Here’s a concept I thought might be fun and keep everybody full on seeds. The idea is we create a seed exchange like a P2P network. In the spirit of overgrow! The establishment of this concept would create a network, whereby every participant has nearly free access to a wide pool of genetics from other participants. Free seeds when you want them, and if you do, cross them with something new and then share-alike by sending out your cross when asked.
Here’s the procedure and rules:
Request seeds.
Receive seeds.
Cross with new strain.
Distribute to new requestors.
Rules:
- Each person who receives seeds breeds them with something, breeder’s choice.
- Each person who receives seeds must agree to send their new cross to 2-4 other people. They own and keep the rest. Seeds should not be distributed to more than 4 people for use in the program. The intention is to create a deep family tree, and attempt to keep it from getting too wide.
- By participating, you agree to send seeds to no fewer than 2 participants and no more than 4. You cannot sell them to any participants. You must pay for postage. By requesting seeds, you agree to send seeds and pay for postage to minimum 2 other participants. You cannot decline to send seeds to fewer than 2 people. You are not required to send seeds until someone has asked for them.
- Each person who receives seeds must enter their new cross in a database (to be developed) prior to distribution. It is assigned a hash and can be given an alias (strain name) for tracking the family history of the line.
- New genetics must be added each generation. Breeding a line to itself is not permitted – neither familial, selfing or hermaphroditic selfing.
- Breeding one line to a separate line is permitted and encouraged; however, if a person receives seeds from two separate lines and crosses them, they must agree to send to 2-4 people for each line received (4-8 people).
- There are no limitations and no restrictions to what a breeder can do with either the seeds they received or the seeds they created. This cannot be controlled anyway, so we agree from the start that when we participate in the project we forego any claim to intellectual or creative property rights. After all, this is gonna be like Napster for seeds…
After a while, I think we’ll be creating and passing around the deepest polyhybrids in the world. Perhaps an advanced look into our future? Perhaps a way to create super strains that grow well in a variety of conditions? Perhaps a new kind of evolutionary breeding by “survival of the most desirable”? Perhaps this is how we win against the larger forces that would like to monopolize our plant. Who knows what a few years of P2P will bring… it’s an experiment!
Have I convinced anybody yet!?