Greetings, (Presented September 16, 2009 Friday Harbor; Fall Grain Workshop)

In May of this spring, I discovered that the farm were I was doing research in Eastern Oregon had gone bankrupt. I quickly starting looking for other opportunities to continue 33 years of research and seed growing. I found the ideal position as an Intern with the Lopez Community Land Trust researching the problems and possibilities of renewed grain production for local self-reliance in the San juan Islands. Having lived in Port Townsend just above the Strait of Juan de Fuca during my early Evergreen State College days, I remembered the patch of blue that often just hung out over the southern end of Lopez.

It was during those days at Evergreen in the fall of 1974 that the first Northwest Sustainable Agriculture Conference was held in Ellensburg. Sponsored by the then fledgling Tilth Association, we expected about 150 people to show up. To the amazement of all, 650 came. We had to rent another entire dormitory to house everyone. That meeting of people from all over North America changed lives including mine. I was young and happy to be in the background. In the fall of 1975 I toured much of Eastern Washington talking with farmers and farm groups about organic grain. The tour ended in Enterprise, Oregon where I spent much of the spring in a teepee with three feet of snow outside.

In the spring of 1976 as the snow melted, I got a job in Eugene with Cascadia Magazine. On one of my assignments as a photographer out in Junction City, I met a horse farmer named Lynn Miller. Lynn handed me a copy of the first issue of his 'Small Farmer's Journal, featuring Practical Horse Farming' hot off the press. He apologized for the still drying ink.

What would happen that day would further change my life and involve me in a lifetime of grain research, and sadly, 'politics.' A team of horses pulling an old binder attempted to harvest a field of oats. Whether the weather had been dry, or the oats had been late planted I didn't know, but obviously they were too short for the binder. The short strawed grain was falling all over like pick-up sticks. I would learn quickly what had happened as 'modern' grain replaced 'old-style' grain varieties. Short was better, better to hold up chemically dependent yields of 'high-yield varieties' of grains with semi-dwarf genes.

I quit my city job and headed back to Eastern Washington. My first stop was the Lind Experiment Station. The Lind Station, out in the middle of the Columbia Plateau, is the driest dryland Experiment Station in North America. I spent much of the day with the WSU winter wheat breeder of the time - Ed Donaldson - Steve Jones predecessor. One of my first questions to Ed was, "why isn't WSU doing research on taller varieties of grain for horse farmers." Remember this was 1976 and I was naive. Ed answered simply, "If I were to mention 'horse farming' I would lose my job, and never be able to get another one within the university or USDA system for the rest of my life." I don't remember exactly what I felt at that moment; sadness, anger, or what. I still have those same feelings almost everyday I work with grains. Before I left Lind that day, Ed took me down to the basement where they stored their seed. He gave me samples of many older varieties, none of which contained semi-dwarf genes. I was happy with my visit, saddened by what I had heard, and delighted with the living history that I held in my hands. I would grow those seeds and many more over the next 15 years. I offered many through what may have been the first organic grain seed company - Self-Reliance Seeds from 1978 to 1982.

As a side note, last summer, while in Eastern Oregon, I discovered that the last wheat that Ed Donaldson bred and released in 1995 is a tall winter wheat. I don't know if he was thinking of horse farmers or of our encounter so many years before. I might also note that one of Steve Jones' wheats - the only one not protected by WSU under the Plant Variety Protection Act - is named 'Edwin' - in honor of Edwin Donaldson. (It too contains no semidwarf genes.) Thank you Steve.

I am interested in "Community Seeds;" seeds for local self-reliance; seeds of the people, for the people, and by the people. Seeds adapted to place. And where is this place?

Last month I spent all four days at the San Juan County Fair, hanging around the Ag Tent; talking with farmers and far too many other people. I enjoyed myself, but I guess I talked too much, because when it came time for my Grain Workshops, no one showed up. Perhaps I had already done my job. While there, I found this great postcard, which shows pretty accurately where we are: Right in the middle of the Salish Sea! And not just any middle, THE dry middle! In the rainshadows of both Vancouver Island and the Olympic Mountains; just perfect for growing the seeds of adapted crops needed for regional self-reliance. The edible parts of grains are simply seeds and the market, as you can see, from the circles and city names on the postcard, is large.

A quick aside. I lived in sunny southern Siberia from 1997 to 2004. I helped a dear friend with her 1/8 acre fruit tree nursery from which she sells over 2000 grafted and seedling fruit trees and berry bushes every year. This to the gardeners of Irktusk - The Paris of Siberia - near Lake Baikal. (BTW, Baikal has a surface area almost twice as large as the Salish Sea.) Irktusk has a population of about 650,000 people. Half a million of them garden; they raise about 75% of the cities' annual food supply; in a 20 mile radius; in SIBERIA! The human population of the Salish Sea region is much larger than Irkutsk. Eleven million people. The market is growing. (No pun intended.)

Organic grains are an interesting case in point. Anyone wishing to grow organic winter wheat will have to look far to find certified organic seed. It was hoped that WSU would develop some varieties and produce some foundation seed. I hope we hear a report on how that is going. In the meantime:

I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Climate Classification maps of German climatologist and amateur botanist Wladimir Koppen (1846-1940). These maps continue to be the authoritative map of the world climates in use today. These maps were used by M.Y. Nuttonson for such studies as "Wheat-Climatic Relationships and the Use of Phenology in Ascertaining the Thermal and Photo-thermal Requirements of Wheat" and other fascinating reading in a similar vane. After World War II Mikhail Yurievitch Nuttonson worked for the CIA to determine similar Agroclimatic Areas of the world from which to source seed to reestablish farming in those areas devastated by the war; such as Canadian wheats for Ukraine. (The Canadian wheat Red Fife - "the Mother of Candian Wheat" - originated in Ukraine, so no real surprise there.)

So where might we discover new and ancient grain varieties for the islands? On the Koppen map the Salish Sea region is Csb - Cool dry summer Mediterranean. Where else has this climate? Perhaps where grain has been grown for 6000 years? Northern Portugal, Espana Verde (Northwest Spain), and parts of France. The climate of this region is moderated by the cold water currents out of the north Atlantic, just as much of the Northwest climate is moderated by the cold waters coming from the Gulf of Alaska.

One interesting fact is that one of the last recorded wheat varieties grown on Lopez Island from the late 40's to the mid 70's was a wheat from France named 'Druchamp.' Another interesting fact is that this variety and another one closely related to it named 'Cappelle Desprez' were used extensively in a Rockefeller breeding program in the 60's and 70's in Chile headed by wheat breeder Joseph Rupert. The Koppen climatic area where this research in Chile took place: Csb! The climate there is moderated by the cold ocean current coming from the Antarctica on it's northward flow along the Pacific coast of South American. The purpose of Rubert's work was to develop 'facultative' wheats by crossing spring and winter varieties. 'Falcultative' wheats are basically cold tolerant spring wheats which can be planted in the fall or spring in mild maritime climatic regions, such as the San Juan Islands. As Chile heated up politically in the early 70's, the Rockefeller program there was terminated and the work was transfered first to University of California at Davis and then to Oregon State University in Corvallis.

The value of this work lives on today in a bizarre twist of industrial corporate controlled wheat breeding. In the 1990's in their continuing quest for world seed control, Monsanto was working on hybrid wheat. Using a patented chemical named 'Genesis' (I'm not making this up) - wheat plants could be made male sterile simply by spraying 'Genesis' on them, allowing the neighboring unsprayed plants to pollenate them, much like male-sterile corn lines used in the production of hybrid seed corn. The late 1990's was bad for Monsanto, which was also developing RoundUp Ready wheat. Farmers and consumers rebelled. Monsanto retreated to fight another day. They 'donated' their collection of these HybriTech wheats to Oregon State University. (It appears that OSU had actually been contracted by Monsanto to work on the HybriTech program.) From this 'donated' collection, OSU selected one to release to save the wheat industry in the Willamette Valley - a Monsanto Trojan Wheat named 'Goetze' - with the pedigree: (and this is taken directly from a OSU publication)

"Goetze is a semi-dwarf soft white winter wheat from the 1995 cross OR8303765/E81FR. OR8303765 has the pedigree 6720-11//Ministerio de Agri 38/WRM (Weigue/Red mace). Selection 6710-11 is a sister of CI17576, with the pedigree Cappelle Desprez/Pullman sel. 101//Druchamp. The origin and pedigree of E81FR are unknown. Goetze is a F5-derived line that was identified as a headrow in 2000 by HybriTech Seed International, Inc., a division of the Monsanto Company. Goetze was among the HybriTech germplasm donated by Monsanto to Oregon State University in 2000. ... Goetze is an open release protected under U.S. Plant Variety Protection without the Title 5 option. ..."

PVP rant... The Plant Variety Protection Act was passed by Congress in 1970 to allow the patent-like protection of Intellectual Property Rights for self-pollinating crops. Previous Patent Laws pertained only to vegetatively propagation plant varieties. Basically a PVP Certificate give the holder 20 years of exclusive say over what happens with their Intellectual Property Rights. The original 1970 Act, for the first time in law (albeit relating to this law) gave farmer's the "right" to save their own seeds. It also gave them the right to sell, trade, or share  seed which they had grown with neighboring farmers, just as farmers had done for thousands of years. In 1994 with lobbying from the new world seed industry, this later right was rescinded. For the first time in history it was now a federal offense for one farmer to even gift seed to another. Again this only applied to varieties protected under the PVP Act. Today more than 90% of corn, soy, wheat, and barley are either patented under utility patents - those containing "transgenes" - or protected under the PVP Act. Note that by legally purchasing or illegally accepting as a gift a PVP variety you have entered in to a binding contract which allows the Certificate holder (or their assigned representative) to come on to your land 24 hours a day, to investigate, to requested record, and to do whatever is necessary to protect their Intellectual Property rights. If you rob a bank, the police need a search warrant to come onto your property to investigate, not so with PVP violations! Buyer Beware!

Read from some more or less randomly selected PVP Applications.

Now, I really don't want to waste time even thinking about Monsanto - or perhaps OSU or WSU. I believe that grain on the islands and the seed from which it is grown - also island grown - needs to be 'open-source' - with a known pedigree or landraces - perhaps from France, Spain, and Portugal. The seeds of many of these remaining varieties are available only through the government seedbanks; in quantities of 5 grams - about 100 seeds - or less. It will take 4 to 5 years to increase seed - while making observations and perhaps selections - before we will have enough seed to market, mill, or even taste OUR adapted grain. Many of these will have stories or stories to be discovered.

In the meantime, we need to fill this 4 or 5 year 'research gap.'  I have identified several varieties of newer and slightly older winter wheats which have not been mutated, genetically engineered, do not have secret pedigrees, and are PVP-free - meaning no laws or lawyers to deal with. These have good Stripe Rust resistance, and most are taller than the typical semi-dwarfs. Meaning that they are also deeper rooted and have a better chance of surviving our wonderful dry island summers as they grow to maturity, like us, basking in the sunlight. Being taller, they can be harvested using old binders or slightly newer combines, with plenty of straw to be used for other purposes - such as animal bedding, mushroom production, building houses, or just good old soil improvement. These varieties are primarily meant as an immediate stop gap measure to grow grain, while learning what must be learned in the quest for increased self-reliance and island grown grain.

One last comment and a question: Many people seem to be into Red Fife wheat - the (Canadian-Ukrainian) Mother of many North American spring wheats. Sharon Rempel made it famous again, and a few Prairie and Vancouver Island farmers are growing fields of it, against Canadian law! But Red Fife is a spring wheat and is susceptible to Stripe Rust. Trying to grow it over the winter will only make matters worse. It just so happens that Druchamp and Cappelle Desprez have a common mother - and therefore a Ukrainian spring wheat in both their pedigrees - perhaps a sister to Red Fife. What if Red Fife were crossed onto that common ancestor wheat - and it is tall and resistant to Stripe Rust? This was done in France in 1938.

Thank You.

O.J. Lougheed