What Are Open Source Seeds?
We are very proud to announce that we have become an OSSI Seed Company Partner!
Free The Seed!
OSSI (The Open Source Seed Initiative) was created by plant breeders, farmers, seed companies, and sustainability advocates whose collective mission is to maintain open access to global plant genetic resources ensuring its accessibility to all farmers, plant breeders and communities for this generation and all to come.
An open source crop variety is one that is not restricted by plant patents or other proprietary limitations used by F1 hybrids and crops of CMS and GMO technologies. The open source seed movement affirms that plant genetics and their physical traits can not, and should not, be owned by individuals or corporations. In other words, plants should never be privatized or restricted because they are a collective resource. The genetics of open source seeds are protected and pledged to forever remain in the public domain. Plant breeders of the OSSI community pledge their varieties as follows:
The OSSI Pledge: You have the freedom to use these OSSI- Pledged seeds in any way you choose. In return, you pledge not to restrict others’ use of these seeds or their derivatives by patents or other means, and to include this Pledge with any transfer of these seeds or their derivatives.
In many countries today the fight for seed freedom is at a critical point. Corporate seed giants make it illegal to save seed by pushing deliberately ruthless patent infringement laws and other broadband regulatory seed laws that favor industry and suppress the rights of civilians and farmers to generate and maintain local and open-pollinated seed varieties. In many places around the world it is already illegal for farmers to save and share seed. The European Union, Canada, and parts of Africa, South America, and India have legislation in place making activities of seed saving and even seed swapping increasingly illegal. The US is close behind in adopting these suppressive measures with multinational seed and agricultural chemical corporations leading the way.
It is a dire time to educate ourselves with fact-based knowledge in order to apply critical thinking and come together to create sustainable solutions for our planet’s future. We all eat food, but very few of us realize how rapidly and drastically the growing of food is changing. You as a gardener and farmer play a pivotal role in allowing crop diversity to proliferate. By supporting local seed production, saving your favorite seeds, and being educated and involved in understanding sustainable agriculture, you are making a big difference in the world for this generation and, more importantly, generations to come.
At Bhoomi Devi Seeds we are standing up for the rights of farmers, gardeners, and for life itself. We can never lose the right to save and distribute locally grown seed. As growers, we should always be able to choose what variety of crop we grow based on our unique regional and cultural needs, not based on the machine of global standardization. Each and every crop variety that we enjoy today are with us thanks to thousands of years of stewardship by countless generations of people around the world. We cannot be the generation that lost the freedom of saving and sharing seed. We cannot afford our agriculture to be under corporate control. Seeds belong to the people and we must stand up for our collective right to breed, sow and save resilient seeds.
Open Source Resources
The Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI)
New Trade Deals Legalise Corporate Theft, Make Farmers' Seeds Illegal
Jul 2016 article from grain.org
“Since 2001, GRAIN has been tracking how so-called free trade agreements (FTAs), negotiated largely in secret, outside the World Trade Organisation (WTO) are being used to go beyond existing international standards on the patenting of life forms. In this report, we provide an update on the FTAs that are legalising corporate theft and threatening farmers’ ability to save, produce and exchange seeds around the world.”
Trade Deals Pushing UPOV (Union for the Protection of New Plant Varieties, providing patent-like rights for plant breeders)
Dec 2021 interactive map from grain.org
“In the early 1990s, through the World Trade Organisation (WTO), seed corporations successfully lobbied governments to give up sovereignty over their seeds and give in to the system of intellectual property rights on plant varieties. This process resulted in the strengthening of UPOV, the hitherto little-known common regime set up by a small group of European countries, aimed at privatising seeds and protecting them in the interest of its plant breeders. Today, the push to join UPOV, or to at least follow its rules known as UPOV 91, is raging under the auspices of various trade negotiations negotiated outside the WTO.”
“GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.”
Open Sesame: The Story of Seeds
2014 Documentary
“One of the world’s most precious resources is at risk. This timely and emotionally moving documentary illuminates what is at stake and what can be done to protect the source of nearly all our food: SEEDS. Seeds provide the basis for everything from fabric, to food to fuels. They are as essential to life as the air we breathe or water we drink…but given far less attention.
According to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN), approximately 90 percent of the fruit and vegetable varieties that existed 100 years ago no longer exist today. Heritage grain is near extinction. Heirloom seeds that were lovingly nurtured over decades or even hundreds of years have been lost forever. Maintaining seed biodiversity allows us to breed new open-pollinated varieties that are resistant to pests or thrive in temperature extremes. This type of diversity is essential in a changing climate.
Meanwhile, corporations are co-opting seed genetics using patent law and legal threats. In the past, the seed was communal. Seeds were a shared resource not unlike the water we drink or the air we breathe. One hundred years ago that started to change. Today, corporate-owned seed accounts for 82% of the world-wide market. Plants grown from transgenic seeds (also known as GMOs or genetically modified organisms) send pollen through the wind and contaminate neighboring crops. When this happens, large companies threaten affected farmers with lawsuits (and nearly always win). Food grown from GMO seed has shown to have dangerous health effects and there is even more we don’t know. Yet once a seed crop gets contaminated by GMO pollen there is no turning back.
In this film you will meet a diverse range of individuals whose lives center around seeds. Farmers. Renegade gardeners. Passionate seed savers. Artists. Seed activists. This film tells the story of seeds by following their challenges and triumphs as they work to save this precious resource.
It’s not too late…yet.”
2019 Documentary
“Sixty years of producing standardized fruit and vegetables and creating industrial hybrids have had a dramatic impact on their nutritional content. In the past 50 years, vegetables have lost 27% of their vitamin C and nearly half of their iron.
Take the tomato. Through multiple hybridizations, scientists are constantly producing redder, smoother, firmer fruit. But in the process, it has lost a quarter of its calcium and more than half of its vitamins. The seeds that produce the fruits and vegetables we consume are now the property of a handful of multinationals, like Bayer, and Dow-Dupont, who own them. These multinationals have their seeds produced predominantly in India, where workers are paid just a handful of rupees while the company has a turnover of more than 2 billion euros. A globalized business where the seed sells for more than gold.
According to FAO, worldwide, 75% of the cultivated varieties have disappeared in the past 100 years. Loss of nutrients, privatization of life, We reveal the industrialists’ great monopoly over our fruit and veg.”