With nothing better to do, a thought occurred to me - How many miles would seeds travel in a seed swap if the original person got them back at the end of the swap ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ???
The Spanish pass the parcel will have travelled quite a few miles, which is rather bizarre when you think about it.
Here we are trying to be as pure, organic or whatever and growing our own to reduce food miles, while sending our seeds by plane. Or having our seeds sent from the US or Canada.
Does that mean we can only swap nationaly, preferably localy? :(
Even if I don't feel terribly guilty for the extra food miles? :-[
Is this very bad?
There are lots of things I don't feel guiilty about. Eating a bar of swiss choc at one go, no guilt at all. Also none with seed swapping. The seeds, winging their way in the post from one person to another, actually gives me a warm feeling, like when I eat my asparagus and think about its journey across italy, handcarried in a black plastic bag, me looking like a bag lady, to end up on an allotment in Winchester.
What I do object to is the carting of foodstuff round the country to be washed/sorted/packed for no valid purpose except to look sellable.
I bought some cherry toms on the vine reduced to 20p last night. When I got home , I noticed they had come from ISRAEL!!
With refference to the seed swap issue, just imagine how many toms are going to be grown from one pack of seeds, as well as all the other stuff. It is a lot 'greener' to transport seed than produce.
I also think posting seed is a lot more ecologically sound than using huge blowers to ripen the pumpkin crops , as they were the wrong colour due to the bad summer!!!!!
cj :)
some things are just counter-intuitive. Apparently if we eat New Zealand lamb rather than British lamb, the enviromental impact is 4 times less, even with all the airmiles. And the same must go for tomatoes etc