The pathway to go after farming and fertilizers ( Anti-capitalists have a plan?)

You may be confusing hybrid seeds with GMO seeds. Hybrid corn is made by crossing corn with corn, and is not analogous to a mule made by crossing two species (that’s how we know they are two species: if they were the same species, the offspring would be fertile).

Heritage seeds don’t breed true in general either, and for the same reason. Unless a plant is homozygous for all expressed traits and is pollinated only by other plants with the same genome (at least on the part governing expressed traits), it won’t breed true any more than a hybrid will. One doesn’t notice it so much with heritage seeds as they have always produced a variety of phenotypes instead of the uniformity found in commercial hybrids that makes not breeding true so obvious in their case.

I stand with you in objecting to any attempt to stamp out heritage seed lines, but for a different reason: basic population genetics shows that genetic diversity is necessary to the long term health of a population (in this case of some plant we grow for food). A strain of some rust or blight particularly adapted to attacking whatever Monsanto is hawking would be a disaster for the food supply if the only seeds available are the ones Monsanto is pushing.

We do agree, I used the cross breed point as it is so easy to see, but you are correct. I did not know your level of understanding. GMO is a whole new ball game, I find very untrustworthy.

Hybrids are indeed corn to corn, but have a lot of the problems previously mentioned. Breeding a strong rootstock corn with a high yield corn does make the high yield corn take off because in nature the hi yield was held back and balanced by its rootstock. In the first generation you get a hi yield that produces like crazy, but over depletes the land. In the following generations you get all kinds of odd throwbacks to its parents, none of them as good as the parents, and often none as good as the natural selection that produced the parents in the first place. Certainly not good commercial seed stock.

If a Heritage line is cross bred by close planting (which often happens in a home garden) you end up with non selective hybrids, a real problem in maintaining your heritage seed. However as they tend to throw back to the parents of a strong seed line that has good qualities of its own vs the selected trait method of artificial hybrids they tend to still produce well, and via natural selection over a few generations may adapt to your local conditions.

But it is clearly a best bet to keep your plants separated as much as possible in your home garden if you are doing the survival thing.

I am most interested however in the broad picture of what has happened to our production farm system. The Hybrid / petro chemical fertilizer boom is a Farming Bubble if you will. It has supplanted smart farming practice that tends to build up the soil and the land with dumb farming, ya gets ya seed from da man, he tells you when to put the fertilizer ya gets from da man and he tells ya when to harvest and what he gonna pay ya for it.

I bemoan the loss of the small family farm that was diverse and adaptive to the large acreage corn industry. Just as you mentioned, genetic diversity vs a blight but multiplied by replacing diverse farming with agra business corn patches miles across is a disaster waiting to happen. The fact that this industry is all balanced on the head of the price of oil is a real tack in the seat of future generations.

I am convinced that famine is in our future, and that some people see this as a valid political move to reduce populations either as an act of war or as an act of ecology worship makes it all the more likely to take place.

This is why the title about anti-capitolist farm moves attracted me.

Thanks for your input, been a fun discussion, and... I got to vent. Thanks also for your patience.

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