www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/16/seed-farmers-climate-change
we’re adding more toxic pollution to our air. Our Weather extremes are making it difficult to produce seeds for the production of vegetables, fruits and plants. Wars stir up pollutants and create toxic pollution. The whole World will feel the scarcity of fertilizers and seed stocks for vegetable production. No nation is escaping the vagaries of weather or the growing threat of wildfires.
What we don’t need is hatred, violence , barbarism and wars tipping our ecological balances. Mankind has enough to do finding solutions to Weather extremes and global warming. Many refugees will be migrating from areas no longer sustaining crops. We certainly don’t need refugees from Wars, as well.
Before the Pandemic, 100 million people were in the diaspora, displaced persons fighting for their personal survival. How many more migrants will senseless Barbarism create? When do we forcefully say, Enough?
For large seed companies accustomed to adjusting locations, moving production to less temperamental locales may not be a daunting prospect – although Sparks said that training farmers to raise seed takes time and there’s already a critical shortage of people to do the work. But no matter where they live, seed farmers themselves don’t have the luxury of relocation. For them, the key to future resiliency is adaptation right where they are. For Mates of the Green Things Farm Collective, that means that more research into both open-pollinated and hybrid seeds is necessary for an uncertain future – and that especially holds true for small-scale and organic farmers. She said that farmers like her need seeds that are disease- and pest-resistant, grow in systems with few chemicals and little tilling, and survive a range of climate fluctuations.
As climate change becomes more chaotic, we want plants with a resilient enough genetic makeup that they can survive if not thrive
Nathaniel Talbot of Deep Harvest Farm
Hybrid varieties are bred for what’s called “vertical” resistance, to one pest or disease; growers of open-pollinated varieties save seed from plants that have “horizontal” resistance, meaning they can withstand a variety of regional stressors. “As climate change becomes more chaotic – one year’s drought might be another year’s freeze – we want plants with a resilient enough genetic makeup that they can survive if not thrive in both of those situations,” Talbot said.
These tenets of open pollination “are part of the resilience you’re talking about”, said Selman. The biggest thing home gardeners purchasing seed can do to help is to “support local, small, regional seed companies so they don’t go away because they are doing incredible work”.
