Monsanto-Free Seed Companies

Note: This list is updated on a continual basis, portions of this article may be reposted but the list shall remain here for proper stewardship in order to maintain accuracy.

First, to explain: there are thousands of other seed companies out there that have also signed the Safe Seed Pledge and/or might even be organic.  However, Monsanto purchased  Semenis which was (and is) the world’s largest seed company and now they own thousands of conventional seed companies in addition to their GMO seed business.  Monsanto now owns 40% of the conventional seed market in the US and 20% of the worldwide market, including organics and heirlooms.  It’s not terribly easy to avoid them, which is why we’ve compiled this list with the help of readers and some experts from the field, both to help you navigate through things as well as encouragement for companies to take part in the boycott so that they may also qualify to have their names included.

Here they are, and please let us know of any companies we may have missed and we will add them to this list.  Names are in alphabetical order, try to search for a company in your bioregion when possible.  Also, it never hurts to ask any company if they sell any Seminis seeds or seeds from Seminis’ partners. (Sites with asterisks* have the additional approval and endorsement by Farmwars.info and verification by recognized leaders in the battle)

US:
*Adaptive Seeds
All Good Things Organic (SW)
*Amishland Seeds
Annie’s Heirloom Seeds
*The Ark Institute
Backyard Beans and Grains Project
*Baker Creek Seed Co. (MW)
Beauty Beyond Belief (BBB Seeds)
*Botanical Interests
Bountiful Gardens
Crispy Farms
Diane’s Flower Seeds (she has veggies now, too)
*Family Farmer’s Seed Co-op
Farm Direct Seed (Hobb’s Family Farm)
*Fedco Seed Co.
Garden City Seeds
Gourmet Seed
*Grow Organic
Heirlooms Evermore Seeds
*Heirloom Seeds
Heirloom Solutions
High Mowing Seeds
*Horizon Herbs
Hudson Valley Seed Library
Humbleseeds
Growing Crazy Acres
Ed Hume Seeds
Irish-Eyes
J.L Hudson 
Kitchen Garden Seeds
Knapp’s Fresh Vegies
 Kusa Seed Society
Lake Valley Seeds
*Landreth Seeds
Larner Seeds
*The Living Seed Company
*Livingston Seeds
Local Harvest
Moonlight Micro Farm
Mountain Rose Herbs
*My Patriot Supply
Native Seeds  for the Arid Southwest
Natural Gardening Company
New Hope Seed Company
Nichol’s Garden Nursery
*Organica Seed
Organic Sanctuary (SE)
Peace Seeds
Peaceful Valley Farm Supply
Prairie Road Garden
Renee’s Garden
Restoration Seeds
Sand Hill Preservation Center
Sage Thymes
*Seed for Security
Seeds Trust
*Select Seeds
Siskiyou Seeds (NW)
*Southern Exposure
*Sow True (SE)
*Sustainable Seed Co
Tiny Seeds
Tomato Fest
Trees of Antiquity
Turtle Tree Seed
*Underwood Garden Seeds
*Uprising Seeds
*Victory Seeds
Vermont Wildflower Farm
White Harvest Seed
*Wild Garden Seeds
Wildseed Farms
*Wood Prairie Farm (NE)

Canadian Seed Companies:
Annapolis Valley Heritage Seed Company
Brother Nature
Cubit’s Organics
Full Circle Seeds
Greta’s Organic Garden
Heritage Harvest Seeds (ships to Canada only)
Hope Seeds
Incredible Seeds
Richters Herbs
Salt Spring Seeds
Seeds of Victoria
Solana Seeds
Stellar Seeds
Terra Edibles
The Cottage Gardener

Europe:
Garden Organic (UK)
Seed Site (Italy)
The Real Seed Catalogue (UK)

Another tool you can use to check up on a seed supplier is supplied by Monsanto’s Seminis themself: http://www.seminis.com/global/us/products/Pages/Where-to-Buy.aspx#

Monsanto and Seminis heirloom seed varieties to watch out for:

First of all, Monsanto or anyone else can’t actually OWN these varieties of seed, but as developers of some of these varieties and as suppliers of them under many different companies it can be hard to tell who owns what.  It does not stand to reason that any crop of these varieties growing today or anytime in the future will be genetically modified in any way.  Some of these varieties can be found without any continuing connection to Monsanto or Seminis but it is important to be a little more cautious with these.

If you are the type of gardener who purchases vegetable seeds or seedlings, including tomato plants from a local garden center, be mindful the varieties you choose. Conversely, you might be placing money into the hands of Monsanto Corporation. Below is the list of Seminis/Monsanto home-garden vegetable variations.  It’s usually best to buy directly from seed farmers and companies that you can trust, but here’s the list just in case.

Beans: Aliconte, Brio, Bronco, Cadillac, Ebro, Etna, Eureka, Festina, Gina, Goldmine, Goldenchild, Labrador, Lynx, Magnum, Matador, Spartacus, Storm, Strike, Stringless Blue Lake 7, Tapia, Tema

Broccoli: Coronado Crown, Major, Packman

Cabbage: Atlantis, Golden Acre, Headstart, Platinum Dynasty, Red Dynasty

Carrot: Bilbo, Envy, Forto, Juliana, Karina, Koroda PS, Royal Chantenay, Sweetness III

Cauliflower: Cheddar, Minuteman

Cucumber: Babylon, Cool Breeze Imp., Dasher II, Emporator, Eureka, Fanfare HG, Marketmore 76, Mathilde, Moctezuma, Orient Express II, Peal, Poinsett 76, Salad Bush, Sweet Slice, Sweet Success PS, Talladega

Eggplant: Black Beauty, Fairytale, Gretel, Hansel, Lavender Touch, Twinkle, White Lightening

Hot Pepper: Anaheim TMR 23, Ancho Saint Martin, Big Bomb, Big Chile brand of Sahuaro, Caribbean Red, Cayenne Large Red Thick, Chichen Itza, Chichimeca, Corcel, Garden Salsa SG, Habanero, Holy Mole brand of Salvatierro, Hungarian Yellow Wax Hot, Ixtapa X3R, Lapid, Mariachi brand of Rio de Oro, Mesilla, Milta, Mucho Nacho brand of Grande, Nainari, Serrano del Sol brand of Tuxtlas, Super Chile, Tam Vera Cruz

Lettuce: Braveheart, Conquistador

Melon: Early Dew, Sante Fe, Saturno

Onion: Candy, Cannonball, Century, Red Zeppelin, Savannah Sweet, Sierra Blanca, Sterling, Vision

Pumpkin: Applachian, Harvest Moon, Jamboree HG, Orange Smoothie, Phantom, Prize Winner, Rumbo, Snackface, Spirit, Spooktacular, Trickster

Spinach: Hellcat

Squash: Ambassador, Canesi, Clarita, Commander, Dixie, Early Butternut, Gold Rush, Grey Zucchini, Greyzini, Lolita, Papaya Pear, Peter Pan, Portofino, President, Richgreen Hybrid Zucchini, Storr’s Green, Sungreen, Sunny Delight, Taybelle PM

Sweet Corn: Devotion, Fantasia, Merit, Obession, Passion, Temptation

Sweet Pepper: Baron, Bell Boy, Big Bertha PS, Biscayne, Blushing Beauty, Bounty, California Wonder 300, Camelot, Capistrano, Cherry Pick, Chocolate Beauty, Corno Verde, Cubanelle W, Dumpling brand of Pritavit, Early Sunsation, Flexum, Fooled You brand of Dulce, Giant Marconi, Gypsy, Jumper, Key West, King Arthur, North Star, Orange Blaze, Pimiento Elite, Red Knight, Satsuma, Socrates, Super Heavyweight, Sweet Spot

Tomato: Amsterdam, Beefmaster, Betterboy, Big Beef, Burpee’s Big Boy, Caramba, Celebrity, Cupid, Early Girl, Granny Smith, Health Kick, Husky Cherry Red, Jetsetter brand of Jack, Lemon Boy, Margharita, Margo, Marmande VF PS, Marmara, Patio, Phoenix, Poseidon 43, Roma VF, Royesta, Sun Sugar, Super Marzano, Sweet Baby Girl, Tiffany, Tye-Dye, Viva Italia, Yaqui

Watermelon: Apollo, Charleston Grey, Crimson Glory, Crimson Sweet, Eureka, Jade Star, Mickylee, Olympia

Note: Not all of the veggie varieties in the above list are Monsanto/Seminis exclusives. Consequently if you spot some of these varieties in the catalog of an heirloom seed-seller,  just check with the seller to make sure the seeds were not purchased from  Seminis/Monsanto. But if you find these seeds on a rack at a big-box garden center, you have every right to suspect they were purchased from the evil empire.

Related article:

Seed Starting Made Simple

'Appalling irresponsibility': Senior scientists attack Chinese researchers for creating new strains of influenza virus in veterinary laboratory

Senior scientists have criticised the “appalling irresponsibility” of researchers in China who have deliberately created new strains of influenza virus in a veterinary laboratory.

They warned there is a danger that the new viral strains created by mixing bird-flu virus with human influenza could escape from the laboratory to cause a global pandemic killing millions of people.

Lord May of Oxford, a former government chief scientist and past president of the Royal Society, denounced the study published today in the journal Science as doing nothing to further the understanding and prevention of flu pandemics.

“They claim they are doing this to help develop vaccines and such like. In fact the real reason is that they are driven by blind ambition with no common sense whatsoever,” Lord May told The Independent.

“The record of containment in labs like this is not reassuring. They are taking it upon themselves to create human-to-human transmission of very dangerous viruses. It’s appallingly irresponsible,” he said.

The controversial study into viral mixing was carried out by a team led by Professor Hualan Chen, director of China’s National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory at Harbin Veterinary Research Institute.

Professor Chen and her colleagues deliberately mixed the H5N1 bird-flu virus, which is highly lethal but not easily transmitted between people, with a 2009 strain of H1N1 flu virus, which is very infectious to humans.

When flu viruses come together by infecting the same cell they can swap genetic material and produce “hybrids” through the re-assortment of genes. The researchers were trying to emulate what happens in nature when animals such as pigs are co-infected with two different strains of virus, Professor Chen said.

“The studies demonstrated that H5N1 viruses have the potential to acquire mammalian transmissibility by re-assortment with the human influenza viruses,” Professor Chen said in an email.

“This tells us that high attention should be paid to monitor the emergence of such mammalian-transmissible virus in nature to prevent a possible pandemic caused by H5N1 virus,” she said.

“It is difficult to say how easy this will happen, but since the H5N1 and 2009/H1N1 viruses are widely existing in nature, they may have a chance to re-assort,” she added.

The study, which was carried out in a laboratory with the second highest security level to prevent accidental escape, resulted in 127 different viral hybrids between H5N1 and H1N1, five of which were able to pass by airborne transmission between laboratory guinea pigs.

Professor Simon Wain-Hobson, an eminent virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, said it is very likely that some or all of these hybrids could pass easily between humans and possess some or all of the highly lethal characteristics of H5N1 bird-flu.

“Nobody can extrapolate to humans except to conclude that the five viruses would probably transmit reasonable well between humans,” Professor Wain-Hobson said.

“We don’t know the pathogenicity [lethality] in man and hopefully we will never know. But if the case fatality rate was between 0.1 and 20 per cent, and a pandemic affected 500 million people, you could estimate anything between 500,000 and 100 million deaths,” he said.

“It’s a fabulous piece of virology by the Chinese group and it’s very impressive, but they haven’t been thinking clearly about what they are doing. It’s very worrying,” Professor Wain-Hobson said.

“The virological basis of this work is not strong. It is of no use for vaccine development and the benefit in terms of surveillance for new flu viruses is oversold,” he added.

An increasing number of scientists outside the influenza field have expressed concern over attempts to deliberately increase the human transmissibility of the H5N1 bird-flu virus. This is done by mutating the virus so that it can pass by airborne droplets between laboratory ferrets, the standard “animal model” of human influenza.

Two previous studies, by Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, caused uproar in 2011 when it emerged that they had created airborne versions of H5N1 that could be passed between ferrets.

The criticism led to researchers to impose a voluntary moratorium on their H5N1 research, banning transmission studies using ferrets. However they decided to lift the ban earlier this year, arguing that they have now consulted widely with health organisations and the public over safety concerns.

However, other scientists have criticised the decision to lift the moratorium.

Source: The Independent

No digital communications is secure

Former FBI agent on their ability to access well everything

Exploit can turn Google Glass into secret surveillance device, even Michael Chertoff isn’t a fan

A hacker has proven that Google Glass can be turned into a secret surveillance device by anyone with physical access to the device, according to a report. Oddly enough, even former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff has come out against the technology.

It’s quite odd to see the likes of Michael Chertoff – the man who made tons of money off of the TSA’s naked body scanners – coming out against the technology as he did in a recent opinion piece, especially based on privacy concerns.

The already quite noteworthy privacy concerns surrounding Google Glass were increased exponentially today with an Ars Technica report stating, “A smartphone hacker has provided conclusive proof that the futuristic computing headset known as Google Glass can be surreptitiously modified to give anyone with physical access almost complete control over the device.”

Given than five minutes with a device, security consultant Jay “saurik” Freeman said that he can “pick up your Glass, turn on debug mode, and get root access on it in a way that doesn’t leave a trace.”

“Then I can modify any of the software on your device,” Freeman told Ars Technica in a telephone interview. “I can make it so that for the rest of your Glass’ lifetime I’m in there, too, able to get access to your camera, listen in on your microphone. I can turn off debug mode and make it look like there’s nothing changed from your perspective. And when you get it back, you’re screwed.”

“A bugged Glass doesn’t just watch your every move: it watches everything you are looking at (intentionally or furtively) and hears everything you do. The only thing it doesn’t know are your thoughts,” Freeman wrote in a blog post.

If a hacker obtained that type of access, Freeman described some of the obviously major problems that would arise.

Since Glass sees everything you do, it would see you entering passwords, PIN codes, building access codes and even pictures of keys detailed enough to allow copies to be made.

“Nothing is safe once your Glass has been hacked,” Freeman said.

“We recognize the importance of building device-specific protections, and we’re experimenting with solutions as we work to make Glass more broadly available,” Google said in a statement. “It’s also important to understand that Glass doesn’t access many parts of a Google Account, including settings or many products. And your personal MyGlass site allows you to change the content that you see on Glass or, if you misplace it, wipe all the data off your device.”

This obviously falls far short of what one might consider reassuring.

It’s amazing to see important questions like, “So, who owns and what happens to the user’s data? Can the entire database be mined and analyzed for commercial purposes?” being raised by the likes of Chertoff and obviously one must treat it with a healthy degree of skepticism, but they are vital questions nonetheless.

“What rules will apply when law enforcement seeks access to the data for a criminal or national security investigation? For how long will the data be retained?” Chertoff asks.

Service providers like Google could argue that the terms of service customers agree to will limit how their data is collected, used and stored, Chertoff points out, but that doesn’t cover “data that is collected about passersbys whom they record, intentionally or not.”

“Even those who might be willing to forgo some degree of privacy to enhance national security should be concerned about a corporate America that will have an unrestricted continuous video record of millions,” Chertoff writes.

Again, reading this coming from Chertoff is so unbelievable it almost seems like an April Fool’s joke that was published a month late.

One might argue that while there are many important points raised by Chertoff, he also draws a conclusion that doesn’t quite follow.

“The new data collection platforms right in front of us are much more likely to affect our lives than is the prospect of drones overhead surveilling American citizens,” Chertoff concludes.

This may or may not be true and certainly can’t be concluded with any degree of certainty, let alone the level of certainty that is communicated in saying “much more likely.”

Therefore, Chertoff’s criticisms very well may be self serving. Indeed, knowing Chertoff, it’s hard to imagine that he would do anything that wasn’t going to directly benefit him in one way or another.

It’s certainly true that Chertoff is not a privacy champion or someone who would consider “what rights consumers have, and what rights nonparticipant third parties should have” simply because he cares.

Regardless, the issues raised by Chertoff must be noted and given the most recent example of how technology like Google Glass can be easily exploited, implementing privacy measures are going to be vitally important.

The Secret of the Seven Sisters

A four-part series that reveals how a secret pact formed a cartel that controls the world's oil. (Editor's NOTE: This is a very interesting documentary showing the history of the world from the perspective of oil or black gold , if you will)

Study Suggests Yoga Boosts The Immune System On A Genetic Level

The results support yoga as a powerful therapy, but more broadly, reinforce the fact that our very genes are affected by our activities and moods. Pacific Standard writes:

Newly published research from Norway suggests that a yoga program rapidly produces internal changes on a genetic level. The results help explain the well-documented health benefits of this ancient practice.

“These data suggest that previously reported effects of yoga practices have an integral physiological component at the molecular level, which is initiated immediately,” writes a research team led by Fahri Saatcioglu of the University of Oslo.

The experiment featured 10 participants who attended a yoga retreat in Germany. For two days, participants spent two hours practicing a comprehensive yoga program and meditation. For the next two days, they spent that same time period going on a nature walk and then listening to jazz or classical music.

Immediately before and after each of the four sessions, the researchers drew blood from each participant. They then isolated and analyzed peripheral blood mononuclear cells, which play a key role in the body’s immune system. The researchers found that the nature walk and music-driven relaxation changed the expression of 38 genes in these circulating immune cells. In comparison, the yoga produced changes in 111.

The researchers note that yoga’s impact was far more widespread, which indicates the practice “may have additional effects over exercise plus simple relaxation in inducing health benefits through differential changes at the molecular level.”

Source: Disinfo

Facebook Rejects Ad Highlighting Zuckerberg Group’s Support For Keystone XL

When a subsidiary of Mark Zuckerberg’s new political group started airing ads for expanded oil drilling and the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, CREDO Action decided to post an ad of their own calling Zuckerberg out — on Facebook.

This morning, Facebook rejected CREDO’s Facebook ad (pictured right). According to CREDO Action, Facebook initially informed them they rejected the ad because it used Facebook trademarks — specifically, Zuckerberg’s image. Though the image used was fully licensed for creative commons use, a Facebook representative told ThinkProgress that any images of Zuckerberg are off-limits, as he is part of the Facebook brand. The rules governing Facebook brand usage specify “trademarks, names, domain names, logos” but does not explicitly restrict images of Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg’s group, FWD.US, is ostensibly focused on passing comprehensive immigration reform, with long-term goals of expanding scientific research and reforming education. However, the group soon started funding ads promoting oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and constructing the Keystone XL pipeline. In the past, Zuckerberg has called for reducing fossil fuel usage in favor of more clean energy sources. FWD.US defended the ads as a way to shore up vulnerable Republican lawmakers who support immigration reform.

CREDO recently protested outside Zuckerberg’s recent fundraiser with Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), and decided to launch a Facebook advertising campaign “to make the connection about how political Mark Zuckerberg has become,” as CREDO told Politico. They’re not the only group taking to Facebook to challenge Zuckerberg’s political causes; the Sierra Club also asked members to share a graphic saying, “Zuckerberg promoting dirty fuels? DISLIKE.”

Source: Think Progress