A Seed Saver's Garden

[Pulsegleaner]

Reading this was quite chilling because you outline a perfect auspice under which saving seeds could conceivably be 'legally' forbidden. I had thought a little here and there about it, how they might go about justifying that kind of 'mandate' and pacify the resistant. It would be done for 'the greater good' to protect such and such, fill in the blank. Not likely they could pull it off in the name of a separate corporate interest, but to claim it is in the best interest of 'the food supply' for all - say in the case of nationalising food production due to independent commercial shortages/issues. Plausibly they could claim independent seed savers/planters endanger their carefully managed lines, lines they will 'need to protect' to feed the population. Even now, OP seeds are often considered (wrongly I think) to be vectors of disease. Scary, like the worst sci-fi. Though realistically, some of this is already underway and has been for some time.

I think a good microcosm of this is what the CIA did in the 1950's with Haiti and its pigs. They rounded up the small native black pigs that the Haitians had been using for generations and slaughtered them all under the auspices of controlling an outbreak of disease (I think it was the swine flu that had evolved from the Spanish Flu virus). In compensation, they gave the Haitian farmer brand new top bred American white pigs. It wasn't until later that the farmers realized the new pigs would only eat special high end very expensive feed (as opposed to the old ones, who would happily live on scraps and garbage) and needed special housing (while the old ones could run around free just fine). The economy collapsed, and most farmers wound up selling their land and moving to the cities...….just like the CIA had planned all along, since they had started this at the behest of American Big Ag, who wanted Haiti to switch from subsistence farming to growing fruit for national export (on plantations they now owned.)

But what I was talking about was going the extra mile to take EVERYTHING, and make dealing with them mandatory. Big Ag is a system and every person who saves seeds or grows public domain ones is opting out of that system. And those who run such systems never like that. There is no marked more profitable than a perfectly inelastic one (one where demand stays constant regardless of the price), and there is no way better of getting people to buy into such a market than making it that they don't have a choice. If we let them, they will soon own all the rights to our food, our timber, and if we really let them go all the way, our oxygen (if they really DID manage to wipe out all wild vegetation down to the algae in the seas, then the plants THEY own would be the only source of oxygen on the planet and they would effectively own our air.)

 

[ducks4you]

That's where Monsanto was headed before litigation.
Perhaps seed saving needs to go the way of the Livestock Conservancy, which advocates for and encourages raising rare livestock breeds in backyards/backyard farms to keep them from extinction.

Home - The Livestock Conservancy

Our mission is to protect America's endangered livestock and poultry breeds from extinction. Many of America’s once-common farm animals face extinction if we do not take action now.

livestockconservancy.org

 

[flowerbug]

... If we let them, they will soon own all the rights to our food, our timber, and if we really let them go all the way, our oxygen (if they really DID manage to wipe out all wild vegetation down to the algae in the seas, then the plants THEY own would be the only source of oxygen on the planet and they would effectively own our air.)

algae is in the air, it's not going away. similar to moss spores and fungal spores. it's in the air, it's on and in a lot of things that are moved around.

 

[meadow]

Soya Ezonishiki
View attachment 48604

I wonder if Soya Ezonishiki is one @Zeedman is familiar with? (probably! but worth drawing his attention just in case )

 

[Pulsegleaner]

That's where Monsanto was headed before litigation.
Perhaps seed saving needs to go the way of the Livestock Conservancy, which advocates for and encourages raising rare livestock breeds in backyards/backyard farms to keep them from extinction.

Home - The Livestock Conservancy

Our mission is to protect America's endangered livestock and poultry breeds from extinction. Many of America’s once-common farm animals face extinction if we do not take action now.

livestockconservancy.org

Not that you can't fight back even with the government.....

 

[heirloomgal]

I wonder if Soya Ezonishiki is one @Zeedman is familiar with? (probably! but worth drawing his attention just in case )

@Zeedman we miss you here

 

[heirloomgal]

Not that you can't fight back even with the government.....

This is interesting @Pulsegleaner I've never heard of this woman before, something to look into for sure.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

This is interesting @Pulsegleaner I've never heard of this woman before, something to look into for sure.

There really isn't that much more to look at. Leslie Fish IS extremely famous in her field, but that field is Fliksongs (songs inspired by sci-fi or fantasy franchises). If you don't know the fantasy she is working from, most of the songs won't make much sense (in fact, if you pay attention closely to this one, you realize they are talking about a post apocalyptic world, not a post Civil War one.) Most of the songs are just sort of silly (by far her most famous one is "Banned From Argo" a.k.a. the Starfleet Drinking Song).

She CAN occasionally hit something rather deep "Lucifer" is pretty powerful. but most of the stuff is for entertainment only.

Oh, unless you REALLY are a fan of Rudyard Kipling's poetry, she has done TWO albums of just setting those to music, and parodies them pretty often ("Ladies of the SCA" (about the Society for Creative Anachronism) is a parody of "Female of the Species" and "Bashing the Balrog" (about Dungeons & Dragons) is a parody of "Paying the Danegeld" (which, oddly, she HASN'T done a straight version of.)

 

[heirloomgal]

Ladies of the SCA We had one of those around here when I was in my 20's, I don't know much about it myself, but those involved were the subject of much snickering indeed.

So all the stuff about her being an anarchist is just made up? She played a character more or less?

 

[Pulsegleaner]

It's not really playing an character, she just sings about whatever she feels will make a good song. It's the same as the fact that, when she sings "Banned from Argo" we aren't REALLY supposed to believe she is a member of the Enterprise crew (actually since she lampoons pretty much every major known member, if she WAS a member of the crew she'd have to be a minor one we never heard about.) It's no more real then when Heather Alexander (another flick legend, both as herself and in her new post-op life as Alexander James Adams.) pretends to be Superman to sing "The Superman Sex Life Boogie".

That being said, there ARE a few other songs of hers that seem to play the same strings about authority not overstepping its bounds. "The Song of the Dispossessed" comes to mind, written by Fish and sung by her friend Joe Belacort (The fact that that that particular song on the Serious Steel album is followed by Rudyard Kipling's "The Reeds of Runnymede" sort of drives the point home.)