16 thoughts on “When Birtherism Isn’t Quite Crazy Enough”

  1. This one, there actually is cause for concern on.
    Seed saver’s exchange; http://tinyurl.com/5oy3v6
    GMO food, eaten over a longer period than the FDA testing, might be causing organ failure. And I don’t really want Monsanto owning the patent on all the seed that can be grown.

  2. Aw, man, they’ve taken a perfectly legitimate concern (preservation of heirloom plants/seeds) and turned it into a survivalist scenario? At $6+ dollars a seed packet for their “special” members? Suckers.
    And, someone needs to make a joke about those french breakfast radishes, pronto. Survivalists should not be allowed to engage in french breakfast activities, the cosmic repercussions would be immeasurable.

  3. This isn’t GMO versus organic or anything like that. It’s about profiting off paranoia and threats of the Apocalypse.
    Take a look at the ad (second link.) The mix of end times rhetoric and calm, clean suburbia (complete with functioning utilities) speaks volumes: the very people pushing these end of the world fantasies couldn’t, in reality, go without electricity or hot water for more than a few days, if that long…

  4. Colbert missed the “non-hybrid” aspect last night when he implied you could get plant seeds at any number of nearby stores.
    But I know of a huge number of heirloom seed providers (including most of the usual seed providers have heirloom lines.) So why overpay here?
    For that matter, how many of the survivalist folk are that concerned about heirloom vs. non-heirloom seeds?

  5. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the seed thing isn’t really all that crazy, though I agree that telling peoplethey will die next year if they don’t have non-hybrid seeds in the storehouse! is extreme. But fuck it, an earthquake in Chile has already interfered with tomato and grape supplies in the U.S. We’ve got climate change and peak oil and all hurricanes and all sorts of other issues that can and will interrupt our food supply. So yes, I am a big believer in community gardens, I am a big believer in everyone knowing how to grow something, and I do think Monsanto is trying to control the food supply with their hybrid seeds that won’t germinate in the second generation.
    There are worse things a person can do besides buying non-hybrid seeds. Profiting off of the fear porn? Bad. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
    ‘s’all I’m saying, folks.

  7. That sure sounds like a scam, like those Civil Defense kits with canned water and moldy crackers. On the other hand, there are lots of scientists out there working on the seed problem. Hybrid seeds came of age in the 1930s when hybrid corn proved itself with much higher yields than self seeding corn. Unfortunately, this means a farmer can’t just save his seeds for the next season and get anything like the same yields. Someone has to be growing the F1s so they can sell the F2 seeds. Thank you very much Barbara McClintock. Science just had a article on world food security. Someone is worrying about the nine billion problem since we are going to have nine billion of us to solve awfully soon. One approach is apomyctic corn which simply fertilizes itself. It’s like parthenogenesis for plants, no pollen daddy is needed. Dandelions can do this, but not a lot of angiosperms, and most of our food plants are angiosperms. (Not pine nuts, for example.) There are actually a couple of labs with kind-a, sort-a apomyctic corn. Then, there are the gene shufflers talking about C-4 rice. They want to upgrade rice from C-3 to C-4, like corn, so it has more calories per plant. Of course, a lot of people don’t like the idea of shuffling genes. There’s an even rougher problem in Africa since they don’t have any way of storing food for any length of time. Ancient Egypt could put seven years of wheat surplus in a warehouse and dish it out during seven years of famine, but most sub-Saharan crops are eat-em or lose-em. Worse, you can’t even save most of their seeds.
    There’s a lot of interesting research going on. One can’t expect miracles, but we may need some. Just don’t dis hybrid seeds.

  8. Mother Earth News runs a seed exchange, for catsakes.
    let the idiots waste their dough.

  9. Apparently some idiots are under the impression that hybrid seeds are all produced by gene splicing as opposed to merely cross breeding strains and that even the ones that are so produced somehow cause organ failure. There’s not the slightest shred of evidence for that, of course, but some other idiot wrote it on a website on the internet so it must be true. Not all the nuts are on the right.

  10. It is a scam. Google that outfit and you will see the light. Perfect company for Glenn Beck’s abomination of a tv show.

  11. The problem with hybrid seeds is that a second and succeeding generations will not breed true, so are not suitable for survival. You’d need both parent breeds and cross-fertilize to achieve the hybrid. Heirloom seeds are the only sensible way to go, but GM seeds might be suitable too, though chancy without long term study (not a problem if heirloom plant populations are surviving, too, and the GM varieties do have many benefits after all).

  13. Heirlooms are wonderful plants, because you can use the seeds from produce to grow the same plant next year. You cannot do this with hybrids.
    But really,most northern gardens cannot grow some of those plants our growing season is too short.
    These poor people are being taken advantage of, this is an expensive way to garden.
    And the good Lord needs to give you good weather, no floods or tornadoes, cold weather or late blight to have a successful crop!!

  14. Every seed catalog I get in the spring has heirloom varieties. None of the people plugging this stuff have any idea of what they are taking about.

  16. well, i gotta say, heirloom apples suuuuuuuuuuuck. except some. can’t beat arkasas blacks + transparent/lodi.

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