by Chom Greacen and Lopez Community Land Trust

Special to the Islands’ Weekly

Soon Lopez gardeners and farmers will have a Seed Library where the public can have access to seeds that are locally grown and adapted to our local climate and tastes.

Saving seeds and sharing them are a critical step towards a more resilient food future for Lopez Island and beyond.

The Seed Library is a project of the Lopez Community Land Trust. Located next to the LCLT office, the library will provide a temperature and humidity-controlled vault for seed storage.

LCLT Board member, David Zapalac, designed and installed a passive cooling system for the seed library, which has a slab floor and an area for cleaning and milling seed, such as local wheat from LCLT’s community-supported agriculture (CSA) grain project.  Protocol for identifying seed, germination, and lending are being developed.

On Nov. 19, LCLT will host a seed saving workshop by Ana Malinoff, who makes her living selling saved seed grown in her garden on Lopez.

Magically contained in each seed is the blueprint of life of a plant or tree that grows to offer sustenance to us and other living creatures. Though much older than the human race itself, these little blueprints of life are now under grave threat.

Thousands of years of evolution and our ancestors’ labor resulted in a massive diversity of plant varieties adapted to differing localized growing conditions. This diversity is rapidly being lost, with an estimate of  approximately 97 percent of U.S. Department of Agriculture lists having disappeared in the last 80 years.

Of the remaining seeds in the worlds, 98 percent are now in the hands of just six companies: Monsanto, DuPont, Aventis, Dow, Syngent and Mitsui. Monsanto alone accounts for almost one-quarter of the global proprietary seed market.

These big agrichemical corporations have been buying up seeds and systematically reducing natural seed stock. A seed company, later acquired by Monsanto, eliminated 2,000 varieties of seeds from its inventory. The seeds being eliminated are the older, open-pollinated, heirloom varieties.

What these corporations are creating instead are seeds that are reliant on chemical or cannot be saved and propagated (hybrid, patented and genetically modified seeds). This business model of manufactured seed poverty and oligopoly control of mutant seed stock has no logic other than maximum profits for the companies.

With more and more cultivars disappearing, both purposely and through neglect, it is more important than ever to keep varieties of seeds alive and available for future generations. There is much diversity and strength found in local seed.

The Lopez Seed Library is funded by contributions from the community members. LCLT has so far raised about $4,000 primarily through the sale of raffle tickets. The raffle prize, a cute yellow electric car/truck, will go to the winner whose name will be drawn at the Annual Harvest Dinner at the Lopez Community Center on October 22.

LCLT is selling raffle tickets until then, hoping to raise another $3,000 to bring the Seeds Library project to completion.