This is my first long-food piece, written in the Spring of 2012. It explores genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the influence of agricultural biotechnology companies on our food system, and seed saving through the words of farmers in Massachusett's Pioneer Valley.
Seed saving is a lost art…or is it?
By Dara Kagan
Suzanne Webber surveyed her
dancing greens. We stood at the edge of her small vegetable plot, no larger
than a patch of dry ground that had been covered by a car during a
rainstorm. Beyond stood the rest
of her Montague, Massachusetts farm, Brooks Bend; sheep dotting the parched New
England grass across the road from the 1751 farmhouse, shepherded by two
talkative dogs, Gemma and Ray. Webber loves the diversity of color and pattern
in the sheep she breeds. The farmhouse was red, with a bright blue door.
Her concern on this chilly Tuesday
in February lay at her feet in the cool, porous loam: her dancing greens. She
is one of several farmers who are growing three kinds of greens together in
order to increase the seed gene pool and enhance a desired trait. “You choose
the ones you like,” she said, pointing out differences in color, texture, stem,
shininess, and leaf shape between the ten new greens. “By taste, by vigor, by
beauty, by how well it does in the cold.” She will selectively breed her
favorites, that is, save their seeds and create new gene pools by growing them
out.
I ordered a salad at lunch at the
nearby Book Mill. Its arrival stole my attention from reviewing my notes of
Brooks Bend, the varied greens variegated with purple and glistening with oil
like fish scales. Everything on my plate was thanks to the efforts of selective
breeding—in a manner of speaking. The seeds that grew this lunch may have come
from Webber’s farm; as the sheepdogs nuzzled her hand, she had removed from the
shelf a lidless white cardboard box with neatly labeled paper packets of tiny
seeds, seeds that she has saved from her own garden or received at exchanges. But
they just as easily could have been grown from patented, genetically modified
seed sold by a multinational corporation. Which salad lay on my plate? More importantly, why does it
matter?
