Wrestling back control of our food

Clive Blazey gave this edited talk on heirlooms during Sarah Wains lecture tour last spring
Let us go back to one hundred years ago at the time of Federation. It was a time when we all grew our own food, and there were no trucks to carry tomatoes or watermelons from Queensland, no refrigeration to increase the shelf life of lettuce or spinach, no supermarkets to threaten the range of vegetables a few greengrocers might carry. Most of the food we ate was grown by us in our vegetable gardens, or in regional market gardens close to us. It was grown in organic soil, using manures and compost because this was before widespread use of soluble fertilizers, so there was no fertilizer run-off to infect our water supply. We didnt use much pesticide, so we didnt kill birds when we sprayed. We didnt use herbicides, and therefore didnt poison our soils. Our air was clear, our water was pure and our food was healthy and free of chemicals. Our CO2 levels were below the levels that cause global warming. But most importantly, we grew hundreds of vegetable varieties adapted to our climate. They were our favourites, and each capital city had its special tomatoes and pumpkins. In short, our food then was regional, seasonal and organic. Today, most of these garden varieties have disappeared from our food supply. By the 1980s, 90% of varieties grown in gardens in the USA had disappeared from seed lists. It was this startling fact that stimulated The Seed Savers Exchange in the USA to begin the rescue work. Over 30 years, The Seed Savers Exchange has collected and saved 25,000 varieties which we now call heirlooms in its collection. There were at least 4,000 different heirloom tomatoes, 3,600 different heirloom beans, 800 different lettuce; each having been selected over 200 years (or more) to suit the needs of gardeners in each area. All these varieties of seeds which we now call heirlooms were grown in solar powered gardens or selected by seed merchants to be grown in market gardens close by. They were fresh, ripe, tasty and nutritious. They were what we in the seed trade call Open Pollinated and true to type, so farmers and gardeners collected the seeds of the earliest, tastiest or latest harvest crops to grow back next year. We you and me owned the seeds they were publically owned and improved by natural selection working to continually improve our crops and diversity. They represent an unbroken chain of improvement back through time. The creation of the modern hybrid has changed our seed selection, and this can be explained by looking at the modern supermarket tomato. At Davis University in California in the 1950s the modern hybrid industrial tomato was created with vastly different characteristics to existing heirlooms because of machine harvesting. 1. Flowering time needed to be reduced from 90 days down to 15-30 days. 2. Tall everflowering branching (indeterminate plant habit) needed to be replaced by the compact self pruning (determinate) growth habit. 3. To overcome plant damage in transport a gene needed to be inserted to create a tomato that would separate from its stalk during the mechanical harvesting stage. 4. A slow ripening gene with rock-hard flesh was identified so that the tomato could be picked unripe as a green fruit, dropped into trucks like quarry rocks and driven three thousand miles from California to warehouses in New York, then ripened with the chemical ethylene. 5. Because literally hundreds of thousands of plants were grown in mono-culture farms special disease resistance was vital since this unnatural growing process caused blights and fungal problems to spread rapidly to every plant. Now lets look at how hybrid plant breeding has changed the quality of our food. These hybrids bred in California began the start of the globalisation of our food supply. Farmers who grew hybrids could not save seed and had to buy from the seed merchant each year, and so we began to lose control of our food supply to corporate multi-nationals. The quality of food deteriorates in direct proportion to the distance it travels Local, regional solar powered heirlooms that we owned and selected were replaced by global companyowned seed strains from America that need huge amounts of energy to grow and transport, accounting for up to 30% of our CO2 pollution! Hybrid seeds are owned by companies such as Monsanto and Syngenta that created genetically-modified seeds, which they refused to label. So lets see how trustworthy they are, because whoever owns the seed controls our food supply. They also change their names to avoid customer antagonism. Syngenta used to be Ciba-Giegy who invented DDT that gave us our first environmental disaster and prompted Rachel Carson to write Silent Spring. Monsanto was found guilty of Outrageous Behaviour in 2002 by the state of Alabama for releasing tonnes of one of the worlds most toxic chemicals into a nearby river. So outrageous and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible grounds of decency, so as to be atrocious and utterly intolerable to civilised society. They bribed Indonesian officials and Canadian scientists to gain approval of their GM crops.

Clive Blazey

Sarah Wain

Actual image from a commercial seed catalogue extolling toughness! Hybrid supermarket tomatoes have become the box and its contents

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Now lets return to our backyards At our Heronswood garden, instead of one crop being grown in 50-100 hectares called mono-culture we have natural diversity, 1000s of different species. We dont use fertilizers and our soil has very high organic carbon content because we garden organically with carbon levels over 22%. We use sunlight for energy, not coal powered energy. When you have a diversity of plants you dont need sprays because the good bugs keep the bad bugs under control. Its all about balance. The History of heirlooms in Australia So now lets go back 18 years to the story of heirlooms in Australia. I visited Seed Savers in Iowa, USA in 1991, and they sent us lots of heirloom seeds. In 1993 we grew out 100 different tomatoes to compare in a taste test between hybrids and heirlooms. Stephanie Alexander, Rita Erlich -Age Food Writer and Herman Schneider were part of the panel. The taste test winner was Tommy Toe, an unknown heirloom. All the taste test winners were tall indeterminate heirlooms not dwarf supermarket hybrids. So if heirlooms have better taste and nutrition, do Hybrids produce better yields? NO! You dont get hybrid vigour from selfpollinating crops like tomatoes. Do hybrids give a longer harvest? NO! Because maturity is now concentrated for machine harvesting. Its unbelievable that the seeds cost 150 times as much heirlooms, particularly when all the breeding was done by the government in the 1950s. These companies - Monsanto and Syngenta have been telling the world that we need GM crops to feed the world, but would any thirdworld farmer ever be able to afford to buy them? Imagine an Asian or African farmer living on $1-2 a day affording $106,000 a kilo for seed. Is Italian cuisine our future model? Now lets look at a cuisine that is based on heirlooms with no global hybrids. These are all Italian favourites Tuscan Kale, Costoluto tomato, Listarda eggplant, chicory, Romano bean have never been surpassed by hybrids.

You see they are all heirlooms the Italians value their regional varieties. At their local co-op every vegetable is labelled by variety and where it is grown so you can properly choose whether to buy it of not! The word heirloom is only relevant when hybrids replace them. Italians dont want McDonalds they have the healthiest cuisine in the world, based on locally grown tomatoes and melons, locally raised prosciutto, cheese, pasta and wine. Its their own why would they want Americans controlling their food supply? And so you have to ask Why do we? We will never create a local cuisine like the Italians have, using global hybrids! So heirlooms taste better, cost less, give longer harvests, and because they must be grown locally, cut down on CO2 pollution. And most importantly give us back ownership of our food supply. Is it any surprise that the modern supermarket tomato has the highest customer dissatisfaction rating of any vegetable? Its now so unpopular, that growing heirlooms today, is a subversive activity just like throwing tomatoes was 50 years ago. You can grow your own heirloom tomatoes so you start to gain control of your food supply, cut down on CO2 pollution and reduce greenhouse gases. Growing your own food is the single most important step towards self-sufficient lifestyle. So please grow your own heirlooms for your health and the planets So lets summarise. Its our choices that we make as gardeners that preserve our best garden varieties. If you want to solve climate change then gardening is a large part of the answer. If you care about the food you put in your mouth you can, by your choice, develop a food culture as rich and diverse as Italys. Do you think it wise to let multinationals control our seeds and our food supply? Thank you for coming today.

Italian heirlooms are part of the worlds healthiest cuisine that was never bred for globalised food distribution

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