Is the solution to E. coli contamination in spinach a scorched earth policy that only the biggest farms can follow? We don't think so, but that's just what corporate agribusiness is suggesting. Shortly after the E. coli outbreak in 2006, the "leafy greens" industry in California got together to try to fix its image, creating something called a marketing agreement for lettuce, spinach, and other leafy greens grown in the state.

Problem is, the standards developed by the California marketing agreement board required drastic measures that were most suited to large-scale producers. These measures included trying to keep all wildlife off of farms. Small farms and those that tried to incorporate water quality protection, wildlife habitat preservation, or organic methods found it hard to comply. Even though the marketing agreement is voluntary, it sure doesn't seem that way to farmers if all of their buyers require participation.

Please sign our petition to USDA to stop the industry from writing its own rules.

http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/t/741/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=1438

Sharrhan:


[www.facebook.com]

kwan,

This link might be easier to access: [action.foodandwaterwatch.org]

Thanks for bringing this to our attention--it's always something[sigh]

Thanks, Tamukha. I was trying to remember how to turn it into an active link and couldn't find the info.

Sharrhan:


[www.facebook.com]

kwan,

You bracket the address with [ and ]

am always up for supporting small businesses : )

Thank you, Tamukha. Next time I'll remember and do that.

Sharrhan:


[www.facebook.com]

i signed the petition

on a personal note i am continueing to order open polinated seeds and saving seeds from those plants [www.victoryseeds.com]

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2009 03:49PM by Jgunn.

kwan,

You're welcome! We can just cut & paste the http if you forget to bracket it, so no worries : )

Jodi,

Thanks for posting that link to Victory Seeds; I tried to go to Seeds of Change's website the other day, and it just wouldn't load--conspiracy!!!

np Tam , i have very good luck with their seeds .. 80-90% germination success which is really good for non - hybrid seeds

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

If I don't have a garden large enough to grow from all the seeds I collect what can I do to preserve them for later on, or to just preserve them? I know they're meant to be grown and produce seeds for the next generation but... my yard is small. For now at least.

One more question, if I were to start a larger garden on my friend's property how do I protect my plants from... I don't know exactly but we are in farmland here and there are tons of crops grown all around, can my plants be contaminated with terminator seed pollen, sprays, etc? What to do to avoid this?

coco--
You're asking all the things I'm wondering about too. I especially worry about the contamination of crops in the future.

Sharrhan:


[www.facebook.com]

seeds can last a veryyyyyyyyyy long time if you keep them cool and absent from oxygen (like in little sealed crayovac) type packages

viable seeds have been found in egyptian tombs ...of really old world grains .. whatever became of them who knows (monsanto probably got their hands on them lol)

Will the Terminator spread to other plants?

It is likely that Terminator will kill the seeds of neighboring plants of the same species, under certain conditions. However, the effects will be confined to the first generation, and will not be able to spread to other generations. The scenario might go like this: when farmers plant the Terminator seeds, the seeds already will have been treated with tetracycline, and thus the recombinase will have acted, and the toxin coding sequence will be next to the seed-specific promoter, and will be ready to act when the end of seed development comes around. The seeds will grow into plants, and make pollen. Every pollen grain will carry a ready-to-act toxin gene. If the Terminator crop is next to a field planted in a normal variety, and pollen is taken by insects or the wind to that field, any eggs fertilized by the Terminator pollen will now have one toxin gene. It will be activated late in that seed's development, and the seed will die. However, it is unlikely that the person growing the normal variety will be able to tell, because the seed will probably look normal. Only when that seed is planted, and doesn't germinate, will the change become apparent.

In most cases, the toxin gene will not be passed on any further, because dead plants don't reproduce. However, under certain conditions I will discuss later, it is possible for the toxin gene to be inherited.

In any case, dead seeds, where they occur, would be a serious problem for the farmer whose fields are close to the Terminator crop. How many seeds die will depend on the degree of cross-pollination, and that is influenced by the species of plant, the variety of crop, weather conditions, how close the fields are to each other, and so on. If many seeds die, it will make saving seed untenable for the adjacent farmer. Even if only a few seeds die, they will contain the toxin and any other proteins engineered into the Terminator-protected variety. These new 'components' may make the seed unusable for certain purposes

[www.victoryseeds.com] that was pulled from this part of the site

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist




Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/19/2009 10:17AM by Jgunn.

scary.

yep it is scary .. fortunately i dont live in a real major area where cross contamination would occur

unless they teach the pollen to somehow blow skywards, around a mountain and down my valley then im screwed

perhaps they will have trained bees in the future to seek out and terminate plants lol .. ok my sci fi mind is going out of control

oh i wanted to add , i had a little story about seeds, this last winter i yoinked out the fridge to clean behind it because it hadnt been done the 3 years ive been here or the 5 years previous to my hubby living here .. behind the fridge was a package of seeds date 1998 .. so i planted them and got a wailing bumper crop of peas this year .. 11 years old behind a hot dusty fridge and they were still good ..soo ... i think seeds can last a good amount of time under optimum conditions

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/19/2009 09:50PM by Jgunn.