For healthy food, we need healthy soil...
Just as our digestive systems require a balance of bacteria to work properly, the soil we grow our food in needs to support a complex, delicate web of life for plants to be able to grow to their full potential.
Industrial farming damages soil health, in turn causing a decline in the nutritional value of the food that is grown in it, and by extension the health of the people eating that food. Some two billion people around the world are now affected by micronutrient deficiency - a shortage in essential vitamins and minerals that should be provided by the food they eat.
Agro-ecological farming methods such as biodynamic and organic farming offer a solution. These farming practices improve soils while also using less water and energy, producing less pollution and accommodating more wildlife. That’s why we provide open pollinated seed that is naturally suited to organic growing systems, without the need for chemical inputs.
Food production shapes our environment more than any other human activity. Our linear food system has inputs such as fertilisers, pesticides and energy, with food the obvious output. But other outputs include pollution, wildlife loss and carbon emissions. This system is unsustainable; it cannot continue forever.
Until the 1940s, farmers and growers in the UK mainly used open pollinated seed, produced locally and saved year-on-year. These days, commercial seeds are usually F1 hybrids and rely more and more heavily on biotechnological research. These seeds have been developed for farming systems that are dependent on chemical inputs, irrigation and mechanisation.
Industrial farming practices have led to catastrophic losses to wildlife. Insects and the birds that feed on them are particularly hit through a complex combination of causes, including insecticide use, habitat loss and declines in food availability. Landscape changes such as the loss of hedges, woodland and scrubby field corners are obvious habitat losses, but other changes are not so obvious.
F1 hybrid seed vs open pollinated seed— the science
Breeding of F1 hybrid seed is based on natural hybridization when two distinctly different varieties of the same species cross to produce a more vigorous offspring. F1 hybrid seed production is uses techniques that enforce prolonged in-breeding on two separate homogeneous breeding lines, which are then crossed to produce the F1 hybrid seeds. However, this in-breeding reduces genetic diversity. The initial benefits of the in-breeding process cannot be sustained from parent to offspring, meaning seed produced from F1 varieties will yield an ever weaker crop.
Open-pollinated seed breeds true, meaning that, after pollination by natural means – either an insect, bird, wind or human hands – with another representative of the same variety or by self-pollination, the offspring will be roughly identical to its parents. The “roughly” bit matters because this seed is not uniform. It closely resembles its parents, has their characteristics, but it also has its own genetic diversity, and that means adaptability and resilience to changing conditions.
Maintaining this system requires massive amounts of energy, depleting natural resources at a rate that cannot be sustained long-term. And it is even failing on its most basic goal: to provide affordable food that is healthy.
For healthy food, we need healthy soil and healthy seed.