Maybe I’m a sucker for personal communication. Maybe, I truly believe that Someone or Something needs to fill this need.

Whatever it is, I will probably renew my membership for another year. This isn’t charity folks. I have been tormented by my decision since I made it. Then yesterday I got a phone call. Hmm.

The acting director of the Seed Savers Exchange, Mr. John Torgrimson called me to address several of my concerns that I had mentioned in my last post. Should I believe him? I don’t know, but he did take the time out of his day to call me personally. He did address several of my concerns directly. What else could I want?

Some of his comments:

1. I had major concerns about the pricing structure. He confirmed that pricing this year is being set as “suggested” pricing. This has always been the case for some members, but it has always been necessary to put this information in your bio. Last year, I had problems with my bio getting truncated by the new web site. Hopefully, this year I will be more careful to review all of the information that I put in the Yearbook through the web site.
2. Too many changes in the Director position. He stressed that Aaron Whaley and George DeVault both left for personal reasons and not due to internal politics
3. I wanted out reach programs or more education options. They have recently hired an education manager and are exploring options for more regional programs.
4. My concerns about the organization being out of touch with its members. The fact that he called me personally states a lot about their concern for their members. They also recently hired a membership manager to hopefully help with membership problems.

My biggest reason for not renewing was the cost of seeds. The organization is completely out of touch with its members. The SSE forums still has a very active thread complaining about the unannounced seed price increases from last year. For listed members to request a small seed, it costs $3.00. For non-listed members, the price is a dollar higher across the board.

In the past few years we have also seen multiple directors. Maybe the organization that Kent Whealy started would have been better off with him at the helm?

I also was concerned by the seed deposits in the Svalbard seed bank. Because of board member connections with this seed bank, it seemed to me, at least, that there could be motives not necessarily in the best interest of the exchange.

In the end, I participated because of the seeds and the knowledge on how to keep and maintain those old varieties. But the organization seems to be drifting farther and farther away from this core. They also don’t seem to want to participate with their members. While activities in Iowa at heritage farms is great, few of us can attend the workshops. They could easily share more of this information by extending regional meetings or gatherings or simply video taping their events.

I hope that they can right the direction of the exchange. In the mean time I am going to watch from the side lines.

I make no guarantees that this is exactly what is presented in the back of the yearbook. I quickly modified the version from last year, so hopefully, I have changed the page numbers etc., to be relevant to the 2010 yearbook.

To use the form, just download it from below and then modify the two areas highlighted in the photo that require personal information. As a sidenote, if you do not have Microsoft Excel, you can open the document with Open Office.

The first area, requires your member code(if you have one) and the second requires your mailing address.

Hope this is helpful and I hope that everyone has a great season.

UPDATE: Link has been deleted. Sorry. This post created a lot of controversy at The Seed Savers Exchange. They have added a similar form within the online yearbook. You must be a member to log into the yearbook.

The yearbook is visually plain, looking very much like a phone book with a color cover. But oh, if you are into gardening then the pages hold so much more than simple listings. Many of the listings include notes of how the variety came into existence. Interesting stories of immigrants who brought seeds from their homeland to plant at their new home. Less not forget the international members who have fantastic varieties not available anywhere in the US.

So what is your favorite veggie?

How about tomatoes? The 2010 yearbook lists approximately 4650 different varieties. Want something more obscure? How about the approximately 75 different varieties of Jerusalem Artichokes? Melons, approx 165. Peppers, approx 870. Okra, approx 60. You get the idea.

The yearbook is not just about seeds. You can also find roots, bulbs, tubers and scionwood.

So what do I do, when I get mine? I bookmark the starting page of my favorite varieties. Then I kick back and think about what part of the yard I can dig up this year to turn into new beds.

I remain extremely passionate about the Seed Savers Exchange. If you haven’t heard of SSE, please take the time to visit their web site and purchase a membership. The membership gives access to multiple publications as well as the incredible seed and plant resources of its members. http://www.seedsavers.org/

Last week I received my Yearbook. This is an event that I patiently wait for starting in December. I start looking through last years yearbook. I think about the members, what new varieties I want to grow, etc.. The yearbook, usually contains minor updates on the organization. This year, there was a fairly detailed note, describing their intent on now longer printing the yearbook. I have concerns about this transition and I voiced them in the following email. I would love to hear any other members or non-members feelings on this matter.

Received my Yearbook last week and was a little concerned about the comments inside. Seed Savers is suggesting that they will discontinue the yearbook in printed form by the end of the year. My personal feeling is that you will find many people resistant to this. Most all of the members I have dealt with directly, didn’t even have email addresses. I don’t know what percentage have email addresses listed in the yearbook, but my guess is that it is fairly low. I am a technology professional and I would still prefer a printed form. A choice for members would be a better option. I applaud that the yearbook was online this year before I even received the printed form, but I still love the printed book. Some thoughts.

1. Make it optional. This is quite common for other publishers.
2. Online yearbook will need to contain all of the information currently in the printed form. This means that it would need to be a membership login area, so that we could query by member etc.. I often will try to consolidate my requests to the fewest members.
3. On a topic outside of the year: I would love to see recorded videos of the events. In this day of YouTube and other online video communities, it could be a way to publicize our organization and at the same time disseminate information to its members. For example, in April SSE is hosting a grafting seminar. This would be an ideal subject to film and make available to members. I am confident many members such as myself would love to come to Iowa but cost considerations for a long journey make it unreasonable.

Update: Steph from Seed Savers has stated that the yearbook will be online in 2010 and they are still going to continue a printed copy. She stated that it will be up to the individual members to decide their format of yearbook.

“November 24, 2008

To the Listed Members of the Seed Savers Exchange,

I have just learned some extremely disturbing news that strikes at the very heart of SSE. I am deeply concerned about the willingness and ability of SSE’s current Board of Directors to protect SSE’s greatest asset – our invaluable and irreplaceable collection of heirloom seeds. The issue involves SSE’s recent affiliation with the Svalbard seed vault. Amy Goldman’s introduction in Seed Savers 2007 Harvest Edition stated, “…..we are preparing seeds to be sent for safety duplication to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway for its February 2008 opening. It is exciting to be part of this worldwide preservation effort.” Also in February 2008, SSE’s website posted a press release (“American food supply safeguarded by SSE contribution to Svalbard Global Seed Vault”) which states, “…..It opens officially on February 26, 2008. Seed Savers Exchange is among the opening-day depositors, making an initial deposit of seeds from 485 different vegetable varieties. With planned annual deposits of 2,000 vegetable varieties over the next several years, its deposits will eventually be among the largest at the Svalbard vault.”

SSE’s greatest treasure is its unique seed collection of 26,000 rare vegetable varieties (being permanently maintained at Heritage Farm), which represents the legacy and combined efforts of more than 3,500 Listed Members who have selflessly shared their families’ heirloom seeds during the last 33 years. SSE’s current leadership, with Amy Goldman as its Chair, may have exposed for patenting the 485 varieties that SSE deposited at Svalbard’s official opening last February. All depositors are required to sign the Svalbard Depositors Agreement (actually an international treaty with Norway) which links those deposits to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources of the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N.), Article 7 of which states, “The Depositor agrees to make available from their own stocks samples of accessions of the deposited plant genetic resources and associated available non-confidential information to other natural or legal persons in accordance with the following terms and conditions:….” The agreement goes on to dictate that “original samples” (the other seeds of those 485 varieties being stored at Heritage Farm) are also covered by the terms of the FAO Treaty, which allows patenting on “derivatives” of those samples.

By signing the treaty, Seed Savers apparently cannot refuse any requests for seeds of those 485 varieties in storage in the seed vaults at Heritage Farm. That would mean Monsanto and others now can, as a right, request those 485 varieties of SSE’s heirlooms, splice in GMOs, patent the product and sell the seed. The actual movement of each sample covered by the FAO Treaty (including the “originals” of all samples deposited in Svalbard) will require the use and signing of FAO’s Standard Material Transfer Agreement (also part of the FAO treaty) that includes language describing a 1.1% tax on patents (the main way that the FAO Treaty will generate funding for itself).

Amy Goldman nominated Cary Fowler (head of the Global Crop Diversity Trust that is in charge of Svalbard) to be on SSE’s Board of Directors at the Santa Fe board meeting (March 2007). I never was involved in any discussion about whether or not SSE’s seeds should be sent to his “doomsday vault,” probably because they both knew I would be opposed. Svalbard has never been a necessary step for SSE – duplicate samples of SSE’s seed collection are already stored in a separate seed vault at Heritage Farm as insurance against fire and tornadoes, plus duplicate samples are also in “black box storage” at the National Seed Storage Lab in Fort Collins, Colorado. (Black box storage means the seeds belong entirely to SSE, are being stored only against catastrophic loss, and can be returned upon request.) Also I had become increasingly concerned because Svalbard’s corporate donors include Seminis and DuPont/Pioneer.

SSE’s seed collection is very much a Peoples Seed Bank, actually quite similar to countless collections of traditional seeds being maintained by villages of indigenous farmers throughout the world. Since the late 1970s Gary Nabhan and I have both been fighting individual battles to keep traditional seeds from being patented (for example, Hopi Blue Popcorn). A few years ago I sent Gary samples of all the Hopi varieties in SSE’s collection which – along with the Hopi varieties
being kept by Native Seed/SEARCH – were given back to the Hopi in a ceremony that was the largest repatriation of native seeds in history. The summer before I was fired, I included in Heritage Farm’s growouts nearly 100 Indian varieties from about 20 different tribes (20 sovereign nations) in anticipation of also repatriating those seeds. (Svalbard and the FAO Treaty don’t even recognize country of origin, much less indigenous farmers’ rights, which has already created serious problems involving sovereignty.) Are those Indian seeds now in Svalbard? That would certainly be touchy!

If all of this turns out to be true, then a portion of SSE’s invaluable seed collection has just been opened up for patenting, with the stated goal that SSE’s entire collection will follow. SSE’s board has a fiduciary responsibility to protect the organization and its seed bank. Please join me in asking SSE’s current leadership, with Amy Goldman as its Chair, how they can possibly be doing this on behalf of SSE’s membership? Does anybody really think that the stewards of SSE’s nonprofit seed bank – the only non-governmental organization involved – should be signing international treaties with seed banks and governmental agencies from 155 countries? We should all demand that the contract which put SSE’s heirloom seeds into Svalbard (who signed what and when?) be posted on SSE’s website, so SSE’s members can compare that contract with the documents below (which, be warned, are deliberately deceptive) to determine for themselves if SSE’s seeds should be returned. Nonprofits are supposed to be transparent. Make SSE’s board answer you; it is your right.

SSE’s current leadership, with Amy Goldman as its Chair, must show all of us any passages in any of these documents that would disprove our grave concerns. You can expect, however, that SSE’s board will instead issue a defensive statement (a non-answer) on SSE’s website, claiming that the seeds in Svalbard belong entirely to SSE and cannot be distributed, patenting cannot occur, SSE can get its seed back upon request. Only part of that is true. While it is true that the seeds actually stored in Svalbard can’t be distributed and can be returned upon request – in that sense all of the samples deposited in Svalbard are in black box storage – it is the linking of those deposits to the FAO Treaty that makes possible the distribution and patenting.   And don’t let them tell you that your fears about opening up SSE’s seed collection to patenting are unfounded and will never actually happen. If it is written into the treaty, it will eventually happen (exactly the same way the rights of farmers to save their own seeds have gradually been made illegal by similar treaties).

Fortunately all of this is reversible – Svalbard’s depositors can annul the agreement and recover their seeds. SSE’s next Board of Directors meeting is scheduled for December 4, 2008. Instead of trying to contact each of SSE’s board members individually (all of them will get this letter), send your concerns directly to SSE’s office at Heritage Farm (e-mails to: steph@seedsavers.org and phone calls to George DeVault: 563-382-5990 and letters to: Board of Directors, Seed Savers Exchange, 3094 North Winn Road, Decorah, IA 52101). Also, please share your thoughts with the board about Amy Goldman’s new SSE logo that’s being increasingly displayed on SSE’s website.

Recently I had the chance to gain limited access to my files (33 years of my speeches, writings, photos, research), but once again only if I signed away my voice, which I will never do. I fully accept my lifelong obligation to always speak the truth about what is best for Seed Savers.

Deeply concerned,
Kent Whealy
P.O. Box 653                      (phone: 231-547-7374)
Charlevoix, MI 49720          (e-mail: kentwhealy@gmail.com)

Svalbard Depositors Agreement: http://www.nordgen.org/sgsv/files/sgsv/SGSV_Standard Depositor_Agreement.pdf

FAQ’s International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources: ftp://ftp.fao.org/ag/cgrfa/it/ITPGRe.pdf

FAQ’s Standard Material Transfer Agreement: ftp ://ftp. fao. org/ag/agp/planttreaty/agreements/smta/SMT Ae .pdf“

I feel deeply for Kent and how this all has transpired. I also feel concern over an organization that I have come to love. I hope that SSE can overcome this current obstacle and I hope that Kent is given the respect and benefits deserving of the man that created this wonderful organization.

Kent Whealy refers to a couple of new documents in his response. These can be found on the Seed Savers web site.
Letter from Diane Ott Whealy
Letter from Advisors

Here is the letter in its entirety. It has been slightly reformatted for easier readability. No content has been altered.

February 4, 2008
To the Listed Members of the Seed Savers Exchange

Dear Friends,
First of all, I want to sincerely thank all of SSE’s members and friends for the amazing avalanche of support (hundreds of e-mails, letters and phone calls) that I’ve received during the last couple of weeks. After what I’ve just been through, all of your messages have been deeply gratifying and heart-warming for me, and I want to thank each and every one of you for your kind words of appreciation and support. Your messages have touched me deeply. Thanks to all of you.

SSE’s Board of Directors will never be able to justify how I was treated, nor are they making any attempt to do so. Instead (in my opinion), there has been a constant stream of two-faced rhetoric and outright lies coming from the board’s public announcements to SSE’s members and also in letters that SSE’s members will never see. Just one example is the board’s recent letter to SSE’s private foundation donors that talks about my “…..desire/plan to take over the organization by somehow installing a new Board of Directors made up of himself and Advisors…..” (I thought I made it clear in my previous letter that, “I do not want to come back as SSE’s Executive Director.”) The board’s letter goes on to say “…..what is happening may be a natural occurrence in the evolution of organizations like SSE…..” (No, what is happening is the result of the board’s misguided actions and incredibly poor judgment.) Another example of an outright lie in a recent board letter is, “Kent was not asked to remain silent about his employment at SSE” while the cover letter from SSE’s lawyer that came with that letter is instructing me that I better not do it again.

SSE’s board is also attempting to rewrite SSE’s history, as is clearly shown by the assertions in Diane Ott Whealy’s recent letter, “As co-founder of the Seed Savers Exchange, I have been involved with the day-to-day operations every day since 1975″ and also “I will never have any regrets about my decision to create and nurture SSE….” My remembrances of that period are quite different. Diane Ott Whealy’s first real involvement was in 1981 (six years after I founded Seed Savers), when the first Campout Convention was held, and when I listed her and my mother as the other two original board members of the nonprofit organization I was incorporating. By that time I had put out six SSE yearbooks, completed the first of three years work compiling the original Garden Seed Inventory, received SSE’s first two grants, took on John Withee’s bean collection (1,186 varieties he collected in the Northeast over 14 years), and gave my very first speech at the “Seed Banks Serving People Conference” in Tucson (in which I first used the term “heirloom vegetable varieties”). Look, I don’t care if Diane wants to call herself “SSE’s co-founder” (she did put up with me funning SSE out of our home for that first decade), but I should rightfully be recognized as SSE’s founder. Diane was a stay-at-home mom (which I deeply valued), but this rewriting of SSE’s history and the accomplishments of my life’s work must stop right now.

During these last two weeks, many of you have asked about Diane Ott Whealy’s involvement, because what has happened is difficult to understand without that piece of the puzzle. For Diane Ott Whealy (in my opinion) these last four years since the divorce have been unceasing attempts to win over family, friends, staff, and now the board. I have refused to play those games at all, but have taken a terrible beating for not playing. During those four years, we have both continued to work in the same office which has been difficult for me and SSE’s staff and board. Amy Goldman, Neil Hamilton and Deborah Madison have all bought into Diane Ott Whealy’s bogus grievances (in my opinion), which should never have been allowed to affect any of the decisions of SSE’s board. Instead, I was severely reprimanded at one board meeting (after Diane vented her grievances privately to board members the night before) without any of the board so much as asking me what was really going on. Just one other example of how the board has been played – shortly before I was fired Amy Goldman pointedly questioned me in an e-mail (to SSE’s entire board) about Diane Ott Whealy’s ridiculous claim that I was “logging in SSE’s orchard” (which Diane already knew wasn’t true). Although Diane Ott Whealy’s actions have contributed greatly to creating this current situation, I don’t think she even realizes the damage she has done to Seed Savers and its future.