We’re not the types to obsess about carbon footprints, preferring a separate set of fun, pleasure and cheapness metrics with which to base our lives on. That being said, Mr. Homegrown Evolution punched in our stats for a contest over at Low Impact Living and ended up winning the contest. Read the article about us here.

There’s some irony about this, in that Mr. Homegrown Evolution is, as you read this, busting the household carbon footprint on an unexpected CLUI related business trip to a remote Swedish mining town in the arctic.

Arctic journeys aside, the way we won the Low Impact contest is simple. We live in a small house and don’t drive much. That’s just about it. We can’t afford solar panels, and everything else we’ve done, such as the washing machine greywater system, is DIY and un-permitted. We’re sure that many people in our 1920s era neighborhood would have also won this contest. Folks in apartments would have done even better. The average African would do a thousand times better.

But anyways, many thanks to the nice folks at Low Impact Living and we’ll be using that hotel stay on our next book tour of San Francisco (travel via Amtrak and bicycle, for those keeping score).

You gotta be a modern day Pythagoras to parse out the moral geometry of our complex food system. Our hasty blog post on growing Dragon Carrots from Seeds of Change prompted a few comments and a phone call alerting us to ethical concerns about the seed company. Knowing the diversity of readers of this blog, we’re simply going to toss out the issues and let you all make up your own minds.

Seeds of Change began as a small New Mexico based company back in 1989, launched a series of organic convenience foods in Europe in 1996 and was purchased by Mars Incorporated, a family owned snack food company in 1997. Last year Mars partnered with Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway (check out that retro B-H website!) to buy Wrigley and create a ginormous financial candy bar. Mmmm, cashy nougats!

One of the founders of Seeds of Change, Howard-Yana Shapiro, now serves as director of plant science and external research for Mars Inc. and is vice president of agriculture at Seeds of Change. He’s the well respected author of Gardening for the Future of the Earth, and is currently at work overseeing the sequencing the Cocao genome in a joint project with the US Department of Agriculture, Mars. Inc. and IBM. As for the ultimate outcome of that project, according to the BBC, “Dr Shapiro would not be drawn on whether the research might lead to genetically modified chocolate. “

As for Seeds of Change’s parent company, an article in the Ecologist, criticizes Mars Inc for opposing EU health laws aimed at curing obesity and for failing to offer fair trade chocolate. Others say the company is a model of responsible business practices. Homegrown Evolution reader Jeremy claims that Seeds of Change, “tried to shut down the HDRA’s Heritage Seed Library,” and “registered an ancient Hopi “mandala” as their trade-mark.” I’ve been unable to dig up further information on the internets about either of these issues, so I’m asking Jeremy to leave some links in the comments.

Our friend, author and neighbor Ysanne Spevack has a positive article about her visit to Seeds of Change in New Mexico. The Mars Inc. corporate promotional video, which features Shapiro at the end, can be viewed here. We have to admit that the video gives us the heebie jeebies but, like most readers of this blog, we’re not exactly in the target audience for M&Ms with printed messages.

When a visionary like Shapiro gets involved with a large company you get a bottomless rabbit’s hole discussion about the morality of “change from within” and taking a good concepts, like organics and biodiversity, to the masses. You’re all welcome to debate these issues in the comments, but here at Homegrown Evolution we’re moving on to a soon to be defined new paradigm. All we know is that it will be more local, and the seeds we exchange will be our own.

Of course, if the Skittles folks offer to pay off Homegrown Evolution’s mortgage and dental bills . . .