When I tell folks about my documentary, occasionally I get the response that organic is a luxury for the rich, but that it can’t feed the planet. They tell me that organic seeds are for home gardeners and specialty market growers.  There is a grain of truth to what they say. We currently have a massive agricultural infrastructure that is wedded to monocultures and chemical farming. In order to feed the world with organic, we need both the right infrastructure…and the right seeds.

Last year I interviewed Matt Dillon, Director of Seed Matters. Matt is a wealth of information on everything that is seed related and I learned a lot from our conversation. Here is what he had to say about the situation we face with organic seeds:

“Many of the conventional vegetable varieties that are on the marketplace don’t do as well in organic systems as they do in conventional systems because fertility in conventional systems is very different. For example, when you plant conventional corn in an organic system, it doesn’t want to go out there and scavenge for nutrients in the soil.  It’s waiting for that pump of anhydrous ammonia. It doesn’t develop as healthy of a root system.  That’s one of the reasons we need to start breeding and creating seed systems that are specific to sustainable, agro-ecological agricultural forms. There are different requirements in those systems for the type of seed we need. We’re just at the genesis of that.”

Conventional Seeds – take your ‘tudes off our organic farms!

Summarizing this from my admittedly much less technically informed perspective, conventional seeds are lazy and have a bad attitude! They are the seed equivalent of junkies. But yet these lazy, agrochemical addicted seeds are the ones that get planted, in good wholesome, organic soil (completely unfamiliar to them) and then we expect them to thrive. Making it even worse, these are the studies that people point to and say “look, organic ain’t so good”!

Updated studies need to be conducted that compare organic seeds in organic systems to conventional seeds in conventional systems. The truth is that, when properly managed, open-pollinated, organic seeds are much more resilient and adaptable. They are hardworking and have a great ‘can-feed-the-world’ attitude. They can thrive in a much greater range of soils. They are better suited to our changing climate.

The problem is, organic seeds are not available in sufficient quantities at the commodity level and this desperately needs to change. The future of our food supply depends upon it.