With the harvest complete and the fields all put to bed, the onset of winter has seen a flurry of activity at Seeds of Change. New seed has been arriving daily and is steadily being cleaned, tested, and packed for the growing season ahead. After months of hard work and still more to do, our all-new website has finally launched, making it easier and more enjoyable than ever to shop for seeds and tools as well as to access loads of information. On top of that, our expanded 2003 seed catalog is hot off the presses and due in your home the last week of December.

2002 has seen tremendous growth for us and the organic industry as a whole, as gardeners, farmers, and consumers realize the myriad benefits of healthy food grown in harmony with the environment. Furthermore, the USDA has implemented new uniform organic standards which, among other things, require organic growers to start with organic seeds when available. Micaela Colley brings us up to speed on the new regulations below.

To meet the rapidly expanding needs of small-scale organic growers, we have significantly increased our focus on producing bulk quantities of selected lines of seed. Steve Peters' engaging interview with master plant breeder Dr. John Navazio demonstrates the importance of breeding and selection for the organic industry while lending insight into the fascinating world of plant breeding and seed production. The newest addition to our book list, Fatal Harvest, The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture, reviewed here, clearly illuminates the imperative to move rapidly towards an organically-based, sustainable food future.

Even though we're embarrassingly late in getting this newsletter to you, there's still time to get great holiday gifts for the gardeners on your list, and gardener or not, our Organic Apple Gift Boxes are truly the gift of taste! All orders received by December 19th at noon and shipped via 2nd day air will arrive by the 24th. See above for information on free shipping for orders over $75.

Happy Holidays!
Scott Vlaun, Editor
editor@seedsofchange.com

Contents | Seeds of Change Homepage

Since our last farm report, lush carpets of winter cover crops have sprouted where plants in our summer trials grew heavy from their bounty. Fall is brief here in northern New Mexico, hastening the process of putting our garden to bed for the winter. The year's first snows have come to this valley assuring us all that winter is here. Final data has been gathered on our replicated trials of butterhead and crisphead lettuces, and variety trials of spinach, kale, carrots, parsnips, gourmet greens, and potatoes are complete.

With the coming of winter, we have transitioned from the outside in. This is the exciting time of year when we receive seed produced by our hard-working growers. Yes, seed cleaning is in full swing! The diversity of shapes, textures, sizes, aromas, and colors of seed are quite a treat for the senses. Heather Gaudet is joining us this winter to assist with record keeping and seed cleaning. Heather and her husband Rick run an organic CSA farm just two doors down. We are all grateful for her presence. Welcome, Heather! We are also happy to have our Head Seed Cleaner, Emily Skelton, back with us after three months on maternity leave. We all join Emily and her husband Robert in celebrating the life of their first child; a beautiful boy named Gabriel.

There are a couple of projects in progress here that we are quite excited about. We have associates Joe Martinez, Erasmo Marquez, and Dennis Roberts to thank for their efforts in building us a traditional Ôhorno' (the Ôh' is silent), an outdoor oven made out of adobe bricks, and constructing several planting boxes inside the greenhouse. We look forward to using the horno next year to roast our chiles, make chicos (dehydrated sweet corn that may be used throughout the winter), and bake breads and pizzas using herbs and vegetables grown in the Seeds of Change research gardens. We will use the greenhouse planting boxes to extend our growing season, carrying out trials indoors throughout the winter. The boxes are filled with an organic, sterile media mix that includes Grow Coir coconut fiber, sand, perlite, and compost. We will be conducting trials on cool weather crops such as Chinese greens, mesclun and braising mixes, and spinach.

Micaela Colley, the Farm Manager, and Steve Peters, Seed Procurement Manager, have been busy putting together a bulk seed catalog which is now available. Call 1-888-762-7333 for a free copy. As always, our annual garden seed book is due in your mailbox in the last week of December. If you don't receive it call the above number to request a copy.

For many home gardeners, winter is the time to cozy up by a warm fire with a stack of seed catalogs, gleaning ideas that will inspire plans for next year's garden. Many of you will enjoy creating delicious meals made with the bounties of your summer and fall gardens throughout the winter months. Others of you still will enjoy fresh produce throughout the winter season with the help of cold frames or greenhouse space, or perhaps you are one who lives in a climate that allows for growing outdoors year-round. Whatever the case may be, enjoy the transition of seasons and take a moment to reflect on the countless gifts and lessons your garden provided you with this year.

Wishing for peace and joy to touch us all.
Jordan Rainwater, Research Associate
Micaela Colley, Research Farm Manager and the entire crew at the Farm

Contents | Seeds of Change Homepage

The October 21st, 2002 implementation of the USDA National Organic Standards marks a coming of age for the organic industry. No longer relegated to a small niche market, organic food production has gained national attention and regulatory notice. The standards are also a milestone for the seed industry as the issue of organic growers using organic seed is being addressed for the first time. The recent release of these new guidelines has left both growers and consumers asking, what does it all mean?

Previously the standards for organic certification were set by a multitude of private certifying agencies. Criteria defining organic varied from agency to agency. It was up to the consumer to know the degree of rigor each organic product had been held to. This variability created confusion for the grower, consumer and distributor alike.

The new USDA standards establish one set of criteria that must be met by all certified organic growers, handlers, and processors in order to label a product Organic. Although private certifying agencies are still acting as certifying bodies, they must do so in accordance with the national guidelines. While there is one standard for organic growers, there are three distinct designations that can be used in labeling organic foods. Only food that contains solely 100% organic ingredients can be labeled 100% Certified Organic, while food containing 95% or greater of organic ingredients can be labeled Organic. Finally the distinction "Made With Organic Ingredients" is reserved for food with between 70% and 95 % organic ingredients. Any lower percentages of organic ingredients may be labeled on the ingredient list, but not advertised on the front of the package.

The organic industry has gotten where it is today through the grassroots movement of environmentally concerned farmers, consumers, and business people working together to seek an alternative to chemically based agriculture. The efforts of these individuals have shaped the current sense of what the word organic represents. The USDA National Organic Standards were developed over the last ten years by the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), a group of farmers, scientists, and industry representatives working under the USDA as part of the National Organics Program (NOP). When the NOSB first released their proposed set of standards in 1997 the public responded loudly with criticism as many saw a serious erosion of the existing standards.

The standards have since been revised with a stricter set of criteria. Unlike the proposed guidelines, the new standards prohibit the use of genetically modified organisms, sewage sludge, or irradiation of organic products. Additionally, the final ruling encourages practices that protect the health of the environment and the soil as well as promoting the use of organic seed. These guidelines have improved the stringency over some previous certifying guidelines. However, some critics of the standards have raised questions about various issues including the crop rotation and composting practices outlined. Many farmers have also complained about the additional burden of paperwork that comes with the involvement of a government agency.

The new organic standards also address the issue of organic seeds in organic production. Now certified growers must use organic seed if it is available. At Seeds of Change we have long recognized the dichotomy of growing organically while using conventional seed. We're happy to see that the issue being raised, although it has raised many questions from growers and certifiers alike, recognizing that the organic seed industry is too small to adequately fill this demand. The "when available" clause in the guidelines mean that growers must demonstrate an effort to look for organic seed. To facilitate the process of locating organic seed the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI) is publishing an availability list on their website (http://www.omri.org).

We are doing our part by offering an extended list of bulk seed this year to help meet the needs of the organic market grower. With over a decade of growing seed organically we recognize that seed developed in organic conditions often has traits that make it better adapted to organic systems. Certainly, with this new opportunity, some large conventional seed companies will begin to offer organically grown seed, however, we recognize that offering organic seed is more than finding an organic field to grow it in. It is a process of selecting varieties under organic growing conditions and developing that seed over generations to create vigorous, healthy, well-adapted organic lines.

Over the past few years we have conducted field trials, both at our research farm and on cooperating growers' farms to evaluate many of our varieties for their potential as commercial seed varieties. This year, in addition to our bulk garden seed, we are offering a list of bulk commercial varieties which we feel have characteristics that meet the needs of the organic market grower. Call toll free 1-888-762-7333 for a free catalog of our bulk varieties.

We welcome this new era of organics and look forward to serving the needs of organic growers. Of course with our roots in the garden, we'll continue working with the organic gardening community by offering an extensive line of %100 Certified Organic garden seeds and the tools and information to help grow them.

Ever since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, a complex and dense literature has arisen in reaction to our increasingly industrialized, chemical intensive, machine based, dollar driven, agriculture. As family farmers worldwide are forced from their land and our soil, water, air, and genetic heritage are wantonly compromised, a multitude of voices have spoken loudly, both in protest to the status quo, and with an increasingly informed vision of an ecologically sane, and economically just food future.

From Vandana Shiva's poignant indictments of a globalized, culture-consuming, agribusiness, and Wendell Berry's pleas for the resurrection of an agrarian ethic, to Wes Jackson's, Bill Mollison's and Masanobu Fukuoka's rigorous analyses, designs and methodologies for generating productive agricultural systems that mimic and harmonize with nature, a steady stream of serious scholarship has emerged to question and redirect our perilous path toward an imbalanced and untenable relationship between our burgeoning population, dwindling resources and our imperiled genetic diversity and ecological resilience.

With such a plethora of information and rhetoric covering wide ranging topics and opinions, it would seem hard to gain an overview of our current deteriorating agricultural situation, and the various strategies being developed and implemented to overcome it, without spending a great deal of time and effort sifting through volumes of books, magazines and websites. In this sense, Fatal Harvest, The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture is a "one-stop-shop." Edited by Andrew Kimbrell, this ambitious project weaves together over 250 incisive photographs with essays from dozens of our most visionary thinkers including Berry, Jackson, and Shiva as well as Anuradha Mittal, Gary Nabhan, Alice Waters, Jim Hightower, and a host of other visionary thinkers on issues of sustainability and the politics of food production and consumption.

At once, alarming and encouraging, Fatal Harvest spells out the imperative to care for the land and its inhabitants on every level, from the microfauna in our soils to our threatened wildlife and struggling rural communities. Masterfully combining words and pictures, it not only chronicles the perilous path of chemically based industrial agriculture, but crafts a vision of hope for a food future that is richly diverse, environmentally sustainable, and socially just.

Scott Vlaun, Editor

Seeds of Change is proud to team up with Jerzy Boyz Organic Orchards to bring you and yours the finest apple gift boxes for the holiday season. Their Braeburn, Fuji and Honeycrisp Apples are unsurpassed in beauty, flavor and nutrition.

At Jerzy Boyz they use only the most sustainable, ecologically conscious methods, including diverse cover cropping, custom composts, seaweed, and mineral fertilizers. Careful thinning and pruning, along with selective harvesting and hand packing, assures that only the ripest, sweetest, most beautiful, organic fruit ever, makes it into a Seeds of Change gift box. After one bite, it's hard to imagine eating fruit grown any other way.

Place your orders before 12 pm noon Mountain Time on Thursday to get 2nd Day delivery by December 24th. Receive FREE 2nd DAY SHIPPING on all orders of 75 dollars or more placed before Thursday at noon. Orders placed by Friday at noon must be shipped OVERNIGHT for delivery on the 24th. Sorry, no free overnight shipping.

We've listed a few of our favorite holiday gifts below. Please visit our new website for more great gift ideas for the gardeners in your life. Happy Shopping and Happy Holidays!

Our Popular Seed Saving Kit

Paper Pot Maker Makes it Easy to Create Endless Seed-Starting Pots from Newspapersr

Top-Rated Pressure Cooker for Healthy Meals from the Garden

Durable Garden Hat, The Coolest Hat Out There

No Peel Garlic Press

Mushroom's Iron Wok for Delicious Stir-Fries

Classic Salad Spinner Makes Crisp Salads a Breeze

Gardening for the Future of the Earth A Seeds of Change Book

Hope's Edge by Frances Moore LappÆ’ and Anna LappÆ’

This Organic Life by Joan Dye Gussow

Fatal Harvest, The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture Edited by Andrew Kimbrell

ATHENS, GA. - The composting industry is threatened by the increasingly widespread use of a particularly persistent herbicide made by Dow AgroSciences, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Company. The taxpayers of Spokane WA are having to pay $950,000 to buy the city out of a contract with a composting company whose product was contaminated with clopyralid, the active ingredient in Dow herbicides like Confront. Compost contaminated with clopyralid residues have been found in several other states and cities. Compost made from grass clippings cut from clopyralid-treated lawns has severely stunted certain food plants to which the compost is applied.

For more on this story go to ENN:
http://www.enn.com/direct/display-release.asp

This job presents an opportunity to work with a dynamic team of people that has helped build the rapidly growing organic cotton market. SCP's goal is to reduce the negative environmental and human health impacts of cotton farming by increasing organic cotton production. SCP works to stimulate interest in organic cotton and to facilitate the use of organic cotton throughout the global apparel industry, while also working directly with growers to develop, test, and teach organic and other environmentally responsible farming practices. SCPs focus on cotton is an effort to get one of the most dominant commodities and the most voluminous user of toxic chemicals to change course. By creating an organic market and increasing consumer awareness, SCP seeks to empower farmers worldwide to eliminate chemicals and GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) and satisfy the growing demand for organic cotton products. For more information on this organization, visit their website at http://www.sustainablecotton.org

Job Description:
Provide intellectual and practical leadership for all aspects of the Sustainable Cotton Project. Work with program and administrative staff to coordinate SCP's major program areas, a farmer-based technical assistance program in sustainable/organic crop production (focused on cotton) and a marketing outreach and education program. The marketing program focuses on three major areas: corporate outreach and education; campus outreach, education, marketing and activism; and consumer outreach, education and activism. All are ongoing programs and have excellent directors and consultants.

Initial deadline for application is January 15, 2003 (postmarked). For more information about the job, contact Kate Duesterberg or Will Allen at kduester@igc.org.