When I read the email that Cornell University and USAID are doing a 5 year project to promote GMO seeds in the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, India and Africa, I was abashed.
In thinking about this, I wanted to do something. Then I got Nathan's new Turtle Seed Catalog from Camphill. It was so much better than it's ever been--more offerings, scientific names, good descriptions of the seeds and of the people who grew them, BD and organic designations. It occurred to me that one thing that could be done is to try to organize a structuring body for organic seed catalog companies that could help organic collectives in these countries to be competitive by offering organic o.p.. seeds, by extolling the virtues of a culture that uses organic practices and educating their citizens about the dangers of pesticides and GMOs and the economic, political and cultural dangers of getting involved with patented seed. Does anyone know if this has already been done? If it's too early in the countries' development, what can be done to educate them or is it already being done by Civil Society people? There must be some room for BD practices and seed as a separate offering or specially marked on a general organic seed catalog. I guess I got excited about this seeing Nathan's catalog because it had all the important things for a mainstream catalog except the color pictures! It is possible to do a low budget catalog which is competitive with established catalogues by getting seed from other BD growers around the world. Anybody have any ideas about this? Merla
