I’m creating this thread as a topic for discussing how similar the Finnish Landrace Association Maatiaiset is to GTS. Discussion came from the thread GTS Seed Mix Steward Project (EU).
In Antibes we met Errki of the Finnish Landrace Association, they have a membership model with 2K members. I didn’t do a full interview because I wanted to come back to it more prepared, I realized their model is so similar to GTS.
https://www.maatiainen.fi/english.htm
Here is the edited transcript of my short talk with Errki below. Could a couple of you join the next conversation with the person who manages the seeds? Erkki recommended we talk to him instead for the details.
My name is Erkke and I come from Finland. I’m here today representing the Finnish Landrace Association, known in Finnish as Maatiaiset. Our organization is dedicated to preserving and promoting traditional landrace plants and domestic animals in Finland. I serve as the chairman of the association, and we currently have about 2,000 members spread throughout the country. Our main office is in Helsinki, and it’s open two days a week—except for July, when our director is on vacation.
Our mission at the Finnish Landrace Association is to safeguard Finland’s agricultural heritage by cultivating traditional varieties of plants and ensuring the survival of native animal breeds. Our members actively participate by growing landrace plants from seeds we provide, collecting seeds from the mature plants, and sending them back to us. In return for sending in seeds, they receive new seed packets from our collection.
Logistically, we have a packaging office located in another city where the seeds are cleaned and packed before distribution. Members can order seeds through our internet shop, or they can visit our office in Helsinki, where we have hundreds of seed packets available. We also participate in the Helsinki Spring Fair, a major gardening event where we sell seeds and try to recruit new members.
As a nonprofit organization, most of our funding comes from membership fees. Our annual fee is €33, though it’s reduced to €19 for students and family members. In addition to access to seeds, our members receive a quarterly magazine, which includes a seed catalog in the February edition. The magazine serves as a vital resource for our members, offering information on growing techniques, plant varieties, and seed-saving practices.
We offer courses on seed collection, cleaning, and storage, as well as workshops on the use of herbs. These programs help ensure that our members not only grow landrace plants but also have the knowledge needed to save and protect these seeds for future generations. Our seeds are unique in that they have adapted to Finland’s local conditions over decades and in some cases, centuries. We even classify our seeds by their age—those with four stars have been grown for over 50 years in the same location, three stars for over 20 years, and so on.
Discussion on moving interview to Zoom to go more in depth and review website and materials
Thanks again for stopping by the table. It’s been a lucky chance!
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I assume @JesseI, @Millefolium or @mtttthwww_vdp would know about Maatiaiset?
@malterod @julia.dakin There is a common misuse of the term maatiainen, which does mean landrace, but has come to be synonym to heirloom as well. True landraces being the minority. Those are mostly grains and brassicas that are not as commonly available. If there are some landraces in other species they have most likely gone through several bottle necks as people think of them same as heirloom and want “keep them pure” by eliminating off types.
I looked through what Maatiainen had to offer some years back and it was a huge disappoinment. It’s mainly what people have bought from normal shops and saved their seeds, which in it’s self might be fine. Mix them up and let them develop into a population, but they had them separate by varieties. Also F1s varieties even if they were F2s+ (if I understood correctly, seeds were self saved). I understand that the purpose is good, but it makes me feel like that maybe they don’t underdstand the terms and basics of plant genetics. I had also already by that time grown more different varieties of species that interested me than they had to offer.
That business plan seems interesting because I’ve been meaning to ask regulatory authorities what kinda opportunities I might have to sell seeds. Based on what I have read about the law, I don’t see how that works within the law, but Maatiainen seems to be in business still and I know some others as well that have similar business plan. Many individuals also sell tomato/chili seed christmas calendars quite big amounts to be just a hobby, but it seems like authorities are either unaware or let them do it. There is a term in Finnish law that could translate " to bring to market", which I’m not sure how it applies. Also it possible to sell small quantities for breeding purposes, but what is small amount, I don’t know. Probably when I ask they say you can’t do that or that, but if I just did it they wouldn’t even know I’m doing it. But I like to be thorough and don’t want any unexpected surprises down the line.
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Ah yeah, I’m also writing basically the same thing @JesseI just posted:
I’ve been a member of maatiainen. I think it’s a cool model and organisation. I don’t know the inner workings, but it’s quite easy and fast to order seed from them.
I might be wrong, but I think it’s more traditional landraces/heirlooms. So more about preserving the traditional plants, animals and landscapes of Finland, rather than breeding or adapting new cultivars. So it’s good for finding anything that grew in Finland several decades ago: favas, Karelian tomatoes, and even Finnish strains of Hablitzia… But there aren’t modern (max. diversity) landraces of all the cool “non-Finnish” things that @JesseI is working on… chillis, peppers, basil, tomatillos, eggplants, sweet potatoes, melons, corn, squash, etc etc.
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Yes, anything that is more traditional in cold climate might be diverse enough to qualify for a landrace. Problem is that many aren’t concious about how to keep them diverse and over time it’s probable that there has been bottle necks. Especially something with small seeds. That’s why I would doubt that those tomatoes are really landraces. Maybe there is some variance if they have flowers that are easily cross-pollinated, but often people (including me years ago) would save seeds from the first few fruits which are likely to be self-pollinated. I have seen in local groups people showing landrace X to ask if it’s the real because it looks like that and if it’s not voted as “pure” then people try to get the “pure” strain. So there might be some variance or new crossing, but they are mostly discarded in the name of pureness.
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Yeah you’re definitely right. It’s more accurate to think of everything as an heirloom. Maybe ONLY the Savitaipale favas would be what we call a landrace; and even there they have the stock disclaimer about not growing them within 300m of other beans.
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This clarifies a lot for me. I thought when I heard it first: Oh, this is almost too good to believe. And then the second thought was: Could it be a simple semantic shift and that they in fact have been inbreeding those landraces for years? I hear that that’s how you understand the way they grow.
I would think it’s from the fact that there isn’t enough people growing food and so there isn’t changes for cross-pollination. Term itself is just a name that reflects how things are done currently even if it doesn’t match it’s former meaning. Similarly people before didn’t know they were growing diverse populations. Curiously maatianen is still applied to animals which in many cases have visible diversity (landrace cat for example here is sort of mixed race semiwild farmcat), but it seems that people don’t make the connection probably because the connection to nature is nowadays very superficial. I can’t base this in any study, but I have a feeling that the war/postwar generation that lived through lack of food had different mindset about food and grew a lot themselves. The following generation rebelled against this and moved to cities to have a job that would make it “easy” to get food as well as modern consumer goods.
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This is interesting context about use of the word landrace. But my interest is not exactly in how diverse the seed mixes are, it’s the fact that it’s happening, with 2000 members for decades, they collect and redistribute locally adapted seeds, produce content and courses, and have an aligned goal of seed sovereignty without inputs. They probably have some useful experience of what works and what doesn’t (organizationally, legally, what motivates people to actually send back seeds). Or maybe there are more orgs that do this in Europe? We should find them.
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Unfortunately it’s mostly not locally adabted seeds, and even if there is some mixing, the genepool used had been very small. There are good things, but it also promotes wrongs conceptions about seeds. I have heard many times people people having the idea that they can save seeds from a single staple variety to get locally adabted seeds. Or saving tomato seeds from a greenhouse. And also the fact that people want pure seeds even if their idea is to get locally adabted/adabting seeds. Personally I think this is useful for people who start for the first few years or if someone does gardening as small scale hobby, but it’s not doing much more than that. That’s probably enough for most of the people, but those few that want to go beyond that might get locked in those ideas thinking that’s what they need to do. It’s partially the reason why I made my own facebook site, so that people can get a idea how plant breeding or adabtion actually works.
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I think quite a lot of seed saving associations in Europe would fit your description. Just taking the Nordic countries as an example:
Danish Seed Saver Association (Frøsamlerne) has around 1000 members, have been active since 1987, release a catalogue of seed grown by members every year, makes courses and advocates for seed sovereignty. I collaborated with Frøsamlerne to make the speaking event with Joseph in October.
SESAM is in Sweden Föreningen Sesam - Site de seeds4all !
KVANN is in Norway with 800 members Kunnskap og Vern Av Nytteplanter I Norge - KVANN - Site de seeds4all !
I started reading this thread because I am curious about the model they are using, and I noticed a great opportunity for all of you in Finland to approach them to introduce landraces as we know it.
I had the same situation in Croatia with many organizations focusing on only pure and heirloom varieties. So I approached them and offered a workshop for their members and anyone else who might be interested. That planted a seed inside of their mind and for me opened up the door to introduce landraces to wider community. And now is just spreading with more and more people joining because adaptation gardening speaks to their soul, not just their mind 
So if this organization already has more than 2000 active members in Finland maybe it makes sense for @JesseI to approach then to get an opportunity to reach out to so many enthusiastic seed savers. Most will probably not care, but many will be curious and I am sure they will want to take seeds from you. So you don’t need to think about legislation in the beginning. Go through them to see how the model is working and then later you can find a way to be more independent and create your community.
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Marcela describes what I want to do too in my country. I think of introducing ideas and practices in the same way as hybridization. Closely related systems easily hybridize. The bigger the difference, the wider the cross and more times you might have to try introducing it.
One way I’ve thought of introducing the idea of local adaption through diversity and community is to stop using the word ‘heirloom’ as synonymous with inbred variety. Heirloom varieties have been diverse before and some of them still are. This is one reason we called the event in Copenhagen “Future Heirloom”. For me, it sums up what many of us are trying to do.
Some of the members in the seed saver association in Denmark have already been seeking local adaption by crossing and maintaining genetic diversity in community.
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many people have a garden (we will say 100 people), but a small number of people make their seeds (5% or 5 people). How many times have I been told: “why get so obsessed with making seeds? it doesn’t pay the time spent doing this work at the cost of a bag.” 
the advantage of its associations of savegarde of heirloom and that you approach people already aware of the world of seed. (90% make their seeds in this framework so there is 90 people).
So it becomes easier to raise awareness of adaptation gardening in these associations because if 10% are receptive to the idea you have convinced 9 people while in the first population you would have convinced 0.5 people!
I think that awareness must therefore be raised primarily in seed keeper associations rather than gardeners’ associations to hope that people get involved in this kind of collaborative project and that people bring back seeds…
In 15 days I will do a Gardening Adaptation workshop in my community and I will try as Marcela says to talk to their soul. Not getting too deep into the technique for the first time but rather raising awareness that each of the seed gardeners has a role to play so that the next generations will find seeds that have made the adaptation to climate change. Try to make them understand that we must think in the long term and especially collectively for more joy. 
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Primary obstacle here is the weather. Most people prioritize harvest over adaption which means that many times they would grow the way they have before which in many cases goes against local adaption. I would also think that it’s better those that are interested go to source rather mix it up with with existing beliefs and habits. A bit like that word game where people say a sentence and once it goes through the line the meaning has changed completely. No point preaching to those that have already made up their minds. Out of those 2000 members that maatiainen has, only small portion are those that grow enough to be potential target group and small portion of those would have open minds. In comparison, there are many local facebook groups that have 40k or more members. More effective share to those groups posts from my page and those that are interested come. People aren’t going to change their methods fast and it’s better to have constant flow of ideas that might change their perspective. If I went to keep some sort of a workshop to maatiainen or some other organization, who would come there? Those that are already interested and it would be just a handful of people at a time. Not saying that I wouldn’t do it in some distant future, but I would rather have that there is a clear distinction. Next day someone might have a workshop that says the opposite and people are just confused. Rather just start a new page. This year I got in a few weeks to almost 300 followers in facebook and next years projects are so nuts in my climate that with full season I can certainly reach many times that number. Later I have to think about how i can go about sharing/selling seeds, but before that people should have some idea what to do with them so that they can effectively save seeds themselves that is improving the seeds over time.
This might work in many cases, but maatiainen is bit more diffucult because the original meaning is corrupted. If it was just a seedsaving organization in a better climate, then it might be easier to intruduce ideas. I think maatiainen even had the original discription of a landrace in their page, yet they don’t abide by that. So many times in social media I have seen people say that maatiainen is same as heirloom, even people that are highly experienced or have some degree in agriculture. So it’s already so well ingrained that it would be hard to change it from the inside. Modern landraces also don’t exactly go to the meaning of maatiainen so in this case I’ll let them have that term and try building a separate concept to that.