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There are crops that have disappeared from our life.
They disappeared completely in 20 years.
Even though they grew well without chemicals,
today it's forbidden to sell their seeds on the market.
Nowadays these breeds can be found almost only in gene banks.
Instead, you can buy industrially bred seeds,
which need lots of chemicals to grow,
usually from the same company that sells the seeds.
SEALED OR FREE?
László Benjámin produces different kinds of pumpkin.
The factories do not buy a certain breed, the so-called Gyomaendrõd pumpkin.
Its problem is that they all stay this small.
It's not suitable for the processing industry.
- Because of its size. - Then what good is it?
It tastes better. Its substance is better than those of the other breeds.
It tastes better, but the factories do not buy it. No one produces it, either.
But Benjamin likes these old breeds, the so-called landrace plants.
Long time ago you could buy white melons of 8-10 kilos.
But then they were marginalized on the markets by the hybrids.
Not because the hybrid was better,
but because it was newer, and everybody wanted the newer.
So you can not find its seeds anymore.
And now everybody looks for it on the markets. It's like the Jonathan apple.
Even Germans are questoning now why Jonathan apples disappeared.
They had the trees cut out. They wanted their breeds instead.
Now it would be good, but there's no more.
What does it mean that a breed disappears?
It means that their seeds are not available and the breed simply dies out.
According to the datas of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN,
75% of crop breeds disappeared in the last century,
and currently only 12 plant and 5 animal species
ensure the nutrition of the humankind in total.
You can not find this kind of tomato in the supermarkets.
The gene banks keep these seeds not to let these tomatoes disappear.
We are in one of the active storages of the Tápiószele Gene Bank.
There are 77.000 items in the active
and around 11.000 items in the basic storage.
The landraces are disappearing, probably several hundreds of them every year.
These breeds adapted well to the environment of a certain region.
These are pumpkin seeds here.
Unfortunately I have to say, we turned quite Dutch.
This means there are rather few old species.
Sometimes you can find old tomatoes and paprikas in countryside markets,
in some places peaches, apricots.
The apples are mainly mainstream breeds - old breeds are very rare.
We used to find summer apple, sour apple, strudel apple on the market.
The logic of the industrial scale forces the food producers
to serve the needs of big supermarket chains.
The supermarket chains are not really producer-friendly.
They're not interested in good quality, but to get the product cheap.
If it's not Hungarian, they'll bring foreigner.
For example they bought my pumpkin for 50-60 HUF and sold it for 249 HUF.
How it that possible? Where did the price of this pumpkin grow 4-fold?
This, however, forces these food-producers
to work with large quantity of cheap and unified materials,
cultivating fewer breeds in larger area, using lots of chemicals.
Until the middle of the 20th century seed production
was in the hands of farmers and state seed-breeders.
These days this role has been taken over mostly by multinational companies.
Today the overwhelming part of the global seed trade
is in the hands of 3-4 giant companies,
and these companies are among the ten biggest pesticide producers, too.
In case of certain crop breeds, like corn, this situation is true for Hungary, as well.
The interest of the two industrial sectors is to put such crops on the market
that meet the needs of the industrial agriculture.
These breeds require large quantity of chemicals to grow.
It doesn't require spraying.
Even now you can see how nice and healthy leafs the new shoots have.
The hybrid needs to be sprayed and requires pest management.
The hybrid, Benjamin is talking about,
is a breed that has been created by companies,
mostly by crossing old breeds.
The result is such a plant that takes over certain features of the old one,
while it will be much worse in others, for example, it'll require more chemicals.
The taste doesn't matter, only the durability.
You can't find melons so tasteful than the ones from 20-30 years ago,
because they go rotten in a few days.
The melons today can be stored for 3 weeks without any problems.
But it's like a chewing gum. The old melon crumbled in your mouth.
Shelf life is the most important, the taste and aroma are secondary.
I have to admit that the foreign marketing is much stronger than the Hungarian.
The hybrid breeds all come from abroad.
These breeds were brought, forced, propagated every day and they spread.
The industrial seeds have to be bought every year,
otherwise the quality of the plants will deteriorate.
Certain seed distributors even prohibit the farmer
to produce the seeds themselves from the harvested crops.
So they have to buy the seeds every year.
The landraces are kind of free breeds.
This means you can produce them freely,
there are no breeding interests behind them,
there are no breed owners.
Landrace fruits, cereals, vegetables, breeds that over hundreds of years
adapted to the specialties of the region,
such as the conditions of the local climate and soil.
Because of their adaptability they can be produced chemical-free,
especially in less-favoured areas.
They have especially good nutritional value and taste.
This can be grown easily for sure as it was bred to this climate and area.
So it's a good idea to buy free breeds since it can be replanted every year.
But there is a little problem: it is impossible to buy them.
On one hand, there is a legal background:
virtually only state-certified, sealed seeds can be commercially grown,
so this way the landraces are out of this.
There are very strict rules about the state recognition.
Only those breeds can be produced commercially
which comply with the principles of uniformity and stability.
Only the industrial seeds can comply with these principles.
In the developed countries, for example in the Netherlands,
because of the strict regulations
that we also apply, namely that only registered,
sealed seeds can be distributed,
resulted in the complete extermination of landraces.
This happens not only in Europe but also in the developing countries,
says Protect the Future, who thinks it's the interests
of the seed producer companies who articulate the market regulation.
All this is a problem because the diversity of the seeds
and plants used by the agriculture is a strategic resource,
because the seed constitutes the first element of the food chain.
So it does matter what seeds we use and who controls these seeds.
This is not only the problem of Protect the Future.
A study commissioned by the World Bank and the UN has suggested
that the small-scale producers’ dependence on expensive chemicals
and patented seeds has to be reduced.
So the future can be dominated by organic farming.
One day Irén Gyõrfi, organic farmer, went to Tápiószele to ask for seeds.
That's how she brought back to life the so-called blue potato.
This is blue potato, which is white inside and it has quite hard flesh.
This is how I got it in Tápiószele.
It works just like any other potato.
You can cook it, fry it, use it for a potato salad or for anything else.
We are traditional producers regarding the garden.
I think it tells everything that we sustain a self-contained economy.
We live in a sandy area.
We produce landraces, for example a bean breed called sand bean.
I got it from an old lady in a seed market in Kerekegyháza.
She produced it in her small garden.
This is for example the meter-long bean. Irén and her family likes diversity,
that’s why they asked for seed from the Tápiószele Gene Bank.
We wanted to see how this potato can grow, what it's like,
if we can actually help its survival,
since this is the point, the preservation.
The state has a very important role to resolve the various legal, institutional
and economical barriers which currently prevent the spread of landraces.
The production and the special and traditional processing of landraces
demand handwork and more attention than the production of industrial breeds.
So they are more suitable to create jobs in the countryside.
France and many Western European countries have a serious system,
the controlled origin denomination.
For example, the Mako onion can not be found everywhere in the country,
only in a certain region, and should be done with a certain breed.
It has a 2 year cycle.
The European Union protects these products,
and the AOC or in the European Union the AOP
makes it clear to everybody that they buy something unique and unrepeatable.
Hungary took over the laws, but the thing's still in its infancy.
I recommened all this to the attention of those who create the Hungaricum law,
as they have a huge responsibility.
If the Hungaricum law will be the game of lobbies,
and not a law with strict standards, like the controlled origin denomination,
then they'll be on uncertain ground.
Around the world and also in Hungary more and more farmers feel
that they can not find such breeds in the seed market which can adapt
to local conditions and meet the needs of family and organic farming.
So we're talking about such breeds that can adapt naturally and chemical-free
to the characteristics of the regions and its climatic conditions.
Such initiatives should be supported which connect the gene banks,
with the local farming communities and the artisan producers.
We could feed ourselves with our own breeds,
why do we have to import all that junk?
Each year we get a lot of requests here in the Tápiószele Gene Bank,
and we have more and more difficulties to satisfy all the demands.
The whole trade system should change.
A rule should be introduced which doesn't allow
the supermarket chains to work with a profit of 100-150%.
Then we could sell much more, and only this can help us.
This requires high-level measures and advertising campaign to make a change.
A film commissioned by Protect the Future (Védegylet)
Professional coordinator: Csilla Kiss Project leader: Borbála Sarbu-Simonyi
Video: László Bihari Green Spider Foundation
Music
Supported by the European Union
Supported by Magnet Hungarian Community Bank