Saving the Old Seeds

The numbers are clear, and what they point to is troubling. Of the many thousands of distinct vegetable and grain varieties that Canadian gardeners and farmers once cultivated, a large share are now planted by almost no one. With each passing decade, a further portion of them disappears from the fields for good. As a small set of modern, commercially bred cultivars come to dominate the country's farms, the loss of these inherited varieties shows little sign of slowing. Supporters of seed conservation, a movement that has lately acquired real institutional weight, maintain that preserving even one endangered variety helps safeguard a community's irreplaceable connection to its own farming heritage. Several provincial governments have begun subsidizing community seed libraries. Officials, though, continue to weigh the trade-offs with obvious caution. The genuinely difficult question now facing policymakers is how far public money should underwrite crops that the market has largely left behind.