Almost 15'000 varieties of vegetables are listed on the european catalog. How many do you have access to?
Agricultural biodiversity matters!
The majority of consumer give more importance to the look, taste, texture and colors of the vegetables than the provenance and the variety of the product.
To feed itself, Switzerland is greatly dependent on other countries. The great majority of seedlings are imported (72%). The law make it possible to commercialize vegetables only after having them registred and recognized by the authorities, through a patent obtention. This lead to a particularly embarrassing phenomenon. Agrochemical companies owns many varieties of vegetables, patenting of the seeds is thus a major issue.
For instance, in Europe, among the 231 varieties of protected tomatoes, 84 (36%) belong to Monsanto and 61 (26%) belong to Syngenta. That mean both of these companies are controlling more than the half of the varieties that are present on the european tomato market! That is unfortunately the case for many other type of vegetables. Some people are already fighting against the patenting of plants, animals and genetic material (link below).
Owning varieties and seeds gives a great power to these companies. This allow them to dicate market prices, lead to an impoverishing of the agrobiodiversity and market concentration.
Saving vegetables variety is very important to permit us to keep our independence in two major ways: once again in relation to prices and to have enough genetic diversity to maintain a reasonable level of food security
