- Nine out of every ten bites of food start with seed
- Local food starts with local seed that grows really well right where we live
- We only grow about 10% of the food varieties that are actually available to us
- Many heirloom varieties offer superior taste, nutritional value, and potential resistance to disease.
- Sustainable crop diversity offers the best hope for adaptation to changing world climate.
- Heritage plant varieties belong to all people. When we help protect them, we are helping to pass a 12,000 year legacy along to the next generation.
- You can legally save seeds from open-pollinated plants that grow like their parents so you NEVER have to buy seeds again
- Each seed produces many more seeds that we can save and share. For example, one squash or one tomato seed can produce thousands of seeds while one lettuce seed can produce 30,000 more seeds! That’s pretty impressive!
- Every seed has a story. People have been saving and sharing open-pollinated seeds for thousands of years. We need ensure that these stories and these seeds are freely available for everyone for all time
- Growing diverse crops of a wide variety of open-pollinated plants offers the best hope for adaptation to changing world climate and is one of the best ways to help us avoid catastrophic crop failures associated with monocultures (growing large fields of just one kind of plant)
- Genetic diversity in open-pollinated varieties is nature’s insurance policy against catastrophic crop failures
- 93% of heirloom or open-pollinated varieties are no longer available. We need to grow them again.
- Four multinational chemical corporations control more than 60% of commercial seed. Their hybrid and patented seeds often require harmful pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers to grow https://civileats.com/2019/01/11/the-sobering-details-behind-the-latest-seed-monopoly-chart/.
- You must buy hybrid seeds every time you grow them.
- It’s illegal to save or share seeds from patented plants. Many hybrid plants and most genetically modified plants are patented
- Commercial seeds that are packaged and sold in Canada are usually grown somewhere else in the world
- Many heirloom varieties offer superior taste, nutritional value, and potential resistance to disease.
- Sustainable crop diversity offers the best hope for adaptation to changing world climate.
- Heritage plant varieties belong to all people. When we help protect them, we are helping to pass a 12,000 year legacy along to the next generation.
