What will we be eating in 50 years time?

 It depends which doom and gloom merchant you believe, but if you will bear with me and believe me for a minute I can tell you, we will be eating whatever Sygenta and Monsanto make the most money on!

And I don't just mean GM food. 

Think back to primary school, how do you grow something, lets say a sunflower?  OK, easy, we go to a shop and buy a packet of sunflower seeds, each child fills a pot with earth, pops in some seeds and waits for their sunflower to grow.  At some point they get planted out and the child with the biggest sunflower gets a prize of a pencil with a rubber on the end.

At the end of the summer, the teacher shows the children the sunflower seeds, they try eating one, they put some on the bird table and the rest they put away carefully to plant next year.

How sweet, and how illegal.  Saving seeds? Tut, tut, they'll be wanting to steal the ideas of the seed companies next and make money with their seed saving and selection and make WMD with the profits!!  Bomb them!!

OK, maybe they won't get bombed, maybe it won't even be noticed, it's only a school project and I am dramatising.  However, it's not that far from reality for farmers all over the world.  It really, truly is illegal in a lot of countries to save seeds and in those countries it's not illegal, it will be soon.  If you are interested in this subject GRAIN, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge has just released a briefing on this subject.  As always, they explain it excellently.  You can read it here