Bonterra (@Bonterra)

Zephyr Zoidis (from Facebook) The mainstream media would never report on this, because it would threaten Big Ag in America. Italian farmers are building a seed network to fight GMOs and corporate control. This is how small farmers across Italy are banding together to help save seeds: The project has the name “Casa Diffusa dei Semi,” the Distributed Seed House. Here’s the concept: A network of growers who save, reproduce, and share seeds completely free of patents and genetic modification, an alternative to a corporate system controlled by just four companies that hold over half the world’s seed supply. On August 7th, this five-year-old network gathered at a farmhouse in the Marche hills to teach people how to save, trade, and pass down seeds no company can patent. The event sold out in a single week, after one Facebook post drew over 1,600 sign-ons in just days. The timing is key here, given two months earlier, the European Parliament voted to deregulate a new category of genetically modified crops, eliminating mandatory risk assessment, traceability, and labeling, while opening the door to patents on conventionally bred plants too. Twenty Italian organizations publicly condemned the vote, warning it would only tighten corporate control over the world’s seed supply. So instead of waiting on lawmakers, these farmers built their own seed system. Let’s take this as inspiration in America, and support the farmers protecting seed freedom. You can find them on Localize. https://www.facebook.com/reel/1537712124821962