Seed Runs Co-Op Logistics/Cost/OT Discussion Megathread

I said breeders can organize their way while MOTR is away, we don’t have to change something that’s been fonctioning correctly for years. Next one will be that the seeds were in the dormitory where the tree felt down … :roll_eyes:

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no need for alarm george. we may have a slight language barrier, but we are simply discussing logistics and organization for continuing distribution of new projects within the United States.

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Much respect for you, zephyr, I agree with the language barrier, specially on my side, but that is not the main question. You’re facing the issue in a practical way, I am considering it on a human level, that’s why we disagree.

I recognize there’s a problem with MOTR missing, I only disagree with the “new organization projects” and finding new distributors for the U.S.A.

I find that discussion premature as for me as long as she doesn’t say the contrary MOTR is the U.S.A. distributor. She has our trust and appreciation for all the hard work and perfect organization she has developed until now.

I would wait to have notices from her before making big decisions. Meanwhile we can find a temporal substitute, Sebring is a honest, respectful and appreciated person here and would be a good candidate, but only while MOTR solves her problems and is able to take the steering again … :sunglasses:

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Just wanted to remind everyone that stuff happens and no one should ever get their hopes up or count on preservation seeds. I’ve seen plants get eaten by rabbits while doing a run, seeds have been lost in the mail and also confiscated. We’ve seen only male plants come out of the original seeds. A bunch of things have and can happen. So whatever seeds MOTR has, consider them gone or whatever until she returns. I personally believe that she will and in time we will get some seeds in the mail that we since stopped counting on. If the seeds somehow went bad, well, it’s always a possibility that a seed run comes out badly and none of the seeds came out viable anyway. Really, what’s the difference? Things happen and we should all just be grateful for any seeds the co-op members distribute, whether it’s some, none or all of us that receive them. It’s not like they are paid employees for some corporation. They are just some super cool members who donate to their cooperative mission.

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For me, the absence of momontherun is simply a non-issue.
I’m sure we will hear from her in the future, in the meantime, the project will carry on.

The goal of the co-op remains the same, and being a co-op, organization is inherently decentralized and by definition cannot rely on any one member.

This co-op was organized less than two years ago to give us the tools to facilitate donation and distribution of pure open pollinated f2 preservations of authentic seeds.

If we all pull together and have a simple, open, practical conversation, we can all continue our work to get seeds out to growers and medical cannabis patients, and preserve the genetic diversity of a plant which we all value and respect.

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If @MomOnTheRun would like assistance in any format I’m available and willing.
If breeders need a person to receive shipments I can do that. If distribution is needed I’m willing to do that as well. I have the greatest faith in MOTR and I’m sure she’ll let me know if she needs help!

I agree that the breeding projects should continue! :slight_smile:

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Can we all agree that @sebring will act as an additional official U.S. distributor, handling upcoming projects?

To (hopefully) make things easier, I set up a poll.

  • yay! Sebring has my approval to act as an official US distributor for the seed co-op
  • neigh! sebring does not have my approval to act as a US distributor

0 voters

*To be clear, no one is ousting MomontheRun, we are simply adding a second distributor who will handle distribution until such time as we hear from MOTR.

** I am just a co-op member, like everyone else. I would like to see this project continue successfully. Being disabled, I lack the physical capability and financial resources to distribute seeds myself, so this is my only chance to share my work with all of you.

***I am happy to delete this poll if people object to it.
It seemed like a simple way to either move forward with a unanimous decision, or go back and re-evaluate how we would all like distribution to continue.

There you have it folks, let your opinion be known so that we can move on and put any controversy behind us.

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zephyr, we are not speaking only of the U.S.A. distributor. I intend to be the EU distributor, MOTR will send me the seeds and I will have to send her back the money, that works also for Gaz29 in U.K. and Shadey in Canada. Breeders will have to send her the seeds prior to being later on distributed to the rest, so yes, everything is centralized on her. As you see, it affects not only the U.S.A., there’s more work and responsibilities involved … :sunglasses:

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I was not aware that international distribution relied so heavily on one member, perhaps in the future we should arrange for breeders to ship directly to international distributors when possible. It is true that most seed runs originate in the US. Perhaps the international distributors would like to nominate a US member to handle bulk shipping to the various international distributors.

I am sure you can speak to sebring about this, and find out whether he would be willing to handle this responsibility as well as U.S. distribution.

If anything @George1961 this sounds like a good reason to find new organizational solutions for distribution of labor and responsibility.

edit- @George1961 the poll has been edited to reflect your input.

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It is also a question of costs, breeder should send four long distance packages instead of one local, as I said before, this has been smoothly working until now, no need to change.

There are two yearly mailings, April and October. Most reasonable thing is that April 2021 is the next box, let’s Sebring contact MOTR and see if he can arrange the actual mess of the “late” 2020 April box and until next one we have time to let MOTR recover or find a valuable alternative … :sunglasses:

Edit: Thanks for considerating my arguments and changing the poll, considering Sebring as an alternative not a substituter … beer3|nullxnull

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All seeds that have been sent to Momontherun remain her sole responsibility. We cannot proceed with these projects until we hear from her. We would all be happy to assist in any way we can, but nothing can be done until she contacts us.

We are only discussing the next steps for distribution of the current projects which have not been sent to momontherun.

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Now we are in the same boat, completely agree on that, I propose Sebring as receptor of them until new decisions are made … Arriba|nullxnull

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I started reading post 472 back to 400 and the first couple of dozen posts starting at number 1. I joined earlier this year, so I have not had the pleasure to receive anything from MOTR, but it seems like there are things going on with her at the moment and is incommunicado. It makes perfect sense to find a work around, @Sebring, to handle things until MOTR resurfaces or says no more. We have a respected member that has offered to step up and fill the void and I think we should. Anything that was sent to MOTR will work itself out eventually, but in the mean time, let’s have Sebring handle the co-op distribution.

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Still feel this needs some work. As it stands MotR is distributing to distributors and then doing US. Should be two people at least.

One issue here is the post office and its travails. Shipping times are slow …if the seeds were sent they… may be in a warehouse and backed up… they may have been in a shipment that was discarded

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/bags-of-usps-mail-dumped-in-glendale-spa-parking-lot/

We may never see these. As far as I am concerned she can use whatever she needs from the money to help however she needs it. I have plenty of seeds. If that bought her a chicken dinner when the roof was caved in and kept her feed that is fine. Hope she and the family are doing well.

And they may show up tomorrow.

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Yeah this should never have been a thing imo. Nothing against MOTR at all, I know she’s good for it, but only in the sense of doing it this way means that there is only a single point of failure. You NEVER want a single point of failure in anything you need to keep running.

Breeders should be sending out a box to each distributor separately. This way there is… 4? points of failure instead of just 1. I get it’s more costly, they should be reimbursed for the shipping costs from the fund, but shouldn’t really be an issue otherwise. Least this way we can pretty much guarantee at least one distributor is gonna be able to give out seeds to their area.

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that would mean each breeder would ship overseas to many different countries. not sure how that would work. If it would.

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Yeah that would be the only caveat. But I think there’s only 4 distributors. US/CANADA/EU/…Global?.

I mean, it wouldn’t make sense for a breeder outside of the US to ship to the US to then have them sent to other distributors outside of the US. just make 4 boxes and send 1 to each dist and then they distribute from there.

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That is 4X the amount of effort and risk in shipping. For many breeders they could be in non-legal areas. To give them the burden of shipping anything more than one package, especially overseas, may be enough to prevent breeders from wanting to be part of the runs.

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My suggestion was that international distributors should nominate / find a volunteer US member to handle international shipping of the breeder stock. Ideally, someone who has experience in these matters.

I’m sure our international distributors have some experience trading with US members. successful international trades may be a good place to start looking for candidates?

This should be independent from the breeder, and from the official US distributors, for optimal distribution of labor and the fewest number of failure points.

So in short, breeders would send out 2 packages within the US. one package to the US distributor, and one package to a newly appointed “international liason” who would divide the stock and mail it out to each of the international distributors.

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For sure, I just want to work in some redundancy here and less points of failure. However we can come to that, is fine with me :slight_smile:

The US group is the biggest group by far so having two people, 1 distributor and 1 liaison, might be a good way to go for the US… Might work well for other area’s too if there’s a lot of members in one particular group. I understand that either responsibility is a lot to handle, much less for only one person to do both.

I still don’t think international breeders should be sending to the US for distribution to the other distributors in the other areas. Now I don’t know that that is the case at all, just pointing out if it is, there has to be a better way to do it than that… I mean I honestly thought, from reading the co-op/breeder rules, that anyone taking up breeding for the community was already sending 4 boxes(one to each distributor of each region) regardless of where they live/grow.

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