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The Fabulous Fantons
The yard across the road from my friends has transformed
since Jude and Michel Fanton moved in several years ago. The
one time straight brick veneer house in a sparse setting is
now surrounded by a garden which seems to thicken by day and
smells like Sunspirit s aromatherapy showroom. Now its a 5
star destination for our bird population and organic farmers
from every continent. When I walked across to investigate
this high growth phenomenon Michel magically appeared from
behind the South American lipstick tree to greet me and asked
if I wanted the ten minute or half hour tour. It was plain
to see that spending time with plants and explaining their
qualities is his greatest joy.
Michel and Jude, founders of Australia s Seed Savers Network,
are devoting their lives to locating and exchanging Australian
heritage seeds, seeds which can be kept true to type in local
conditions. Such plants maintain vitality of production year
after year, without being unnaturally stimulated with expensive
heavy artificial fertilizers. Their work with plants keeps
them effervescently positive about people empowering themselves
to effect their life s quality and health through gardening.
The Byron region is their well nurtured home seedbed, a place
where locals and visitors are seriously into understanding
the food they ingest.
Through their efforts in organising Seed Savers Networks,
Seed Exchanges and local Seed Banks in places like Cuba, Soloman
Islands, Tonga, Cambodia, East Timor, India, Equador and South
East Africa, numerous seeds developed by our ancestors have
been saved.
As Michel explains in Seed Savers Handbook:
Until recent times all gardeners and farmers were the stewards
of the plant heritage that sustained us. Over the centuries
it was seed saving that enabled people to domesticate wild
plants, and this allowed comunities to settle.
Through years of consciously selecting their fruit, vegetables,
grains and flowers, yesterday s gardeners produced the diversity
of crops that we have come to enjoy.
The diversity of life ( bio-diversity) , that is essential
to our survival, is
quietly eroding. Far fewer locally adapted strains are available
today: the strains that have the particular characteristics
of taste, and of pest and disease resistance, that are so
useful to the no-spray gardener.
Why is this happening, when the skills that a gardener requires
to help maintain our plant heritage are so few and so simple?
Why have half a dozen strains of red shiny cricket balls replaced
juicy, delicious tomatoes whose gene pool features hundreds
of different strains?
To save good seeds you need only follow what plants do naturally.
But you do have to start with an original and viable seed
stock.
The way food is mass-produced and distributed today dictates
plant breeding and seed production world-wide. It stands to
reason that, when plants are engineered for specific commercial
features, other valuable characteristics are inevitably lost.
Tomatoes harvested by machine, dumped on to conveyor belts
and hauled long distances by truck need to be very tough indeed,
but not necessarily tasty or nutritious!
Flavour and aroma constituents are major determinants of
quality in fruits, vegetable and grain crops, but this aspect
has often been ignored by corporate breeding programmes.
Most commercial hybrids are not suitable for seed saving
because they revert to their highly inbred parents, or are
simply as sterile as a mule.
The Seed Savers Trust invites you to help preserve the rich
diversity of food crops before it disappears, both for our
own future and the future of our descendants.
We can help ourselves to become independent again by saving
seeds and passing on knowledge about propagation and plant
usage. By regaining control of our food, we strengthen our
own security, the genetic integrity of our traditinal crops
and the potential to develop useful varieties that are adaptated
to the climate, the soil of the region and local pests.
www.
seedsavers. net
"We want to extend the kind of attention that environmentalism
has dedicated to the panda and the tiger to domesticated plants
and animals.
A hundred years ago, people ate between 100 and 120 different
species of food. Now our diet is made up of, at most, 10 or
12 species."
Carlo Petrini, founder of the Slow Food movement.
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