“Evolutionary population” is the term used by Salvattore Ceccarelli in “evolutionary plant breeding”
He made populations of 1600 barleys and then redistributed it to farmers all accross the Middle East… the article is very interesting
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See also:
where he speaks also about “dynamic mixtures” which start from combining varieties in the field to real “evolutionary populations”, i.e. from grexes (f0, f1…) to “modern landraces”
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That’s a nice phrase!
The way I see it is this terminology discussion is ‘behind the scenes’, so not a problem, but I think potentially very useful. Like how I like that phrase you just used. Good words help communication, I think. And it’s helpful for people to know quite quickly what this is all about, and how it differs to countless other seed-oriented websites or groups or whatever. So some good terminology can be really useful for communicating such things, I think. Especially when the terminology is accurate and easily digestible.
Oh I’m reading step by step so just came to this, yeah basically that’s my take too.
Yeah. I don’t know much about grammar so these might not be the right terms but, ‘adapted’ to me is past tense, ‘adaptive’ is present continuous. That is to say, ‘adapted’ has the adaptation in the past, it’s not verbing now. ‘Adaptive’ is happening right now. I think folk here are interested in seeds that can verb now, not just in the past. That’s what makes this so different from landraces, in my opinion. Landraces adapted in the past, over a very long period, in one specific land. The adaptation has already taken place, and while often being slightly more adaptive than heirlooms, they’re still pretty static. Whereas we are interested in diverse adaptive seeds, so that we can work to making new landraces from them. Unless we are sharing them with our next door neighbours who happen to use the same growing methods as us! (And some seeds we share might be from a project old enough to have progressed far enough to be a landrace of sorts, but with the tastes of folk here, probably an ‘adaptive landrace’ rather than one of the more common far less adaptive landraces available, whether old or new).
I think that applies also to landraces. I mean, in the traditional sense of that word. Like all the rice landraces being lost in India due to the US corporate imperialism and so on. There are for example landrace rice varieties with extremely high levels of… I forget what vitamin, then you have millions of dollars invested into breeding new GMO rice varieties patented by immoral seed companies like claiming ‘the highest levels’ of iron, and they’re like 10 or 20 time less than those traditional landrace rice varieties, it seems so stupid to me. Then the WHO or whatever organisations go promoting the patented seeds and they become really popular though very much inferior. Great danger of so many such valuable landraces being lost. Here’s the video on that if you’re interested:
Here’s the comparison (and see for zinc also) - the GMO one is the red one at the bottom:
Sounds quite good. Think I still prefer ‘adaptive population’ but yeah, if that is already an established term, could be appropriate.
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A counter position that occured to me. Maybe there are trade offs in the uniformity of the language/brand of the amateur crop breeding movement that has come together here. If we use a single label then we are putting all our metaphorical eggs in one allegorical basket. Perhaps having a tangle of overlapping labels/terminology is better in some ways, just as is the case with plant breeding itself. The movement and community should embody the diversity and adaptability that we expect in our crops.
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Shane, this is wise to consider.
Whatever you call this diverse and promiscuous approach, it doesn’t belong to any one person or organization. Each of us must make a decision about how we approach our communities.
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Yes, I agree. And that goes double for translating a term to another language.
Yes, I think so too. When it comes to speaking about what we do, and for me saying it in french, I tend to focus on principles more than on words, because, as average people are curious, I have to take them through some kind of learning journey which is both linguistic and conceptual: breeding is something fully unknown to the masses… But I am quite happy to see that my words sounds true even to scientists working in the field, when it happens: “genetic bottleneck” and things like “opening up the gene pool” they get it…
Not to focus on it but just to add some kind of visual synthesis of the approach of Ceccarelli, here is (from 18’10" to around 20’) Ceccarelli speaking about how landraces can cope with climate changes where he explains what he did and is doing in Syria and elsewhere: listening to it I learned that the term “Evolutionary Plant Breeding” has been coined by Suneson in 1956 and that the process (see graphs) is exactly what we do: starting from a collection of varieties put together in the field (hybrid swarm/grexes, he calls them “mixtures”), to evolutionary populations (that we would call … “this or that” (!), here he just call them “populations”)
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Here is a brief rhetorical strategy/language-use idea in response to this question.
Lofthouse identifies the need for an “international version of Landrace Gardening” and Dakin asks us for a universal greeting besides “Landrace” that can grow our community.
What if we used the phrase: “Food Freedom” to introduce ourselves? It engages people because it is a movement they can join. It goes beyond saving diverse seeds. It is a collective effort to place control of food back into local hands.
We could start with an informative title “Five Essential Food Freedoms” on the website and list our traits of landrace gardening that so eloquently make foods free from inputs, free for people to choose their foods’ traits, and free to be distributed and shared. It can be an entry into our local food philosophy.
This introductory language could become an easy segue to injustices in gardens around the world. We can ask: what prevents “Food Freedom” in your garden or on your farm?
As an example, my Ugandan friend Sam shared how his farmer neighbors clear-cut their mountain forests to plant coffee, rather than use their open fields. Then it rained, triggering a massive landslide, killing the farmers and burying their village.
How can we engage this community? How can we greet them and enter the conversation with our knowledge without the “landrace” phrase? We can tell them about “Food Freedom” in this region: creating a resilient coffee plant that can grow in hotter, drier conditions, so they can avoid opening new land.
What are limitations of this approach?
What is other more specific introductory language?
Thanks! Curious to hear thoughts from the community.
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I like this idea!
Made me think of “Seedwork” – it calls to a term in software engineering, but is ultimately a blank new noun we could define to mean: gardening activities centered on saving resilient food crops’ seeds.
Then we create “Seedworkers” as an offshoot to define who we are as practitioners.
Thanks for this example. “Mix it” is a great phrase that is engaging and serves as a greeting to people unfamiliar with landraces, yet can create a natural transition into explaining the practice of diverse crop-keeping.
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Coming from a non-english speaking country (SE Europe) I found that this approach works best for me too. Some of those English terms just don’t exist in my language, but also there is some difference in concepts - such as heirlooms and traditional varieties - that are somewhat different here than in North America (I still don’t know how to call heirlooms in one or two word 
, traditional varieties are more on the traditional landraces side here, but there are also some varieties that are more on the heirloom side… it’s a linguistic mess).
I think the focus on explaining concept and principles works much better (anywhere in the world) than focusing on any particular word or frase. That said, I think it’s usefull to have a bunch of different frases or short sentences that apply to the concept of landrace and are easily translatable in other languages, that can help us to explain landracing more easily. And I think this thread gives us a lot of nice examples already.
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The people I talk to about landrace gardening are mostly not gardeners but chefs, so I find myself using a lot of different phrases. Changing them often, because none of them have hit bullseye yet.
I did use this one phrase recently with a colleague that seemed to make the penny drop for her. We talk about farm-to-table all the time and there’s something weird about it, because it is always the chef praising and admiring and almost deifying the farmer or gardener. Why doesn’t it go the other way too? So I said, we should try to make a gardening practice that is farm-to-table and back again. Or farm-to-table and then table-to-farm. I’m trying to get the chef students to save seed for me, when they stumble upon good fruit (it is most practical with stuff like squash, cucumber etc, but it is that practice that will teach them the logic).
Another phrase I recently used to describe landrace gardening, or anyway the style of generosity and community sharing that is practiced here, is to play on the similar ethic in software programming. Seed is a kind of genetic code anyway and it should be freely shared and open-source. In programming you call that Free & Open Source Software (FOSS for short). I think we could call it FOSS and tongue-in-cheek piggyback on that acronym: Free & Open Source Seeds.
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Are you aware of the Open Source Seed Initiative? They have done a lot toward preventing the patenting off open-pollinated varieties by corporations, and have popularized the idea of public access to germplasm. Freetheseed.org, I think.
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Open source seed initiative (OSSI) was in fact inspired by the free and open source software movement, as said on their US site https://osseeds.org/. And here’s the European organization of the same movement Home | Open Source Seeds.
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Yes, I do know them and thank you for reminding me about that connection. I hadn’t considered that they were directly inspired by the FOSS ethic, but it makes sense and is obvious now you say it. I see they even use the expression I used above. It’s so nice when people have already had your own idea and developed it much further.
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Keep it light and keep it fun. Avoid controversial words and phrases. Avoid complex Words.
“Casual Plant Breeding for Every Garden”
“You are Already a Plant Breeder, but for some reason you’ve been discarding your work- until now!”
“Making Gardening and Seed Saving Fun and Easy”
“Good Fun with Plant Diversity in Your Garden”
“Good Fun with Crop Plants in Your Garden”
"Conserving Plant Diversity in any size of Garden: Why saving your own seeds is easy. "
“Gardening With Your Friends: Why Swapping Seeds Makes Gardening Fun”
The complexities, history, and closely related methods can be addressed somewhere in the book or courses.
It does need something specific enough so that folks can understand that they are doing something exciting with seed saving / plant breeding / and their garden. Seed Saving is a form of plant breeding so it doesn’t necessarily have to even mention plant breeding but something of those must be in there or it could be too vague. “Fun in The Garden” is great and true but most everything we do in the garden is fun.
Landrace Gardening, Evolutionary Plant Breeding, Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, are all Niche because they appeal to different demographics. All three appeal to me.
You simply can’t appeal to simply everyone. Some portion of the population prefers to buy their seed. Seed Saving is a no go for them, period, end of discussion. They will not be moved. As seed savers we can’t convert them if that is a brick wall in their brain because as soon as we blurt out “seed saving” they will go on by. Some people similarly cannot see themselves as plant breeders.
I would posit that you do not in fact need to convert everyone or even move everyone from similar groups under the precise same banner.
For instance, seed savers can simply sell or gift seed to those who prefer to buy seed. Plant breeders can breed plants for those who prefer not to.
Similarly, everyone does not need to grow a milkweed plant to conserve Monarch butterflies. As long as someone on your street has one, an airborne milkweed seed will find its way into your garden or in some local spot of wayside ground.
As long as there is an evolutionary plant breeder or a landrace plant breeder, or a breed your own vegetable varieties book reader selling plants at your local farmers market you may have tried the produce of these methods. That may be enough representation for a movement- if a little taste of it is spreading along country lanes. Just take that to heart and never stop plant breeding.
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A few more ideas:
- pick-and-mix gardening (works as “pick-and-mix variety” too, as distinct from heirloom, F1, open-pollinated etc)
- applied diversity gardening
- context-led gardening (i.e. we want these plants to thrive and produce tasty food in our particular context, not shape the context to the plants)
- taste-led gardening (maybe only useful talking to people who cook?)
- low-input plant selection
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The word ‘Herd’ seems relevant to Landraces.
I had a Herd of Heirloom plants that I used to tend, but the Bees mixed up all the pollen! And the traits began to blend!
The Bastard plants are well adapted and unique, but without names: What will the neighbors think?
Shakespeare said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” But there is so much variety: Some smell like pickled pigs feet!?!
What would Lofthouse do? With so many plants to sort through? Organize them by size, shape or hue?
The job of a breeder is more than cross pollinate but to also evaluate and sadly eliminate.
Plant Breeding is easy
Save heirloom genetics by crossing them all with each other
Save heirloom varieties from inbreeding
It’s easy to make new heirloom varieties
In a century, we’ve lost 95% of all variety in our food seeds. It’s time to make new varieties!
Wow!
So much work went into this discussion. Thank you to everyone that contributed. Thank you for the grace and compassion with which we approached this topic.
The advisory committee met yesterday afternoon, and agreed to gradually transition the Going To Seed web site and outreach materials towards using the terms:
Adaptation Agriculture or Adaptation Gardening
That meshes well with our mission statement.
I like Adaptation Agriculture due to the alliteration.
Then last night, I published an international version of Landrace Gardening. I ended up keeping the same title, because of the complexities of changing the title of a popular book. The international version comes in standard color, which reduces the price by half compared to the full color version.
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