When we buy cereal or bread, few pay attention to the fact that most grains are protected or even patented. Most farmers don’t own the seeds they sow on their fields. “They are renting them,” Kloppenburg, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-founder of OSSI says with disgust. The problem with that? “A few global companies have the monopolies on global seed trade, and they breed cash crops like corn and soy, purely for money. They don’t care about biodiversity, world hunger or about the small farmer.” What sounds like a business problem impacts everybody, Kloppenburg insists. “These few gene giants on top of the food chain decide what ends up on our plates.”
In 2012, Kloppenburg and half a dozen like-minded agriculture experts founded OSSI as an alternative to the monopolies. OSSI’s aim is the “free flow and exchange of genetic resources, of plant breeding and variety development,” Kloppenburg says. With global warming, disease and changing climatic patterns, “we need novel plant varieties that are capable of responding to the changes. Farm to table is popular, but we really need to talk about seed to table.”
The movement faces an uphill battle, particularly in the US where most farmers plant seeds that are patented by the big corporations. Still, about 50 seed breeders have already signed on with OSSI in the US to offer nearly 500 seed varieties. And other open source seed organizations are making their own way in Europe, Argentina, India and more.
https://worldsensorium.com/open-source-seeds-loosen-big-ags-grip-on-farmers/
This topic has several aspects which many eco-activists often do not see. 1. Seeds can only be "patented" if they are genetically modified. This is the case for example in Roundup-ready or BT maize and soy varieties. 2. "Normally" (without gene editing) bred varieties can be used by everybody, the breeder cannot forbid it, but the farmer has to pay a (relatively small) fee to the breeder if he reuses the strain in the next year by seeding his own harvested seeds. (which is not bad, but good, as we will see...). This is only applicable for strains, which are not hybrid strains (those will not give good, fertile seeds) and only for strains which are not older than 70 years.
3.The breeding of new strains has been one of the most important things of modern times. It enabled the creation of strains with stronger resistancy against diseases and much, much higher yields and protein contents. This is the base of our food security. To create a new strain costs a lot of work, money and time. The breeder needs years of cross breeding and selection, has to conduct many expensive field trials to find a stable strain, has to proof it to the authorities and then he can start to multiply and sell it. It costs a lot and has a high risk. This must be paid, otherwise nobody would do it and we would face the risk that a new disease might come and nobody has a solution. We also need better strains, adapted to changing environmental and soil conditions. The main problem is not the breeders themselves, but the market. Big corporations buy small breeders and also have more resources to create high-yield hybrid strains which give them power (then the farmer cannot reuse his own seeds, but has to re-buy from the seed-company again). But it is the farmers' decision -he wants more yield, so he takes the hybrids and becomes dependent. He could decide to take an old strain which would even be free to use. But then the quality and yield would be less and he would have losses, as he cannot fulfill the market demands of protein content, etc. At the end it is also a decision of the consumer which bread he buys and which meat he selects, cheap is industrial... The good thing is: we have gene banks and seed banks which store old strains for the future, so we will not loose them. And there are organic and old seed strain clubs which share the strains among their members and keep them alife/active and free. Organic farmers and breeders can get the old seeds there and multiply them again. Here is one of them, you can order seeds for your garden or balcony and support the project in this way, they are also doing lobby work to protect the laws from beeing changed by the influence of the big companies: https://vern.de/
I have alrady seen some of these old strains for sale at a big hardware store chain, the customers are becoming more aware and buy it.
4. Hybrid strains may even have ecological advantages: They cannot or are not likely to get invasive as they cannot produce fertile offspring. This is very important, in aquaculture with african species, for example.
