of lock down problems for seeds.
- joshvm 7y ago
  Actually we do have odd laws. You can circumvent them, as some sellers do, but they exist nonetheless. Real seeds is a British company that sells exclusively non hybrid heirloom seeds. Good stuff and loads of weird crosses. However, they're not allowed to sell them to the public because they're not on an approved list of varieties. s So you pay a penny to join their seed club and essentially agree that you won't start a business selling crops. http://www.realseeds.co.uk/terms.html http://www.realseeds.co.uk/terms.html > In the EU, there is actually a list of 'official' vegetable varieties. And a law governing seed sellers, which states that if a variety isn’t on the official list, then seed companies cannot ‘market’ the seed to anyone. In an immediate sense, this law only affects us, not you - because there are no laws at all governing the buying of seed or what vegetables anyone can grow. Selling unlisted seed? - that’s against the law. Buying unlisted seed? - that’s completely fine! So we should stress that for you it’s perfectly legal to buy any seed you like, plant it, grow it, and do whatever you want with it.
  - saalweachter 7y ago
    Do you know the history of the "allowed seeds" law? I assume greed is in there somewhere, but there's usually some other bizarre or novel justification for that sort of law.
    - joshvm 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Union_for_the_Protection_of_New_Varieties_of_Plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Union_for_the_Pr... https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gardening-blog/2013/sep/26/eu-regulation-garden-plants https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gardening-blog/2013... https://ec.europa.eu/food/plant/plant_propagation_material/plant_variety_catalogues_databases_en https://ec.europa.eu/food/plant/plant_propagation_material/p... Some of the justification I can see is environmental/economical. As per my sibling post - it's there to make sure that a rogue seller doesn't accidentally or intentionally cripple national food production by introducing a crop that is prone to disease and infects/crosses with everything. However there is also "breeder's right" which is more debatable. I'm not sure what actually happened (IANAL), the original proposal came under a lot of fire from retailers and gardeners: http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlaw2.html http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlaw2.html
  - aitchnyu 7y ago
    Whats an "approved list of varieties" for commercial crops? Sounds ominous.
    - joshvm 7y ago
      You can find some more information here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-lists-of-agricultural-and-vegetable-crops https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-lists-of-agricultural-a... Note that there's no restriction on the buyer, you can buy whatever you like. But in order to sell seeds to the public you can only sell registered varieties. I would guess this is to prevent crops which are disease prone or invasive from spreading. For agricultural crops the fee includes mandatory testing. You wouldn't want the country's cereal crop to get decimated because someone started selling dodgy seeds. Having read a bit of the legislation it also looks like it's been heavily lobbied by businesses. It's not particularly hard to get stuff added to the list, but it's pretty expensive. An amateur heritage variety costs £100-175 to register. So someone like Fothergill's or Thomson and Morgan don't have any trouble, but a small retailer might struggle.
- hobofan 7y ago
  That's not true: https://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/en/patent-cases https://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/en/patent-cases
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
cryptica 7y ago
Seems interesting. It's a shame that it has to come to this. Government regulation should be focused on the safety and well being of the majority of producers and consumers, it should not focus on how to help a small number of corporations to capture value from the system; that is not the job of the government.
ohazi 7y ago
Is this currently "only" a legal problem, or are the GMO crop companies able to produce seeds that produce sterile crops? I'm sure this has already been done to death, but... Cheesy sci-fi plot where genetically engineered crops crowd out all the reproducing ones, and then humanity starves to death when evilcorp loses their ability to produce the seeds? Could we maybe not go down this route, please?
- serf 7y ago
  > Is this currently "only" a legal problem, or are the GMO crop companies able to produce seeds that produce sterile crops? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_techno... It's possible to do, but most folks say that they won't ever implement it. The UN has a moratorium on GURT use.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  It's not about GMO, but about conventional breeding. There is a concept called hybrid breeding, both for animals and plants. The "final" product, the seed for the farmer, the piglet raised for mass production, is bred from two parent lines, one for the male part, one for the female. Both are relatively inbred so they are mostly homocygotic. Their offspring, because of Mendelian genetics, is mostly heterocygotic, but very homegeneous, which is a great thing, industrially speaking. However, a farmer can't just raise those piglets and breed them on his own. Not because of patents or licenses, but just because the offspring would be all over the map, genetically. And probably less profitable. The breeding companies need a complicated system to develop these lines and provide their customers with the best seed/livestock. That takes a lot of money and effort.
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    For some functions of 'best'.
    - bayesian_horse 7y ago
      Well, to be more specific, the farmers make more money on the right genetic material. Hybrids outperform single lines (breeds, etc) on most metrics of interest. And they are homogeneous in growth, size and body composition (animals). Which matters for industrial processing and marketing. And for the price consumers have to pay. The current agricultural mass production would just not be possible without such hybrid breeding programs. So the OSSI will need to offer seeds from similar breeding programs. There are always lines/breeds which are not hybrid-bred, but the market for that produce is limited. Higher performance also means less animals tortured, less land and water used to feed the same number of Humans. From a global perspective plant and animal breeding has to become more professional, not less. As far as I have understood it, the OSSI wants to professionalize the breeding efforts of (non-breeding-company) farmers and small scale breeding companies. Much like many open source projects got professionalized through forming organizations and legal entities.
bayesian_horse 7y ago
Breeders have "the power" to do all these licensing and patenting shenanigans because they are creating superior seeds. Farmers choose to use these restricted seeds because they make more money that way. This effort of "open source seeds" is comparable to communal breeding, which hasn't been competitive to these breeding companies. It takes time and effort to develop these breeds, and an Open Source Seed Initiative would have to somehow replicate this advantage, probably by individual farmers taking a hit on returns from not using the most marketable seedstock in order to work on those lines.
- serf 7y ago
  >Breeders have "the power" to do all these licensing and patenting shenanigans because they are creating superior seeds. 'the power' also comes from lobbying and gaming the political system; it's not just product efficacy. That's like saying John Deere has 'the power' to restrict right-to-repair because they make such a superior product, which is demonstrably false. They spend a large effort on securing their products' place in the market via legislation, propaganda, and the threat of discontinuation of service to the lower rung purchasers of their products. All of which are tactics which are effective for profiteering, but not that great morally or ethically -- especially given that we're talking about an industry that is attempting to feed the world with regards to this threads' discussion.
  - bayesian_horse 7y ago
    Do you have any idea about agricultural breeding? There are some fundamental factors which are hard to overcome. Mendelian genetics more or less dictates that hybrid breeding schemes are superior, in the big picture, to line breeding. But those schemes require long term organizing and capital investment. Which is why companies have any say in breeding at all. The Open Source Seed Initiative would need to replicate this through cooperation in a community. Farmers don't have big margins. They can't afford to waste money on crops that underperform, for whatever reasons. They can't afford to lose money on produce that isn't marketable for whatever reason.
    - 7y ago
kissgyorgy 7y ago
This is really cool! I hope this will happen with medicine at some point in life...
- comicjk 7y ago
  Most medicines are already "open source" in the sense that their patents have expired, the details are known, and any chemistry lab can make them. The problem is selling them legally as medicine! A generic medicine needs FDA approval confirming that it is biologically equivalent to an already-approved drug, which requires a human trial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviated_New_Drug_Application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviated_New_Drug_Applicati... This process is apparently easier in the EU, but both systems are so complex that it's hard to tell exactly what makes it easier.
nickserv 7y ago
For those in Europe, I've had good success growing seeds ordered from the Kokopelli association, which has been doing this for 20 years. The trick is to find varieties adapted to the local climate, for example ancient varieties from your region no longer commercialized. http://kokopelli-semences.fr/ http://kokopelli-semences.fr/
- benj111 7y ago
  In the Uk there's the Heritage Seed Library. https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/hsl https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/hsl
vwyxp 7y ago
Sooo am I the only one who thinks if you spend millions on creating a special breed you should be able to control who gets to use it? Otherwise where's the incentive for me to spend the money?
- tchaffee 7y ago
  In what way does open source prevent you from attempting to do that?
- n4r9 7y ago
  You don't have to believe otherwise to support this initiative as far as I can tell. It's not about restricting the rights of the patenters but rather giving farmers an alternative choice.
- tathougies 7y ago
  Of course you should be able to patent it. You should also be able to give it away for free. You should not be allowed to ask the government to prevent other people from doing what they want with their seeds.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
floki999 7y ago
Very good, related, article in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/07/opinion/sunday/dan-barber-seed-companies.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/07/opinion/sunda...
nerd7473 7y ago
I never have been big on planting, and didn't really know theee was an issue with companies holding large amounts of seeds...

317 points by ciconia 7y ago

flimflamm 7y ago

Is this some US specific problem? At least in EU we don't have this kind of lock down problems for seeds.

joshvm 7y ago
Actually we do have odd laws. You can circumvent them, as some sellers do, but they exist nonetheless. Real seeds is a British company that sells exclusively non hybrid heirloom seeds. Good stuff and loads of weird crosses. However, they're not allowed to sell them to the public because they're not on an approved list of varieties. s So you pay a penny to join their seed club and essentially agree that you won't start a business selling crops. http://www.realseeds.co.uk/terms.html http://www.realseeds.co.uk/terms.html > In the EU, there is actually a list of 'official' vegetable varieties. And a law governing seed sellers, which states that if a variety isn’t on the official list, then seed companies cannot ‘market’ the seed to anyone. In an immediate sense, this law only affects us, not you - because there are no laws at all governing the buying of seed or what vegetables anyone can grow. Selling unlisted seed? - that’s against the law. Buying unlisted seed? - that’s completely fine! So we should stress that for you it’s perfectly legal to buy any seed you like, plant it, grow it, and do whatever you want with it.
- saalweachter 7y ago
  Do you know the history of the "allowed seeds" law? I assume greed is in there somewhere, but there's usually some other bizarre or novel justification for that sort of law.
  - joshvm 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Union_for_the_Protection_of_New_Varieties_of_Plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Union_for_the_Pr... https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gardening-blog/2013/sep/26/eu-regulation-garden-plants https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gardening-blog/2013... https://ec.europa.eu/food/plant/plant_propagation_material/plant_variety_catalogues_databases_en https://ec.europa.eu/food/plant/plant_propagation_material/p... Some of the justification I can see is environmental/economical. As per my sibling post - it's there to make sure that a rogue seller doesn't accidentally or intentionally cripple national food production by introducing a crop that is prone to disease and infects/crosses with everything. However there is also "breeder's right" which is more debatable. I'm not sure what actually happened (IANAL), the original proposal came under a lot of fire from retailers and gardeners: http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlaw2.html http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlaw2.html
- aitchnyu 7y ago
  Whats an "approved list of varieties" for commercial crops? Sounds ominous.
  - joshvm 7y ago
    You can find some more information here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-lists-of-agricultural-and-vegetable-crops https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-lists-of-agricultural-a... Note that there's no restriction on the buyer, you can buy whatever you like. But in order to sell seeds to the public you can only sell registered varieties. I would guess this is to prevent crops which are disease prone or invasive from spreading. For agricultural crops the fee includes mandatory testing. You wouldn't want the country's cereal crop to get decimated because someone started selling dodgy seeds. Having read a bit of the legislation it also looks like it's been heavily lobbied by businesses. It's not particularly hard to get stuff added to the list, but it's pretty expensive. An amateur heritage variety costs £100-175 to register. So someone like Fothergill's or Thomson and Morgan don't have any trouble, but a small retailer might struggle.
hobofan 7y ago
That's not true: https://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/en/patent-cases https://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/en/patent-cases
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

cryptica 7y ago

Seems interesting. It's a shame that it has to come to this. Government regulation should be focused on the safety and well being of the majority of producers and consumers, it should not focus on how to help a small number of corporations to capture value from the system; that is not the job of the government.

ohazi 7y ago

Is this currently "only" a legal problem, or are the GMO crop companies able to produce seeds that produce sterile crops? I'm sure this has already been done to death, but... Cheesy sci-fi plot where genetically engineered crops crowd out all the reproducing ones, and then humanity starves to death when evilcorp loses their ability to produce the seeds? Could we maybe not go down this route, please?

serf 7y ago
> Is this currently "only" a legal problem, or are the GMO crop companies able to produce seeds that produce sterile crops? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_techno... It's possible to do, but most folks say that they won't ever implement it. The UN has a moratorium on GURT use.
bayesian_horse 7y ago
It's not about GMO, but about conventional breeding. There is a concept called hybrid breeding, both for animals and plants. The "final" product, the seed for the farmer, the piglet raised for mass production, is bred from two parent lines, one for the male part, one for the female. Both are relatively inbred so they are mostly homocygotic. Their offspring, because of Mendelian genetics, is mostly heterocygotic, but very homegeneous, which is a great thing, industrially speaking. However, a farmer can't just raise those piglets and breed them on his own. Not because of patents or licenses, but just because the offspring would be all over the map, genetically. And probably less profitable. The breeding companies need a complicated system to develop these lines and provide their customers with the best seed/livestock. That takes a lot of money and effort.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  For some functions of 'best'.
  - bayesian_horse 7y ago
    Well, to be more specific, the farmers make more money on the right genetic material. Hybrids outperform single lines (breeds, etc) on most metrics of interest. And they are homogeneous in growth, size and body composition (animals). Which matters for industrial processing and marketing. And for the price consumers have to pay. The current agricultural mass production would just not be possible without such hybrid breeding programs. So the OSSI will need to offer seeds from similar breeding programs. There are always lines/breeds which are not hybrid-bred, but the market for that produce is limited. Higher performance also means less animals tortured, less land and water used to feed the same number of Humans. From a global perspective plant and animal breeding has to become more professional, not less. As far as I have understood it, the OSSI wants to professionalize the breeding efforts of (non-breeding-company) farmers and small scale breeding companies. Much like many open source projects got professionalized through forming organizations and legal entities.

bayesian_horse 7y ago

Breeders have "the power" to do all these licensing and patenting shenanigans because they are creating superior seeds. Farmers choose to use these restricted seeds because they make more money that way. This effort of "open source seeds" is comparable to communal breeding, which hasn't been competitive to these breeding companies. It takes time and effort to develop these breeds, and an Open Source Seed Initiative would have to somehow replicate this advantage, probably by individual farmers taking a hit on returns from not using the most marketable seedstock in order to work on those lines.

serf 7y ago
>Breeders have "the power" to do all these licensing and patenting shenanigans because they are creating superior seeds. 'the power' also comes from lobbying and gaming the political system; it's not just product efficacy. That's like saying John Deere has 'the power' to restrict right-to-repair because they make such a superior product, which is demonstrably false. They spend a large effort on securing their products' place in the market via legislation, propaganda, and the threat of discontinuation of service to the lower rung purchasers of their products. All of which are tactics which are effective for profiteering, but not that great morally or ethically -- especially given that we're talking about an industry that is attempting to feed the world with regards to this threads' discussion.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  Do you have any idea about agricultural breeding? There are some fundamental factors which are hard to overcome. Mendelian genetics more or less dictates that hybrid breeding schemes are superior, in the big picture, to line breeding. But those schemes require long term organizing and capital investment. Which is why companies have any say in breeding at all. The Open Source Seed Initiative would need to replicate this through cooperation in a community. Farmers don't have big margins. They can't afford to waste money on crops that underperform, for whatever reasons. They can't afford to lose money on produce that isn't marketable for whatever reason.
  - 7y ago

kissgyorgy 7y ago

This is really cool! I hope this will happen with medicine at some point in life...

comicjk 7y ago
Most medicines are already "open source" in the sense that their patents have expired, the details are known, and any chemistry lab can make them. The problem is selling them legally as medicine! A generic medicine needs FDA approval confirming that it is biologically equivalent to an already-approved drug, which requires a human trial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviated_New_Drug_Application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviated_New_Drug_Applicati... This process is apparently easier in the EU, but both systems are so complex that it's hard to tell exactly what makes it easier.

nickserv 7y ago

For those in Europe, I've had good success growing seeds ordered from the Kokopelli association, which has been doing this for 20 years. The trick is to find varieties adapted to the local climate, for example ancient varieties from your region no longer commercialized. http://kokopelli-semences.fr/ http://kokopelli-semences.fr/

benj111 7y ago
In the Uk there's the Heritage Seed Library. https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/hsl https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/hsl

vwyxp 7y ago

Sooo am I the only one who thinks if you spend millions on creating a special breed you should be able to control who gets to use it? Otherwise where's the incentive for me to spend the money?

tchaffee 7y ago
In what way does open source prevent you from attempting to do that?
n4r9 7y ago
You don't have to believe otherwise to support this initiative as far as I can tell. It's not about restricting the rights of the patenters but rather giving farmers an alternative choice.
tathougies 7y ago
Of course you should be able to patent it. You should also be able to give it away for free. You should not be allowed to ask the government to prevent other people from doing what they want with their seeds.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

floki999 7y ago

Very good, related, article in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/07/opinion/sunday/dan-barber-seed-companies.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/07/opinion/sunda...

nerd7473 7y ago

I never have been big on planting, and didn't really know theee was an issue with companies holding large amounts of seeds...