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| For some time now I've been wondering whether it would be possible to start a 'national' seed bank, along the lines of Canada's Seeds of Diversity and Plant and Seed Sanctuary, or the Henry Doubleday Heritage Seed library in the UK. The US has the Seed Savers Exchange, a huge operation, but then it's the US. Both Canada and the US have national, government funded seed banks.
Australia has no real equivalent. A few government areas fund seed banks for important commercial crops (wheat etc) but nothing on the scale of either Canada or the US. There was the Heritage Seed Curators group, sadly now defunct, and of course there's the Seed Savers Network at Byron Bay. The SSN isn't really a seed bank, more of a seed distributor and even that activity looks like being wound back as they remodel themselves. Setting up a seed bank is a huge task and probably very costly. If it got enough momentum I'm sure the government could be embarrased into at least partially funding it. I think, though, that given my health predicament, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to embark on such a consuming venture. Then I had an idea, an almost novel experience these days. Why not an internet based 'register' of varieties - a kind of who grows what where, kept anonymous of course, and who is able and/or willing to distribute a few seeds. I envisage something like a distributed seed bank and exchange mechanism. Not sure how this would hang together yet but I think it's in the realm of possibilty. A distributed seed bank already exists in a sense. The various seed savers groups around the country and individual gardeners that grow and maintain varieties of this and that. There isn't, however, a central, accessible, searchable register. I repeat that it would have to remain anonymous, rather like we can here at GWeb by submitting our email addresses but hiding them from view. GWeb sends on the email and then it's up to the individuals involved. We have the GWeb exchange of course, but that's not really searchable. You can't for instance look at every tomato seed offer, not easily at any rate and certainly not all on one page. I don't know. Am I mad? It saddens me to think that lots and lots of great old varieties of yummy food is slowly getting lost. Comments anyone? |
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by danielkemp Brisbane AUST (My Page) on Mon, Nov 21, 05 at 21:43
| Sounds like a GREAT idea Ray! In my early days of growing special tomatoes I would be most grateful. With guidance I would be happy to share what I have also. Daniel |
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| Brilliant idea. |
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| You are absolutely, totally mad, Ray! :) But it's a marvellous idea! A database of available seeds, searchable on the internet, seeds held by individuals who are ready and willing to distribute their seeds. |
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| We have Seed Savers. A network of folk who grow and save the open pollinated varieties. http://www.seedsavers.net/ |
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| so how do we organize something like that? I would be interested in helping out any way I could. |
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| Seed Savers are great, but they'd be even greater if they had a searchable database on the internet. :) |
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| Some of you mentioned Seed Savers. I've been a member for a while and know the Fantons who set it up and still run it. In my original post I mentioned their intention of pulling back from distribution and becoming simply a local Byron Bay group, hence my post. Jude and Michel have been at it most of their working lives and want to pull back and relax. They want a well deserved break. There's no-one to take over the mantle so they will probably just slowly wind it down. What I'm suggesting is a focussing on just one part of their activities and developing it with the aid of the internet. I wanted to get some feedback on the idea, hazy as it is at the moment. When my thoughts are clearer, or perhaps that should be if, I'll run the idea past them as well. |
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| not mad crazy?? ;-) first up I'd approach the overseas groups for advice on software for the database. they may be able to donate a copy?? and then you need a friendly ISP (or government department/employee) or even the bill gates foundation to provide the physical hard drives for storing the stuff and the server for running the monster and then approach google and yahoo for help in spreading the word - free of course because you are doing the country a service and google may help with that and then contact aquis for cross referencing with their data base - they may loosen their tallons if they know that what they are trying to block from coming into the country is already in the country and then there's the premiers departments from each of the states - they have discressionary spending powers and may be able to cough up a couple of bucks to help with maintaining the monster (sorry data base) and then there's the grey hairs - so time to plant your own henna plants ;-) |
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| raymondo - as you live in armidale you might be able to get the uni to take over maintenance of the software/database/hardware etc?? worth a thought |
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| Well, mostly positive responses. That's reassuring. Though half a dozen respondents is a pretty small sample. I'll talk to the Fantons as a first step. They have pretty much lived this stuff for nearly 20 years. |
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- Posted by Cosmicgardener N W TAS (My Page) on Tue, Nov 22, 05 at 16:59
| Here are my thoughts Ray. I think in principle what you propose is an excellent and workable proposition. Being Devil's Advocate for a while: Running a website takes a fair bit of time so you would need to have someone dedicated to adding the data and uploading it as well as implementing the design, promotion and maintenance. Getting it set up is hard work. Getting people to find the site is becoming harder because there is so much stuff out there, so some marketing skills comes in handy. Getting links on the millions of other dedicated sites is one of the best ways - I get about 500 visits a day to my site and 40% are from links, the others are from search engines, but then I sit fairly high in the Google ranks because I pay for advertising with them. These are all considerations. The other trick would be to get Peter Cundall or someone similar to do a feature and lend his profile to the project once its up and running. The logistics of setting up the site ( searachable database software would not be hard to find in fact I'm researching possibilities for my own plants and planets database) I have some items on my website that 16 year old college students helped me to install as part of their projects ( their teacher lives next door! )and the students are very useful to have around because they haven't got the materialistic bent that Uni students have who want to be fed like gremlins. Costs: The first thing would be to get an ISP that is willing to give the webspace - the usual 'home page' type of free space that comes with a lot of servers wouldn't be enough I suspect. This may be difficult because you would first need to register an appropiate name ( probably a .net or .org ) and someone would have to be the registrant. I'm not sure if a .net allows for a 'group' to register. I suspect .org has to have a committee style set up or even be an incorporated body. Mine is a .com and I had to be a registered company to get a .com which is picked up better than the .com.au by search engines. Solution to that might be to get some funding from an appropriate body. I have clients who are into that and can make some enquiries if you like. To get funding though would need to have a proposition outlined so as to maximise on the fund that are available through government nad quasi government bodies. But then there is level at which they would want control. I mentioned clients whom obviously I can't name ( astrological consults are billed as environmental consults but that's cool, they pay well). I could contact one or two and see if they might be willing to support the project. ISPs are constantly being taken over so you need to go with one that has a stable platform. For example, I started my site in 1996 with Webnet, which was taken over by Southcom which was taken over by Keypoint which was taken over by Eftel. Somewhere along the line, the helpful people got lost in a sea of technical push button talking heads. So you'd need to go with an ISP that is big enough to not get lost but generous enought to give free space. Someone will need to have it connected through their phone connections, preferably with Broadband as upload time, particularly in the early stages can be expensive on dialup. Getting participants to register their contacts is the least of your worries. Making sure they are willing and accessible in the longer term will be a maintenance problem. For example you might have seeds of the "greatest tomato" which you are willing to share but unless you can supply viable seeds over at least a three year projected period, and have enough to expect to be inundated with enquiries, then you will cause trouble for the webmaster who has to take your entry down or add to it. That person would have to put in time keeping things updated. Having said all that, if I can help I will. Now I'm off for a days's hedonism. |
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| Brilliant Idea Ray, I have been though a lot of what Linda says. My local sporting association's email list is still on a server that still exists and works, but we can no longer access it as it was a freebee from a lovely techy that used to work for the company. Recently, because of the upkeep problems a friend of mine completely rewrote the site to enable it to be upkept by registered users. This basically diseminates the workload to the users of the system and it has enough security to enable you to change your own stuff but not others people stuff. While GWeb has done this to some extent with their email exchange. The addition of a searchable database would be a great adjunct and probably something they would support. Such a database could easily be written or borrowed. Alternatively, you could use existing databases and infrastructure and incorporate the Oz data into them. The site does not have to be local. Regards PS. Hope the yam daisies germinate |
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| Thanks for all the input. It's given me much to think over. Ray |
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