I love this story. Not just because it sounds the like perfect scenario on which to base 1930’s-style Ealing comedy but because it has given me a glimpse into a world the very existance of which I had, hitherto, not even begun to suspect.
I don’t think many people realise it, but there is a contraband war going on in this country. It is a war which has spawned a clandestine ring of illicit and secretive dealers and buyers operating their own black economy and doing their best to steer clear of the agents of the state.
And just what are these shadowy merchants trading in? Is it narcotics? Is it guns? Is it prostitution? Gambling dens? No, it’s tomato seeds:
The dealer wishes to remain anonymous. Not that he’s ashamed of his seeds: on the contrary, he’s doubts you’ll find better in England. Once you’ve tried their crop, he believes, you’ll be hooked. But if he told you how to buy them, he could be prosecuted – and a small businessman like him can ill-afford a £5,000 fine.
The crop in question goes by the exotic name of ‘White Princess’. But it is not, as you might suspect, a variety of cannabis. Rather, it is a tomato – a “meltingly, sumptuously tasty” variety, according to the pusher, but a mere tomato none the less. And if that strikes you as surprising, you’ll be even more surprised to discover that ‘White Princess’ are just the tip of the iceberg.
This is a story of the bizarre, seldom-seen subculture of unlicensed vegetable-growing. Its wares include rogue tomatoes, “bad” apples and “hot” potatoes; tomatoes are as good an illustration as any of how the market works.
‘Seldom-seen’ is surely an understatement. Who knew such a thing was even going on? Though, reading on, it becomes clear why it is going on:
The Plant Varieties and Seeds Act (1964) makes these tomatoes forbidden fruit – well, at least the seeds from which they are grown.
NEVER EVEN HEARD OF IT!!
According to the act, anyone wanting to sell the seeds of a fruit or vegetable must first register the variety on a National List. Before registration, it must be tested to ensure it is “distinct, uniform and stable”, and a fee must be paid. Sadly for amateur growers, these fees add up to nearly £1,000, in the case of tomatoes, plus an annual renewal fee of £185. There are no exceptions, no grants for amateur growers, and it is illegal for anyone to sell the seeds of unregistered fruit or, by implication, the fruit itself.
Choice-killing legislation at its finest. Still, what the state denies the market provides so no wonder it gives rise to such a lively, profitable and enthusiastic ‘guerilla’ trade.
It’s fair to say Defra doesn’t police the law with much conviction, but the multinationals are always watching. In 1998 a company that illegally marketed grass seed was successfully prosecuted under the Plant Varieties and Seeds Act 1964. It was fined a total of £7,500 and ordered to pay costs of £7,964.
An instructive tale. For non-UK readers, ‘Defra’ is the Department of Farming and Rural Affairs and it is clealy not above moving to protect the interest of the market-hogging corporations. We should never overlook that fact that some large business concerns are not interested in the market they are interested in controlling the market and they use the apparatus of state to do so. Regulatory regimes often result from the connivance between big business and the state.
The linked article is lengthy but well worth reading in my view. It is not just enjoyable for its delightfully, eccentrically British flavour but also because it proves, yet again, that all legislation has precisely the opposite of its intended effect. The aim of the state was to prop up a cartel but instead they have breathed life into a thriving, committed and obviously very well-informed ‘black’ market.
May their tomatoes continue to grow and prosper.
I’m sitting here, reflecting…
savoring the memories of the last time I had an ear of white corn. Once you’ve had white corn, eating yellow corn on the cob is rather like chewing the bark off a branch.
Tomatoes are rather similiar, but for a somewhat different reason. Supermarket tomatoes are picked green and ripen on the way to the shelves. There’s just no way (short of Flavr-Savr tomatoes) to get good tomatoes on a supermarket shelf. I’ve had the same breed tomatoes (grown from the seeds of supermarket tomatoes) and they’re actually quite tasty.
All that said, there’s no fundamental obstacle to naturally breeding for the same mutation used in Flavr-Savr. It would take a lot of different attempts by a lot of people to have a reasonable chance of success. It’s a labor of love.
It seems to me that The State is effectively suppressing beneficial voluntary research. Why would The State want to suppress voluntary contributions to society?
Isn’t it obvious? If people starting doing things for themselves, they might realize they don’t need the State.
I suggest saving some of those tomotos as a donation to your favoured MP.
…Reminds me of that episode of the BBC comedy Chef! when the main character ‘Gareth Blackstock’ [Lenny Henry] gets busted by the police for purchasing unpasteurized ‘Stilton’ cheese…Or in his words:
“gone off milk and bugs living together in perfect harmony“…
The Indy presumably quotes the 1964 Act as the notional source legislation because the most pernicious applications (the ones outlawing all traffic in unlisted varieties) emanate from EU Directives. The Indy never prints criticism of the EU.
If you want to be completely up to date on this check out The Seeds (National Lists of Varieties) Regulations 2001, The Vegetable Seed (England) Regulations 2002, and The Seed (Registration, Licensing and Enforcement) (England) Regulations 2002, and work your way back through 57 varieties of statutory instrument, directive and statute. (Gawd bless non-textual amendment for keeping the parliamentary draftsmen in business and everyone else in the dark!)
After you’ve wasted 3 months of your life doing this is a good time to reflect: not just on the vileness of it all, but on just how many interests are there vested, how uninteresting it is to the general public, and how difficult it is to get from where we are to where we might want to be.
When the phrase “unlicenced vegetable growing” is used in a non-ironic sentence as here, I sometimes think we should just admit we have lost, give up, and go home. (Of course in reality it is just protectionism pure and simple, but a particularly pernicious kind).
You are right that there is a great film in it.
Tomato seeds? Illegal? Oh Christ!
(lifts gun to head)
BANG!!!
“Why would The State want to suppress voluntary contributions to society?”
Because it was paid off?
Tomatoes? I’m surprised you can call them that still, what with that fruit’s affiliation with Spain and Italy. Anybody want to take any bets that the EU demands that non-Mediterranean varieties be labeled something like “Red Fruit That’s Handy for Eating With PastaTm?
As the son of an Italian-American woman, I proudly sport a dozen tomato plants on the back deck of my townhouse. My wife and I have been munching on them all summer long, and they are far better tasting than any tomato we’ve ever bought in a store. They can take my Supersonics, Plums, Beefsteaks and Cherry Tomatoes from me when they pry them from my cold, tasty bruschetta.
I am a flaming freedom lover, but there are reasons for gov control of agriculture – to keep the prices up, supporting rural economies and keeping a nation with limited food production capacity with an agriculture base as insurance against worst case situations – like world wide famine, etc…
Canada does the same thing. If you want to farm, you have to buy a share from another farmer or petition to the guild that controls whatever crop you want to grow for shares. This keeps over production from drivnig whole industires into the ground.
And…. as far as I am concerned, the US cranks out more food than any other country. We have been “limping” along with a free agriculture for decades. Sure there are problems, but I don’t see private or gov guilds as the answer.
Of course, if you are currently farming, the guild concept is great. Higher prices for you crop.
Agronomist and farmer here in the States.
I have a colleague, /formerly/ of California who eventually left that state for more reasonable environs after being threatened with a fine of U$5000 (L3200) for each aluminium pie tin found within 50 feet of his vegetables.
The crime? Trapping slugs with stale beer.
Actually, trapping slugs is about all that most /fresh/ American beer is good for, anyway. But that was considered to be an unlicenced method of pest control, and therefore illegal.
That they would actually spend public moneys to harass a farmer about stale beer suggests that (unfortunately) rather too much UK and EU bureaucratic insanity has already filtred over to this side of the pond.
If you have contacts travelling in the States, make sure you get ahold of Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa — your friends can probably smuggle back many wonderful vegetable varieties to deepen the apoplexy of supercilious bureaucrats who obviously haven’t enough real work to do.
…rather too much UK and EU bureaucratic insanity has already filtred over to this side of the pond.
Much as it pains me to admit it, Bart, the natural flow of regulatory bullshit is just as likely to move in the other direction. Like as not, from California…eastwards…to the world.
Think catalytic converters and grief counselors.
I remember, many moons ago, a spoof item* on BBC South’s ‘South Today’ programme. It would have been around 1976 or so, and concerned a new directive that had come out of the Common Market (as it was disingenuously named then) to the effect that all gardeners were to be subject to the same pettifogging rules on cucumber straightness etc. that the big growers were bound by. I recall my father leaping up and ranting about how he didn’t spend 1941-1946 in the British Army just so some jumped-up little toady in Brussels could tell him what to do with his runner beans etc. etc. It wasn’t until my mother rather calmly pointed out the date – April 1st – that he subsided.
Strange (but curiously familiar) to think that what was fantasy then is reality now. After all, the thought that a Greek policeman could arrest you and extradite you for something that is not a crime in the UK would have been considered too far-fetched to be plausible even five years ago.
*This was in the great tradition of hoax news items, like the infamous Richard Dimbleby documentary on the spaghetti harvest in Italy, or the same South Today’s report that HMS Victory was to take part in that year’s Tall Ships Race (despite having its mast firmly buried in concrete in a dry dock).
Like Michael my first reaction is to be just so downhearted with the insanity of it all. But even the biggest pile of manure will wear itself down over time, so there’s still hope. We just have to keep digging to help government regulation of this ilk on it’s way. Down the toilet, that is..
Peter,
I have toenail fungus. It’s agriculture. Does the government have a right to regulate that? Here in the U.S., under Wickard v. Filburn, it does. Even a grain of wheat is regulable under the commerce clause.
That case is widely viewed by critics left and right as an atrocity. It has been used by Congress as a justification for all manner of interference in everything that is even remotely related to economics or commerce. Sure food is important – but so is water, air, a good education, lotsa good lovin’, and damn near everything else. Importance alone isn’t justification for government interference.
And when you start justifying bans on private gardens as a method of price support to help farmers… well, you’ve sprung over from libertarianism into flat out socialism.
And Mayday 72, this whole issue reminds me of an apt quote from another TV show featuring a chef. In this case, it’s South Park, and the character was named “Chef”. He too was selling a popular foodstuff, albeit one that received some negative attention from local government officials. His response might be appropriate for the streetcorner tomato dealer to use on government regulators. As Chef put it, in song, “Try Chef’s big hot chocolate salty balls… put ’em in your mouth… mmmmm… feels good.”
The Chef character, by the way, was Black.
:MayDay72 – my favorite episode
On a positive note:
Here in the Middle West of the Great Satan, my local favorite natchoorall foods cooperative, where I walk past the aisles featuring tofu, spelt, carob candy, cardboard imitation breakfast cereal, and organic sea sponge tampon alternatives, to get to the meat-worth-eating and drinkable coffee sections, has quietly dropped the imported Roquefort (maybe someone overheard me while I was wandering around the parking lot gesticulating and muttering about weasels) and replaced it with *genuine* (sigh, pastuerized for export) Stilton!
I just saw “The Man in the White Suit” for the first time in 20 years and indeed this IS like something out of an Ealing Studios movie!
We have Southpark here too, Omnibus Bill. And coincidentally the classy restaurateur in Chef! is also black.
I do hope we are safe from Lenny Henry re-recording Chocolate Salty Balls. If not I shall move to France for the duration of the promotion.
Don’t these fools realize that selling the whole tomato is the legal way to distribute the seeds?
I’d bet that when the law was passed, it was touted as a wonderful consumer-protection measure. It’s remarkable how easily consumer-protection laws can become industry-protection laws.
You know, perhaps the tomato dealers are going about it all wrong.
What they need to do is claim that smoking the tomato in pure form – aka “seeds” – makes you really high, kinda lazy, fat, and unmotivated.
The government would then relax the penalties, and undertake trials to see if tomato use has therapeutic value.
The odds of this coming to fruition will be increased if it can be demonstrated that the Brixton rioters, jazz musicians and White hippies are regular users of tomatoes…
And Guy, sorry, didn’t know if you got SouthPark. Not all worthy cultural exports make it over to that gem, that harbor from the plague, that land, that England. Or vice versa. For example, we’re just now getting “The Office”, and I don’t suppose you’ve gotten “The Wire” yet, or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which is not a cop show.
but where’s the mob? why isnt organized crime getting into the act? where are the calls for tougher sentences of seed pushers? where are the scads of social workers telling us what a blight tomato seeds are having on inner city youth? where are the politicians with their studies financed by the macarthur foundation telling us that there is a direct correlation between the traffic in illicit tomato seeds and the illegitimacy rate? why arent the police cracking down on this scourge that destroys the home, alienates the young, and prevents inner city youth from entering modern society? why arent our prisons overflowing with the conscienceless bastards who promote this horrid and detestable trade? WHY ISNT GOVERNMENT DOING SOMETHING?
Please forgive the epithet above; I got carried away. Self-righteousness is a heady brew and I generally stick to root beer. Again, my apologies.
I agree it’s likely there’s a lot of economic protectionism going on in the way the laws are applied,as the story implies. However, there are, in fact, GOOD reasons for many such agriculture regulations — the safety of the food supply being number one. E.g., some plant strains are much more prone to disease and can more readily pass them along to other varieties; same with animals. Hence many nations have laws prohibiting entry or possession of certain items — there’s a west pacific island area (can’t remember which one; NZ?) that’s forbidden snakes because there aren’t any native snakes and local birds never developed an avoidance response. Unregulated or mismanaged plants and animals have resulted in many problems: killer bees, kudzu (a non-native plant taking over US brushland), mad-cow disease, and many other examples are the inspiration and justification for a NECESSARY kind of protectionism. …Even though the laws may be applied with market control in mind or other nefarious motives or even without common sense — the old good-idea-gone-awry.
Re: Filbert’s post —
If I remember correctly, Kudzu was introduced (in the US) by a gov’t agency (don’t recall which — parks/interior dept?). I believe it was for soil erosion (but could be wrong).
So who’s protecting us from the gov’t that’s protecting us? Why is it ok for the gov’t to inflict massively bone-headed mistakes, while the slightest risk of the same occuring via individuals is the latest greatest sin?
(and I’m not saying that’s Filbert’s position. Just commenting on the Kudzu aspect of his comment.)
Thanks a lot guys I’m now left with a consuming desire to grow White Princess tomatoes and no way of getting hold of any. There must be someway round it ,any ideas?
Georgia
ps I have managed to locate Sundrop tomato seed in Canada.