Comments on: Open Source Seeds http://onthejohn.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/open-source-seeds/ John's Blog about Life, Business, Technology, and Clean Tech Fri, 02 May 2008 19:35:20 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: Bill McDorman http://onthejohn.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/open-source-seeds/#comment-12 Bill McDorman Fri, 02 May 2008 19:35:20 +0000 http://onthejohn.wordpress.com/?p=11#comment-12 The land grant agricultural colleges were originally set up to do just what you are talking about. Unfortunately, in the past few decades their research has been privatized in large part by the same seed conglomerates now threatening diversity. The open-source software analogy is a good one with one important limitation. The success of a seed is dependent on the specific requirements of the ecosystem in which it is planted. Open source software will work anywhere. Open-source seeds will only be most effective if adapted to a specific climate, ecosystem, region. A variety of grain designed for Florida will probably not be the best for Montana. I have often thought web 2.0 technologies could provide the information sharing backbone for a peer to peer, open-source seed breeding and conservation effort. The Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa has 7,000 members and has developed a language to describe characteristics and differences in varieties that will be necessary. Unfortunatley, it has not embraced the web to further this mission. It largely relies on a printed catalog of varieties available for exchange each year. I spoke with Jeff Bezos once about starting Seedazon.com. The idea was a website allowing anyone in the world to access seeds listed by anyone like Amazon does with books and small book sellers. This isn't exactly an open-source forum, but it would allow important breeding developments to be accessed and exchanged. Most importantly, everyone in every region, town and city needs to rejoin the seed saving ritual. Personal computing at the gardening level if you will. If we want to live in the post peak oil era, we will need our own regional agricultures. If we are going to be successful with regional agricultures, we will need access to a diversity of seeds. The strength of an ecosystem is its diversity. If we want a diversity of seeds, we need to grow and save our own again, the way humanity has for the past 10,000 years. Rejoin the seed saving ritual, the ritual one could argue, that made civilization possible. You can find detailed seed saving instructions on the web site of this 20 year-old nonprofit: http://www.seedsave.org The land grant agricultural colleges were originally set up to do just what you are talking about. Unfortunately, in the past few decades their research has been privatized in large part by the same seed conglomerates now threatening diversity.

The open-source software analogy is a good one with one important limitation. The success of a seed is dependent on the specific requirements of the ecosystem in which it is planted. Open source software will work anywhere. Open-source seeds will only be most effective if adapted to a specific climate, ecosystem, region. A variety of grain designed for Florida will probably not be the best for Montana.

I have often thought web 2.0 technologies could provide the information sharing backbone for a peer to peer, open-source seed breeding and conservation effort. The Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa has 7,000 members and has developed a language to describe characteristics and differences in varieties that will be necessary. Unfortunatley, it has not embraced the web to further this mission. It largely relies on a printed catalog of varieties available for exchange each year.

I spoke with Jeff Bezos once about starting Seedazon.com. The idea was a website allowing anyone in the world to access seeds listed by anyone like Amazon does with books and small book sellers. This isn’t exactly an open-source forum, but it would allow important breeding developments to be accessed and exchanged.

Most importantly, everyone in every region, town and city needs to rejoin the seed saving ritual. Personal computing at the gardening level if you will. If we want to live in the post peak oil era, we will need our own regional agricultures. If we are going to be successful with regional agricultures, we will need access to a diversity of seeds. The strength of an ecosystem is its diversity. If we want a diversity of seeds, we need to grow and save our own again, the way humanity has for the past 10,000 years.

Rejoin the seed saving ritual, the ritual one could argue, that made civilization possible.

You can find detailed seed saving instructions on the web site of this 20 year-old nonprofit:

http://www.seedsave.org

]]> By: sailesh http://onthejohn.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/open-source-seeds/#comment-11 sailesh Thu, 01 May 2008 17:50:27 +0000 http://onthejohn.wordpress.com/?p=11#comment-11 I dont think a centralized authority is necessary. One way to look at this is to look at the state of affairs before Monsanto entered the picture. Many farmers would travel and actually share their seed stocks to help in better cross breeds of the corn. In fact most of the innovation in agriculture was coming from individual farmers using low tech techniques. But eventually the low bandwith combined with the poorer technology had to give way to the superior concentrated techniques of the conglomerates. Therefore in order to develop the equivalent of Open Source in agriculture, we need a rapid prototyping environment combined with a very efficient communication/collaboration mechanism. I think the web and social networks offer a good means to do the latter. Imagine discussion groups and conversations debating best practices and sharing expertise. Combined with a peer-peer seed stock distribution model, seeds can be rapidly contributed and distributed to various folks interested in prototyping and development. So it comes down to can we get an efficient and economical prototyping environment that can compete with the large laboratories of Monsanto. Here is where I believe we can take advantage of large scale coordinated experimentation. Each farmer performs certain set of experiments to produce seed stocks with a variety of characteristics that can be shared with other farmers. Working in such a distributed fashion can potentially become as efficient as lab design and experimentation. Another aspect is the research being performed in the agriculture departments of various universities. Government investment in research rather than subsidies would help spur the pace of innovation significantly. I dont think a centralized authority is necessary. One way to look at this is to look at the state of affairs before Monsanto entered the picture. Many farmers would travel and actually share their seed stocks to help in better cross breeds of the corn. In fact most of the innovation in agriculture was coming from individual farmers using low tech techniques. But eventually the low bandwith combined with the poorer technology had to give way to the superior concentrated techniques of the conglomerates.

Therefore in order to develop the equivalent of Open Source in agriculture, we need a rapid prototyping environment combined with a very efficient communication/collaboration mechanism.

I think the web and social networks offer a good means to do the latter. Imagine discussion groups and conversations debating best practices and sharing expertise. Combined with a peer-peer seed stock distribution model, seeds can be rapidly contributed and distributed to various folks interested in prototyping and development.

So it comes down to can we get an efficient and economical prototyping environment that can compete with the large laboratories of Monsanto. Here is where I believe we can take advantage of large scale coordinated experimentation. Each farmer performs certain set of experiments to produce seed stocks with a variety of characteristics that can be shared with other farmers. Working in such a distributed fashion can potentially become as efficient as lab design and experimentation.

Another aspect is the research being performed in the agriculture departments of various universities. Government investment in research rather than subsidies would help spur the pace of innovation significantly.

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