For thousands of years, seeds were free, and now they are prisoners. Ancient seeds, traditional varieties, respect agriculture, treating Mother Earth with respect. Good ancient varieties and a little fertile land can do wonders.
We believe that the seeds will return so that Mother Earth can be fertile and giving. The seeds do not belong to us: they are a gift from Life to itself.
Management and improvement of traditional plants, as well as the selection of new varieties that are best in chemical-free growing systems and that are a public good, are our goal.
Smallholder farmers and gardeners are an integral part of their community. At the same time, these farmers are also guardians of genetic diversity on their side: the seeds that they continually improve and preserve. These producers not only feed themselves and small communities, but are also biodiversity advocates by the method of their production.
At the same time, breeders working with larger commercial goals see the need to work with wild relatives of cultivated plants, village seeds, and traditional varieties to create new varieties resistant to different climatic conditions. They realize that the source of plant material is extremely important and can be sought not among industrial agricultural producers, but among farmers who have living gene bank. And more than ever, everyone, big and small, must remember that intellectual property of these natural and local foods belong to the people who produced and improved them through hundreds of generations of diligent selection.
Everyone should share the benefits that others receive from working with their seeds. Genetic material in publicly funded institutions should be accessible and free for anyone who wants to develop new varieties. Big agribusiness, with their applied techniques for often minor changes in genetics, proclaim them as new inventions with which they control the intellectual property of the entire genome: a perversion that must be stopped.