By Nancy Owano
Members of the Open Source Seed Initiative this week held a rally and seed giveaway event. The group is concerned over restricting access to seeds through patents. They are stirring up public awareness over their mission to model a new crop system of seed-sharing in the spirit of open source software. On Thursday the OSSI group gathered at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to give away a set of seeds that can be used by anyone. The seeds are unrestricted by patents or intellectual property barriers. They released 29 new varieties of crops under an “open source pledge” for farmers, gardeners and plant breeders. The new varieties involved broccoli, celery, kale, quinoa and other vegetables and grains released under their novel Pledge, to be printed on all OSSI seed packets.
