seed broadcast: Recent Comments

Comment on Link to Seminis Varieties for professional growers and gardeners

Mary Ellen Chadd — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:13:58 GMT

Thank you very much for this information. The more we can educate our market customers about this issue, the more support we will have for dropping these varieties from production. I did not realize so many (which is not that many) of Johnny's varieties were Seminis seed. Rather disturbing. We are a new farm, and save mostly herb and flower seeds for beneficial hedgerows, but I hope to do vegetable seed saving and breeding work in the future. I will look over my packets, and if I find something send it to you. We did like 'Fairytale' 'Hansel' & 'Gretel' eggplant quite a bit. I often dream of being a farmer in 1951, or 1870 times were simpler & there was more common sense.

Thank you for your valuable blog!

Mary Ellen D. Chadd
Cape Elizabeth, Maine

Comment on Organic Vegetable Farmers - WARNING - you may be engaging in contract agreements with Monsanto

Matthew — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:09:20 GMT

Folks, if you want a list of Seminis Varieties, here are two links.

1) The Seminis Professional Growers Product page: http://us.seminis.com/products/products.asp

2) The Seminis Home Gardener Product Page: http://us.seminis.com/products/hg_products.asp

Comment on Organic Vegetable Farmers - WARNING - you may be engaging in contract agreements with Monsanto

Paul N — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:40:03 GMT

I have searched and not discovered any place where a thorough and regularly updated list of vegetable varieties owned by Seminis and other monsanto companies. Could such a list be compiles?

I do purchase from Fedco to avoid Monsanto, but I keep discovering other varieties that I use and purchase from other sources are Monsanto owned. I don't want to have anything to do with them. I suspect that I'm still growing Monsanto varieties unknowingly.

Please, if you know of a list of all varieties connected to Monsanto, I'd like to have access to it!

Comment on Organic Vegetable Farmers - WARNING - you may be engaging in contract agreements with Monsanto

MrBrownThumb — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:12:27 GMT

I'm torn over issues like this. On the one hand I believe people who create things should have the ability to patent them. On the other hand it is a really aggravating that people are allowed to patent something that nature produce all by itself.

Comment on Organic Vegetable Farmers - WARNING - you may be engaging in contract agreements with Monsanto

robyn — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:53:49 GMT

Okay, went to your front page and found the list. Thank you! Could you tweet it? I'm sure there are others out there that don't know about you.

Comment on Organic Vegetable Farmers - WARNING - you may be engaging in contract agreements with Monsanto

robyn — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:51:11 GMT

Matthew is there a list somewhere that one could check to be certain they are buying from a "non-Monsanto" seed companies? They have been scooping up everyone and I'm not sure just how far they've been able to become one company we all have to deal with.

Excellent article. We're a farm family that does not want to have our saved seeds confiscated by them or anyone else.

Comment on Organic Vegetable Farmers - WARNING - you may be engaging in contract agreements with Monsanto

Jeff B — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:24:03 GMT

Boycott buying there seed- use others. I personally like Pinetree Garden Seeds out of Maine. Grow the heirlooms instead of these genetically engineered seed crops. Plenty of diversity out there.

Comment on Organic Vegetable Farmers - WARNING - you may be engaging in contract agreements with Monsanto

Wendy — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:16:29 GMT

Excellent documented article- it needs to be on the front page of ever newspaper in America for consumer transparency as well. Have you considered submitting to Capital Press out of Idaho? They publish a surprising amount of alternative agriculture articles that are deciminated to a large ag readership.

Comment on Organic Vegetable Farmers - WARNING - you may be engaging in contract agreements with Monsanto

Kent — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 04:30:28 GMT

Good work, Matthew! It is amazing that rich companies can do things like that that don't make sense with almost complete impunity. I agree, the patent laws certainly need revision to preserve the commons for the people.

Comment on Afternoon Panel - How have technological developments and structural changes affected the competitive dynamics of the seed industry?

Mica — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 04:48:10 GMT

I was at the hearing and was live tweeting today.

Just to clarify before this snowballs into a "truth," we do not have a 2,4-D trait in the Monsanto pipeline. What Jim said is there is the opportunity for a 2,4-D trait from others, but we are not working on it.

Mica Veihman
Monsanto