Seeking the Northern Heritage

- documentary on Apple project on Finland

There has been going on an exiting and interesting project to develop again the northern gardening on the basis of the locally existing genetic diversity. We have been taking part on this project as gardeners
and documentarist now for seven years. We are interested to change experiences with other similar initiatives in different countries and we are also dreaming about starting to make global document of this kind of activities in different countries.

Here is a presentation of the project in the Sustainable World Conference in London 15th July 2005.



Organic plant breeding as a basis for sustainable food chain
-experiences from Northern Heritage project/ Hannu Hyvönen

First some common comments on the global strategy for sustainable future. We have been developing this oil based culture now about hundred and fifty years and during next decades we shall meet the cultural
revolution, moving to post oil era. There is not to be seen a serious preparation for this enormous big change.This radical change seems to come like a cultural tsunami, which collapses the oil based production and consumption structures of western, industrial sivization, (Look more: http://elonmerkki.net/kyoto.html ) At the same time it is quite probable that this ongoing war on oil resourses shall continue and deepen in future. This war is a thread for oil production and consumption but also it can threaten by many ways todays globalized food supply. The climate change is the other change which causes threads for food security by changing the farming conditions allover the world. How can human sivilisation survive through these threads and changes? The basic prinsible for surviving are the diversity and localising. Sentralized monocultures cannot survive, we need localized diversity in farming but also in all kind of economics and specially in energy production.


In this presentation I focus on the genetic diversity and our ways to
control, use and develope that heritage as a base for sustainable food
chain. The diversity of species is the capital by which ecosystems can
adabt on chancings and the genetic diversity of every one species is the
capital by which it can adabt and survive in changing environment. This
prinsible is true also in agroecosystems. We need all possible species
which we can use in our agriculture and with them we need to develope
diversity on fields instead of monocultures. The multi species diverse
agroecosystems are more sustainable against pests and diseases but they
also increase the food security. If there are many crops species on the
farm there is more propability that some of them give some production
also in diffycult years.

But we need also to stop the genetic erosion of crop species which has
collapsed the amount of varietys among crops. The sustainable food chain
is build on the ground of genetic diversity which is serving the local
needs. This was the situation before second world war and towards this
we have to go again. We need localized control on producing the genetics
which farming needs, plant breeding is to take from corporations and
institutions to the hands of farmers and consumers networking.

We need localized control on produsing seeds and other propagation
material. On the ground of these steps can be build the rest of
sustainable food chain.

In Finland we have started thiskind of prosess with fruit trees and
berryes , a local initiative to develope plant breeding and propagation
for the needs of northern Finland and organic farming.

Before 1950´s there were many hundreds of local apple tree variety which
were propagated by traditional cloning method, crafting. But when coming
to 1990´s the amount had collapsed to about 15 varietys. In the end of
1990´s we started a project in Northern part of Finland to seek these
old varietys among old, still existing apple trees. Besides these old
cloned varietys we found enormous amount of individual and unique seed
trees with good qualities. By selecting among them the best one we have
now produced for local use tens of new local varietys and we are sure
that the limit of commercial apple growing in Finland can be lifted many
hundred kilometres norht by them.

Look more on the video presentation made for Sustainable world conference:

http://elonmerkki.net/omena/APPLE_PROJECT.mov