When we were much younger, my sister and I used to collect and dry seeds from our cosmos and zinnia flowers at the end of the growing season. The next spring we planted them, just as farmers do with non-hybrid seeds for their crops. Farming with hybrid seeds is different. Developed to permit machines to harvest and husk corn, for example, hybrid seeds produce plants that are all the same height and yellow ears that are the same size with the same number of kernels per row.There are two reasons why hybrid seeds cannot be saved and planted again the next growing season. First, they produce variable plants with characteristics of only one parent or something entirely different from the crop from hybrid seeds. Second, since the major seed producing corporations that control over half of the global market, such as Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta, make a major investment of time and money to produce hybrid seeds, they patent and license their seeds, sue unauthorized users for patent infringement, and, of course, charge farmers who have to purchase new seeds every year.
The increased worldwide corporate control of soybean, corn, cotton, and other hybrid seeds has led to several developments. An Open Source Seed Initiative has been formed to make sure some unpatented seeds are available to home, organic, and other farmers who are unconcerned about, for example, a variable corn crop that has pink and yellow tassels, plants that grow to different heights, and ears that have white, red, or yellow kernels. At the same time, agonomy scientists and farmers interested in seed breeding are working to develop new varieties of unpatented, non-hybrid seeds that are well adapted to different growing conditions. To discover the best seeds to save for planting from year to year, individual farmers, on a smaller scale, might try to imitate what the University of Wisconsin's agricultural department did under the direction of Professor Bill Tracy. Students planted 200 rows of seeds from 200 different varieties of corn. After they tried bites of the crop from each row, they stored seeds from plants in the row they liked best, sent the seeds to another country with similar growing conditions, and repeated the sampling process until they found the variety that grew reasonably well, tasted the best, and had good disease resistance.
Local soil, water, and climate conditions have a major impact on farming. When English settlers came to North America, the Indians introduced them to new crops like corn, beans, and squash and new methods of fertilizing the soil by planting seeds with fish. As water shortages escalate, in part because of climate change, there may be a need to rethink age-old farming practices. In India, where the World Resources Institute figures demand for water will outstrip supply by 50% as early as 2030, the Water Footprint Network expressed concern that the water India used to grow the cotton it exported in 2013 would have supplied 1.24 billion people (85% of India's population) with 100 liters of water every day for a year. Traditionally, India grows cotton and cereals in the drier northwestern parts of the country, where the government subsidizes the cost of electric pumps farmers use to deplete groundwater reserves. Consequently, there is no incentive for farmers to shift plantings to wetter parts of India where less evaporation would occur, to use water efficiently with irrigation, or to grow organic cotton and reduce the contamination of water by pesticides.
Farming is changing in other places and ways. A former factory site has become a 1.5-acre micro-farm that provides job training and produces lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers for local restaurants and farmers markets. The storm-water management system the farm installed both reduced flooding and provided irrigation. Contaminated soil was covered with a layer of gravel and two feet of clean soil. By adding a greenhouse, the micro-farm could produce vegetables all year.
To ensure a market for organic farmers, there are places where local folk sort of become shareholders who purchase a share of a farm's products when farmers need money before the planting season each spring. These shareholders receive a box of food from the farm during a 20-week growing season. In the U.S. the first box might arrive with asparagus, broccoli, and radishes in the spring and early summer; tomatoes, beans, bell peppers, cucumbers, and watermelons in summer; and pumpkins, squash, and sweet potatoes in the fall. Some farms also offer add-ons, such as eggs, honey, bread, cheese, wool, and meat, and there are farm events like potluck dinners and opportunities to work on a farm.
To grow, I once learned that vegetables need a soil temperature of 45F degrees and overnight the temperature should not fall below 45F degrees either. In the U.S. Midwest, it is time to begin planting the crops.
(For more about farming, see the earlier blog post, "Back to the Land.")
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