If you think of DNA and proteins as being like microscopic threads, then whatever way we do plant breeding that is ultimately what we are weaving when we work with living things.
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This came up in other topic. I have had problem translating landrace as there is a translation that has been corrupted over the years to mean heirloom in peoples minds. Little similar to english term “open pollinated” that can refer species that generally don’t cross pollinate. Or fields of same staple variety that is grown in isolation. Landrace or whatever term is used has similar problem when people have very little idea of pollination methods or genetics. Just had person tell me how purple potato is GM because it is a cross. Although principle of landrace should be quite to easy understand, not all are equiped with skills to understand it.
Personally for my languege I’m thinking of using direct translation from evolutionary breeding/gardening for the process as that’s really what it is and it should give people some idea what it is without prior knowledge. I think that would work in english too. I’m sure some will missunderstand it and it might not work everywhere. For the end product (landrace) I have had similar ideas as mentioned here. Problem really seems to be how to get people understand the concept rather than the word. If you ad “variety” to the name I think you will get people thinking it’s similar to heirloom or staple varieties. Breaking habits is what people need. During spring I see in many groups how people only germinate/sow same amounth as how many plants they want and if they have too much they have hard time getting rid of them. Like you have hundreds of seeds in one squash fruit, but only use few and either save rest for eternity or discard rest. First people should understand crosses aren’t bad (and how they happen in different species), but secondly also to understand that you should not grow them like staple varieties.
Few names did come to mind while writing this like; survivor population/mix and adaptive population/mix. Adaptive population/mix I like and can translate to my language.
Also could be adaptive seeds and if association with evolution is off putting for some, then it could be adaptive farming/breeding also.
I do not know if it will be of any help or not, but let me share one concept with you.
The term “permaculture” had acquired some bad press about two decades ago, for instance “serious” farmers were instantly put off when hearing this word, since they instantly were associating that with hippies playing naked in mud (a famous YT video was a source of that). So some of permaculture practitioners started to come up with different terms, like regenerative agriculture, Earth friendly design, etc. However, there were others who took different root - they were talking about permaculture without naming it at all. They were showing the methods, and the results. When a curiuos person asked - how this is possible, how this method is called, they were saying - oh, this? ah yes, that is permaculture, do you want to know more about it?
Over the years I have always best results doing just that. Not starting with the name, but saving it until someone asks. Obviously, it is not applicable everywhere, but maybe something to think about.
As to the landrace gardening is is not possible to coin a good, catchy name for it in my language, since the shortest exact translation would be “ogrodnictwo z zastosowaniem odmian lokalnych” 
I’m still thinking how to make it shorter 
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That is a worthwhile point. The overarching question is- how rapidly does this community want the idea of landrace gardening to spread? In many ways I think permaculture suffered from being too easily marketed, which led to it being rapidly watered down and sullied as it went. Landrace gardening isn’t for everyone (just as growing any of your own food isn’t on most people’s radar). The concept is suited for a subset of a subset of people. Organisations that throw their doors open too wide sometimes get crushed in the resulting stampede. Are people who are unwilling to look past possible vague implications of the word “landrace” really who we should be targeting?
On the flip side, the main value of rebranding in the digital age is clean discoverability. Reusing terms or phrases that are too old or diffuse in their use and possible meanings ends up meaning anyone searching for this organisation ends up needing to scroll to page 30 of google to find us. Inventing a new term (built from recognisable components) or a unique short phrase (2-3 words maximum) is probably the best approach if this is the goal. The permaculture movement had persistent success with this strategy. Syntropics are now likewise taking off. Restoration agriculture not so much (maybe too long/generic). Hugelculture had limited success (maybe to hard to spell). Fukuoka’s “Natural Farming” was a flop (too generic). Savory’s “Holistic Management” likewise doesn’t say anything specific enough (even though the name describes the philosophy well).
I still think Seed Weavers has a lot of potential. This is an unusual strategy since it describes the person with a valuable set of skills, or a group of such people. All the other attempts at branding refer to some vague/abstract aspect of the philosophy, which is harder for people to identify with personally. It also instantly gets unfamiliar people’s attention because what could be more impossible to weave into anything than tiny hard seeds? It hints of hidden magic.
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I think you mean ‘stable’. I know the p/b is tricky, but these two words have quite different meanings, so, I’m just trying to help out there.
I think this is a much better term than ‘landrace’ for seeds being sold or shared like the ones in this group which don’t seem to be landrace seeds, in the well established sense of the word. It would seem to me actual landrace seeds are closer to heirloom seeds than they are to the highly varied seeds folk here are into. Sure they might be the best for people to share over large distances or even small distances but going into different environmental conditions, even if they want to use them to make a new landrace. But a hybrid swarm or diverse mix of different varieties and/or crosses from various areas, isn’t a landrace. I already wrote about this in depth above, but it becomes even more significant when talking not merely about the method, but about the actual seeds. Calling it a landrace would be fighting against almost a century of established usage, and I don’t see the point in doing that. It doesn’t seem too bad to call the method ‘landrace’ since it is a method for attempting to create new landraces, albeit a new innovative method. But it would seem to me that regarding seeds, the term should be used just for completed landrace populations, not diverse mixes one might want to use in an attempt to create a landrace. ‘Adaptive population/mix’ seems far more appropriate to me for the latter. And for ‘survivor population/mix’, I think that’s great too, but think knowing what conditions they survived is also essential. I could imagine a seed store for example, where one could search for seeds based on specific survival conditions, such as:
- specific disease pressure
- daytime temperatures
- night time temperatures
- Summer conditions
- Winter conditions
- day length conditions or latitude
- sun hours (i.e. how cloudy)
- rain patterns
Basically, a way of choosing seeds most suited to ones land. And just to say, the US climate zone system that many varieties are classified is I think almost useless in most cases. So far as I understand it’s just about Winter temperatures. How cold a part of the US gets in Winter bares almost no relation to the growing season conditions for much (most?) of the world. Even season length - an ‘early’ variety from somewhere with cold Winters and short Summers but with lots of strong sun, might do poorly in the UK where we don’t get too much sun, so mere earliness isn’t sufficient.
Also just to say, there are some genebanks where you can add filters to search results based on many different criteria, such as fruit size, fruit cracking tendency, vigour, time to flowering, time to ripening, disease resistance, and so on. It helps narrow things down a lot. What I suggest above is similar in principle to that. And the more variety available, the more significant this will become. It makes sense to me that a land-based seed project would have land-based search criteria. And whilst initially maybe just maximum variation would be the way to go, to share around the world; as things progress towards actual landraces, populations can be bred to be more specific. Knowing what conditions a population survives is really useful in that. Especially if put into a kind of multivariable searchable database.
I wonder if those might also be related to success rate of the actual method? I heard logs take a very long time to decay, and that method looks like a lot of work too. Plus I wondered if I would ever even want those big mounds that shade out what’s behind it. And Fukuoka, I read his book many years ago and found it really inspiring and philosophically very appealing. However, even his son doesn’t run his father’s farm using his methods. I think maybe he kept some fruit trees with that method but so far as I understand he reverted to mainstream rice cultivation, and I heard people around the world tended to fail using his methods. I think there’s still nice things to gain from what he did. But permaculture seems quite different in that it’s actually really successful. I like Richard Perkins as an example of that, who teaches people how to start a market garden and make it profitable within the first year, and make way more profit than mainstream farming. That to me is a really good proof of method. Mike Hoag is another permaculturist who is very much focused on making things actually work, with low input and high profits/output. The fact that Fukuoka’s own son who grew up with him on his farm, abandoned his methods, implies to me that his method even on his own land, perhaps did not stand the test of being low input and profitable. I can’t think of another reason why his son would have abandoned it.
“Hi, my name is Chris and I practice locally-adapting hybrid-swarm anarchy gardening.”
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You should see my writing before I read it trough couple times, even in finnish (although that would not make any more sense to you either way) . Sometimes just can’t read or write right. It’s true that my english spelling is a bit out of practice and have to check for right spelling often. It’s been more than a decade when I have been using it anything more than listening and some reading.
Those terms just came to mind when I tried come up with discriptive terms. Survivor is a bit out there, but it’s quite accurate. Especially at early stages. It would also be good if term is somewhat approachable for non native english speakers as that is quite a big demographic, even within english speaking countries.
I always think that your writing comes across as excellent English, better than a great many native speakers/writers. It’s just that ‘staple’ and ‘stable’ have quite different but specific meanings in this context, so I thought maybe it was worth pointing out in case people misunderstood your meaning
Ha ha ha, now that’s the kind of introduction that would get me really interested in a person!
I think it’s very appropriate for seeds that have come from hardcore environmental stress pressures. Searching ‘survivor’ on the EFN website brings 7 hits for example. Granted at least 1 of them is referring to the holocaust, but you’ll see some of them at least are referring to stress:
It really piques my interest if I see seeds that have undergone severe selection, especially for cold and disease. And I think that relates strongly to the ‘modern landrace’ method. Joseph’s farm is a great example of that. And for any of us trying to push the bounds of a species’ habitat.
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“Pioneer plant breeding” perhaps?
That emphasizes that we’re trying to create new varieties, and “pioneer” has a kind of throwback, low-tech vibe already.
Or, riffing off of “seed weavers” we could say “seed pioneers”
@Justin Whatever we come up with for a name, I like your point about how this is a transitional method, one which, if persisted with, will create “landraces” in the traditional sense. I’ve stopped calling the seeds I get from GtS landraces and started calling them grexes or mixes, etc. We are wanabe landrace gardeners without the landraces! So we have to start making our own—a process so lengthy that we will probably on get the first stage done in our lifetimes.
As far as naming; I agree with whoever said that Joseph’s melon story is better than any name when it comes to talking to people one on one! That’s the story I go to for explanation, coupled with my own experience growing Joseph’s squash.
As far as overall branding, I like the word “adaptive”—in the way they are currently used, neither OP varieties nor hybrids are adaptive, either at their initial planting or along the way. @ShaneS idea of “seed weaving” is pretty cool too—though would it be understandable to the average gardener? What comes to my mind is weaving together seed stalks for storage or something like that, like the braids of corn cobs and chile peppers in the American Southwest.
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When I search up Landrace Plants, Marijuana (Canabis sativa) is all that Pops up! (Especially in Images)
Maybe we should use get Cross Pollinate Ideas with them?
I feel like they will Vibe Deeply with Landrace Gardening! Especially Since they already use the same terms. (Tho I think they mean Landrace differently)
Normies don’t like plants like we do, but they do love Marijuana and Marijuana could be the gateway to Landrace Gardening? Just a thought
Regardless just be decentralized AF and collaborate with as many cool people as you can!
I think that’s how landrace gardening will spread!
That’s about traditional landraces. Quite different to the ‘modern landrace’ idea. So I don’t think collaborating with them would be that fruitful. Except that community is very advanced in terms of indoor growing and LEDs, so if you want to quickly make hybrid swarms, that’s their area of expertise that I would say is going to be valuable. I actually built my light system from parts acquired from a company that sells ultra high efficiency parts to cannabis geeks. There are also some lectures on light spectrum stuff from cannabis people, one great professor in the US in particular though I forget his name. Doesn’t all translate directly to our crops but yeah, we basically have them to thank for the rapid innovation of good efficient grow lights and their availability.
Also just to point out, they usually don’t grow outside. Because they need to avoid pollen (they need seedless buds) and cannabis pollen travels far. Some of them just want to smoke traditional landrace bud, or use it for breeding.
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I couldn’t agree more with basically everything you said.
I post on this forum for two primary reasons. The first being I recognize this as a worthy cause. Second, the more selfish reason is I am obsessed with this stuff and the normal person doesn’t share my interest and passion. I can actually call out 4 species of cucurbita in Latin. That is very geeky. You don’t exactly meet people who can relate to this on a regular basis.
What gets me excited is when I notice a plant that is thriving in harsh conditions when the others are failing. The discovery and preservation of something special is meaningful to me.
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Damnn… You Nailed it on this head. That is exactly the root of the problem. And that goes for everything said!
Pretty much, you reap what you sow and if ya don’t care about where your food comes from, you reap the results of not caring.
Yup, but also remember everyone who learns will very likely also spread the info. It can spread exponentially like wildfire if we simply teach more people.
Fred said “If you love something, you never shut up about it.”
That’s the attitude you should have when Teaching Landrace Gardening! Lead by example is the best way to introduce people. Show them the Results and they will flock because you’ve proven to them that what you do works!
I would also add on Decentralized Education, it typically reaches more people. We should get on as many Gardening/Plant forums and introduce people to Landrace Gardening. Plus Health Conscience people would be the most easiest to convince, since the natural next step to taking care of your health is growing your own food!
I’m sure there are lots of vegans who would love Landrace Gardening. To add to the list of people we should introduce it too, or which circles/Forums/Clubs to go to
- Preppers
- Offgrid People
- Back to the Land
- Vegans/Vegetarians (Even tho most of them are in the cities, why tho?)
- Foragers
- Environmentalist
- Gardeners
- Breeders (Especially Open Source Seed People)
- Christians
- Chefs
- etc (List goes on)
BINGO!!!
Hmm maybe we should get influences to promote it? But here’s the thing, as often happens to hobbies people like, normies often ruin/misunderstand what made it great in the first place. (Tho how can that Logically apply to Landrace Gardening? How can Landrace Gardening be ruined? It can only be forgotten and the rediscovered again. We don’t see it now but by gut is telling me we could possibly have Unforseen Problems arise.)
It’s why I’m happy Linux isn’t too popular otherwise corporations get too much involved! So maybe it’s a good thing most people don’t know about it? Just a thought.
OOOOh I know! Politics will ruin Landrace Gardening you just watch, could this is the unforseen problems my gut is telling me about? eh fuck it. It’s worth introducing Landrace Gardening to more people regardless of what happens am I right? I’m just glad the community here on this forum is good and well behaved because lots of other communities get ruined as more people join.
Bruh! Same! I knew the potential of Talking/Collaborating with like Minded people would only make me learn more. Hence this forum yields good fruit.
Hah, Same. Funny cuz I sometimes remember the scientific name better than the common names. Thank God for the Power of the internet! I’ve finally found my collaborators! From here on out, we will only get smarter as we Cross Pollinate and Landrace the ideas themselves in a Decentralized way!
I appreciate a lot of this feedback, and completely agree with some of it, but some of it feels pretty harsh, considering Joseph wrote a book, then we made an online course for people starting out, then we made it completely free. I considered adding course lessons to this platform, but Discourse wasn’t built for that and I abandoned in favor of just pointing people to the free course.
Is there anyone that wants to help with making content more ‘open source’ or available here on Discourse? I would love love love more people doing more of that kind of thing. Just message me.
Another decision that’s on me, was making people joining this forum say they had read the book or taken the course before joining. I was afraid of what often happens in online groups, where tons of beginners join, keep asking the same questions, and wear experienced people out. Sure, I wish there were more people joining and participating, but ‘failure’ also feels harsh. Part of the idea here with language is to figure out how to bring in more beginners.
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I want to address this seed topic:
But first just about ‘starvation’. I live in the UK, and most people here can’t feed themselves because they don’t have a place to even grow, and those who do have gardens usually have only very small ones. Even those who have allotments, only grow some small proportion of their food generally, largely for fun. Which is great, but will be unlikely to solve starvation in a food crisis. Most of the land here is owned by the rich, or by farmers (many of whom are also rich) with vast tracks of extremely inefficient land, and even a lot of that is subsidised to merely look like farmland - the EU (which the UK left but anyway) made stupid laws such that they pay landowners (mostly extremely rich ones) to keep land looking like farmland (for the pleasure of the ruling class’s view from their countryside estates?) such that rewilding is prevented and even wild land is destroyed just to get subsidies for not using it but keeping it radically low in biodiversity. Anyway, that’s not so much on topic, but just to say, there is lots of land that could be used to produce food efficiently, or be used to stop climate change and the mass extinction event, but the 99% and the wild species are barred from using it. Not that that should discourage us - perhaps one day the seeds we are making can be used on some of that land.
But now to seeds. Of course relatively few people save seeds. But, there are still many who do. And I would see the ‘modern landrace’ movement as a very small proportion of the seed saving movement. There are many resources on seed saving. To give a UK example, the best seed store here is https://www.realseeds.co.uk and they give instructions on how to save seeds for each variety they sell. Quite remarkable for a seed company really, goes directly against the psychopathic capitalist ideals! But they’re great. I know a Japanese seed company that does the same, and is oriented to organic growing. Both these companies are all about heirlooms, and there’s lots of seed saving going on in the heirloom community. And of course it’s standard in the traditional landrace communities around the world.
And here’s a topic I created sharing a brilliant French website that gives video instructions in 9 languages for 34 species:
If the aim is to be the premier place to go to for home seed saving, it would be hard to beat that! But, if there is such an aim, then I would suggest taking a lot from that website. For example, it could be possible (would require a lot of work!) to make similar videos for each species but make them on the modern landrace model, so including the selection principles for each species, and also principles of crossing for each species, including both how to manually cross them; how to grow them in crossing blocks; and how to grow out F2 populations in high density to save space during early selection processes, since most people will have limited space. That is to say, the key differences between this method and the far far more common general seed saving process (which is already well covered by resources out there, such as that website I referenced as well as countless YouTube videos and books and so on), are perhaps:
- The creation of the initial hybrid swarm
- The ongoing encouragement of higher crossing
- The selection process
- The method of selecting ratios of seeds according to criteria within a population
Those all contrast quite strongly from mainstream seed saving. So, to have a resource so very convenient like the website with a video for each species, but integrating these principles, would be awesome. One could just go to the relevant species and there’s one video explaining and showing all the info you need, showing you visually what you need to do, split into easily trackable sections for each stage. The key being that it would be very easy to search and find what you need (which is the key value of the website in the post I made). Like, just thinking off the top of my head things like:
- When and how to plant for eating and how they look
- When and how to plant for seed production and how they look
- How to cross manually
- Natural crossing rate of the species
- Phenotypes to look for and select for (including disease response etc.)
- Seed saving
All this could potentially be boiled down to a 10 minute video for each species, and maybe a general 10 or 20 minute intro to general modern landrace principles, and that could be all that most people actually need, like no need for necessarily anything else at all in terms of information on the method or theory of modern landrace. Like, ‘here’s how you do it. Now go do it and chat in the forums about it as you continue your project and issues come up.’
I’m not sure why that particular religion should be of special relevance. But, I do happen to wonder if getting the Amish on board could be good. They’re really into farming and self sufficiency. And they have a tonne of land. If anyone is near Amish land, it could be cool to make friends with them and ask them to set aside a plot for experimenting with some seeds gifted to them. Some might be up for it. And if it turned out well, they might spread it through their community. I have thought similarly regarding good permaculture practice also. And the two would go together well also.
I hope I speak for everyone is saying all of that is very much appreciated. I think people are just trying to help with this topic of how to increase successful outreach. And I think people are only giving this feedback because they love and appreciate this work, and are just trying to contribute to help it even more.
I think that’s a good idea. Perhaps even essential. Quality of participation is more important than quantity.
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I love this idea, I think we should plan do it. Unless we crowdsource everything, we’d need funding. I have always wished we could open-source the creation of these pages, include a video, various sources. I’ve been working on single page summaries/instructions for in-person events where our seeds are available that could be printed, could be modified/expanded.
I consistently choose to not give detailed instructions about how to do this or that. I want to teach general principles that apply to everything, and teach people how to think and act for themselves.
Therefore, I teach only two types of seed saving:
Harvesting seeds from wet fruits.
Harvesting seeds from dry plants.
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One option could be to make a specific format. Like exactly what to include for each species. And then different people could make the video for each species. They could all be narrated by the same person, or not, but the actual videos could be made by various people, spreading the work. I guess it might take most of the year to make each video, for the stages of the plant. But anyway, spreading the work out amongst the community like that could be helpful, and many people might be willing to make such videos for free. Though the editing and narrating would be a significant task, and having 1 person doing that could make the videos more consistent, like the ones on that French site. Narrating with a very clear voice/enunciation is important also, like those videos. Especially for an international audience.
Also I think detailed concise instructions make it all much more accessible and easily digestible and applicable. I would think that would generally be beneficial and turn more people on. If things are very vague then it can take a lot of time just trying to understand what one is to do, lots of searching and trying to understand and confusion. If it’s simple and easy and straightforward, like those French videos, then one only need spend a few minutes studying, then go do the actual work, for months or years! And occasionally refer back to that easy to access concise resource when one needs reminding. And, one might need only study a few videos or try a few species to then understand the general principles and not need to see specifics for other species, perhaps. But I think often a good entry to general principles is to learn how to do one thing, then do it. So as an entry point, some people will just want info on the species they want to try. Being able to receive instructions on that 1 species is therefore very useful and very approachable. Seeing 10 minutes of someone explaining and showing what to do with that species makes it easy to understand and easy to believe it is doable. I think potentially far easier than seeing a different species and being expected to extrapolate principles from that to their chosen species, and indeed there are significant differences between species, such as being SI or SC, having different modes of pollination, being annual or not, and so many other things. And even if they’re the same, they’d have to do a lot of research before they’d know they were the same. It’s just so much easier for someone without knowledge, to be shown what to do with the species they’re working on. Like using a guitar to show someone how to play guitar, rather than a piano, which is possible, and an experienced musician would get it (depending on what is being explained), but for beginners that, I would say that’s less likely to work as well. One video that comes to mind was of Joseph going around inspecting plants, taking about them, pulling some up and so on. I forget which it was, maybe tomatoes? Things like that are so useful. We so often learn by seeing.
If videoing were done by various volunteers, some videos might be rejected due to poor quality. If this idea were to be carried out, it could be worth warning them their videos might not necessarily be accepted. It could also be possible to have multiple videos for each species. Could be superfluous but if more than 1 person wanted to do a specific species and they were well filmed, that could be a benefit to see the same species in different climates, or different people’s preferences for phenotype selection, or different crossing methods, for example.
In terms of crossing info, a bit of a shotcut could be just to take all the minimum distances given for isolation in the French videos and give them as maximum distances instead of minimums 
I think in the end this work is maybe fairly easy. The modern landrace method I mean. I mean, lots of work in the garden. And most of the learning is in the garden. But just a few things for each species that can be really handy to know. And that does differ between species. A resource where it’s easy to be able to go straight to exactly what one wants to know, would seem key both to people who are busy, and in general to the modern trend of attention deficit. I think quick accessibility to relevant readily applicable information on the specific topic someone is searching for, might be the (or at least one of the) most important key to ‘outreach’.
I’ll also just give a translated page (not perfect translation but you’ll get the rough idea) to a random seed variety from this Japanese website, as an example of ease of access to information. It’s the same on almost all of their seed pages - you can see the germination temperature, growing temperature, cultivation method, info on collecting seeds, seed life and dormancy, when to plant and harvest and so on. This is really handy.