Although heirlooms or fixed varieties are supposed to be stable, I suspect they decline in quality over time due to stewardship.
Since a named, unpatented variety becomes a commodity when stable, it encounters various economic and climatic forces that lead to quality declines.
Pretend example. The state of Oregon has the absolute perfect weather, climate, soil type, etc to grow Cherrycumbers. There are 10 seed companies in 10 different states growing Cherrycumbers. The 1 seed company operating in Oregon will outcompete the other 9 companies operating in other states with less favorable conditions, all else equal. Over time, many producers in less favorable conditions will exit the production market and may just buy their seeds from Oregon and just resell it. The genetics of the Cherrycumber become even weaker. What is the opposite of being challenged? Being pampered? This promotes weakness in the long term.
If what I have said is true, then our seed production system is actually producing weakness and food insecurity. It needs to be turned upside down.
I suspect that the same pattern plays out over longer time periods with whole species, genera and families. There is constant turn over of new species arising and old ones dying out (often due to accumulating loss of genetic diversity over time). Life never stands still and the human instinct to preserve things is better spent on paintings and sculptures.
I’m not sure about this part. The cherrycumber seed-farmer in Georgia is likely to produce cherrycumber seeds that fare better when grown in southern gardens, so wise southern gardeners are willing to pay $3 for a packet of their seeds instead of $2 for a packet from Oregon.
That’s true, but only gardeners who understand this fact will be willing to pay the premium. Right now, that’s a niche rather than mainstream market. There are definitely gardeners who buy their seeds from local seed companies for exactly this reason, but far more buy from big box stores or Burpee.
I’ve heard that a lot of watermelon varieties are grown for seed in the southeast, where they do great because the soil is amazing. They’re sort of pampered by default. This gets the companies very high seed production, and it gets the gardeners plants that want to be grown in the southeast and are unthrilled about being grown in a more challenging climate.
One sneaky way to get local seeds is to buy fruit at farmers’ markets and save the seeds from the fruits. The farmers very likely bought the seeds from a big seed company that grew them in pampered conditions, and the farmers likely pampered them a bit, but those seeds will have had one generation of local adaptation, which can help make them easier to grow for you.
Carol Deppe talks about this phenomenon in her books. Varietal decline, if you will, is in her view improper varietal maintenance. She wrote in one of them about how she brought back a beloved Pacific NW strain of Cucurbita maxima by resampling from all available sources and then reselecting the variety. She considers that very large seed companies simply cannot properly maintain some of these varieties because they don’t taste each fruit, mechanically harvest large fields of seed crops, and so natural selection moves the populations away from the important desirable traits they once had.
Industrial crop breeding worries about the demands of farm and food processing machines first, with the concerns of humans a distant third (usually papered over with additives and advertising).
I do however think that some varietal decline is unavoidable, and new varieties have to be continually produced to replace/refresh old ones. A continuity of crops with similar traits and purposes though is possible over longer time frames.
Far north even local might not be that good in warm loving crops as seeds are usually produced in greenhouses or they simply being imported. More southern source might be better if they are grown with the elements. Even warmer climate is likely to have somewhat similar start to the season, just month or two earlier so they can get some acclimatization to wide range of areas, but also have easier time getting seed harvest consistently. Latter is why seeds aren’t produced further north, but it also might not be as important for suitability.
I think varietal change is unavoidable. Decline will happen by default; improvement can happen through continual selection and hard work. It’s absolutely true that nothing will stay the same, either way. That’s how life works: nothing stays the same. Either you’re growing, or you’re deteriorating.
@WilliamGrowsTomatoes Yes, Carol Deppe’s discussion of that whole subject is excellent, and I think she’s completely right. With fruits in particular, “quantity of seeds” and “quantity of flesh” are often opposite goals, and anybody that harvests all the seeds is going to automatically wind up with more seeds from fruits that make more seeds. That’s just how math works.
There’s also the fact that it’s usually in the grower’s best interest to get “more seeds” as a higher priority than “better seeds.” There are many plant breeders who favor quality of plants over quantity of seeds, but when stewardship of the seed crops goes to farmers who get paid per ounce of seed produced . . . well, I mean, of course they’re not going to discard any viable seeds, especially not from the plants that produce the most seeds.
This isn’t a conflict when seeds are the harvest, such as dried beans. Then quantity of seeds produced is usually the highest priority for gardeners, as well as for seed crop growers.
So it’s probably well worth considering what kind of crop it is, and whether the economic incentives (even for the most well-meaning growers) are currently in conflict with most gardeners’ goals. If so, you will probably need to assume the variety will deteriorate fast, because keeping it excellent is swimming against a tide.
There’s an old story about a farmer whose corn always won first place at the fair. A reporter went to interview him and was stunned to learn that he supplied corn seed to all his neighbors. He asked the old farmer why he would do that, since then his neighbors would have corn just as good and might win the prizes at the fair. The old man responded that the pollen from his neighbors’ fields pollinated his corn, so if they had bad corn eventually his own would start to decline.
The idea with the old landraces was that no one person did the breeding. The whole community grew the crop, harvested the seeds, and traded the seeds, retaining genetic diversity and preventing inbreeding. Each person or family might breed for the things they valued, but it was part of a community effort.
Yes, very good contemplation you have made. I think very few seed buyers know these things. When the seed is considered a commodity, like a can of corn vs a can of corn, then the demand will flow towards price and accessibility.
Additionally, after reading many seed catalogs from smaller seed companies, I’ve pieced together the understanding that just because a seed company sells something doesn’t mean they steward it.
I also think the mass produced seed model drives seed pricing down, which on the surface is a great thing. Who wants higher prices, right? Except that once we realize quality is also being lowered by that same system, then we recognize a problem.
The seed buyer will go through more effort to find seed that is less accessible, and they will pay more for it if they are aware of the benefits. Obviously, they are not. The market is a reflection of consumer demand.
To make matters worse, because seed pricing is so cheap, the incentive to save seed is very low. To the uninitiated gardener, saving seeds is a way to save money. They paid $3 for their seeds. It’s really not worth the effort unless they are saving something special. If every gardener knew the truth that when you save seeds, you are a plant breeder by default. And when you breed plants, you receive so many benefits that they don’t know about.
The more people involved in saving and sharing seeds, the better.
I am not personally concerned or get bothered by the potential of inbreeding or loss of diversity because of set minimums established by the plant breeding establishment narrative. I am planting so many varieties in such a small space, those rules and formulations don’t apply to me. I have so many varieties of whatever I am growing, half of the time, I cannot even identify the variety I am looking at.
You know, I was just telling a neighbor about this today. She said she’d given up on gardening because it was so expensive. She kept buying expensive soil, expensive fertilizers, expensive compost, and nothing ever seemed to work. Almost everything kept dying. It wasn’t ever worth the money or time.
I asked if she wanted to know what the secret was. She said yes.
I said, “You ask your neighbors for seeds they’ve saved. Those survived in similar conditions to your yard. Then you save your own seeds from that point on. The only plants that will make seeds in your yard are plants that can survive in your yard. If they survived, their kids probably will, too.”
Her eyes went big, and she said, “That’s brilliant!”
(Grin.)
It is, too. It really is. It often takes a brilliant mind (thanks, Joseph!) to notice things that are obvious once someone’s pointed them out.