• Home gardeners will be permitted to save and swap unregistered seed without breaking the law.
• Small organisations can grow and supply unregistered vegetable seed – but only if they have less than 10 employees
• Seedbanks can grow unregistered seed without breaking the law (but they cannot give it to the public)
• There might be easier (in an unspecified way) rules for large producers of seeds suitable for organic agriculture etc, in some (unspecified) future legislation – maybe.

SURELY THIS IS OK THEN?
No, not really. These concessions might be helpful, but are still limited. They are subject to all sorts of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ in the small print. And the small print hasn’t been written yet, and in fact won’t written until long after the law has been approved.
So we have no idea if they will survive into the final version in any useful form. Remember, they only made these changes after a huge public outcry – and given what they thought was a good idea to start with, our confidence in the process is not high.
And the rest of the law is still overly restrictive – there are all sorts of rules about labelling & sealing packets for example – and in the long run will make it much harder for people to get hold of good seeds they want to grow at home or for small scale sustainable agriculture.
For years the availability of freely reproducible open-pollinated seedsuitable for sustainable agriculture has been shrinking due to the seed laws, and this new law doesn’t address the problem. It just considers the needs of the agri-tech industry and makes it easier for them to market their industrial seed on a big scale.
WHAT IS THE BASIC PROBLEM?
The real problem is having a starting point that all seeds are prohibited unless officially tested and registered, and then adding some small exceptions as an afterthought.
This is really back to front – testing and registration should be voluntary. Then some people (like massive industrial farmers) who might want the sort of seed that can pass certain types of test – they can choose to use the ‘officially registered’ seed.
And normal people would be free to choose freely what they want to grow from all the myriad of normal seed in the world.
There are also clauses that mean the above concessions could be removed or reduced at any time in the future without coming back to the Parliament for a vote.
NOW WHAT HAPPENS?
This is a starting point – it is a draft law, not the final thing. Next it must go to Parliament for modification or approval, so there is still the chance of changes for better or worse. All the competing and vested interests will try to change it for their own benefit.
And almost everyone involved – either as a lobbyist or a bureaucrat – is only thinking about the needs of industrial farmers, not small-scale agriculture – even though they have applied the law to both types of seeds. So we must all campaign for small farmers’ and home growers’ rights, to make sure only improvements are made!
WHAT DO WE WANT?
This law was written for the needs of the globalised farm-seed industry, who supply seed by the ton to industrial farmers. It should not apply at all to seed used by home gardeners and small market growers, who have very different needs.
Freely reproducible seeds are an inalienable part of our heritage. Listing and official certification of vegetable seeds might be helpful for industrial-scale farmers, but it should be a voluntary scheme that people can choose to use if they need it.
So we are calling for registration and testing to be voluntary for all non-GMO, non-patented, non-hybrid seed. That would fix all the problems with the law, while still allowing the giant agri-companies to protect their business the way they want.
But if that does not happen, if we must have a seed-registration system, then this law really needs improving – because allowing tiny organisations to supply seed outside the regulations is a good start, but it is not sufficient.
Only in this way will we have a broad supply of quality seed for the needs of home gardeners and small growers.