Hi Heather!
I've been thinking about you and your tomato/pepper swap a lot as Dave has been creating this fantastic tool. I owe 80% or 90% of my tomato seed variety, and any early/cold tomato knowledge, to being allowed to participate in your past cross-border swaps.
During early discussions here, many people focused on the "thou shalt not, without paperwork," aspect of mailing seeds across borders, and phytosanitary certificates were spoken of.
Multiple people reporting that they've
never lost a packet to customs had no visible effect.
Maybe someone said they once lost a packet in the mail, to customs.
Maybe there was an unspoken attitude of "It's the law, end of story".
The upshot was that some people said they would only mail seeds within the borders of their own country, and I'm guessing that, at least at first, some swap hosts will follow that same rule.
That seems really, really sad for ATP members in countries with few ATP members.
It's also sad for members in countries with many members, including Canada and the USA - meaning, it's our loss, too. We won't recruit any international members or goodwill through seed swaps this way!
I'm thinking especially of
@JonnaSudenius, who has gifted millions if not billions of seed packets to Americans and others outside Belgium, in seed swaps. And sold more millions or billions all over the world. Jonna, what % of your mailers get confiscated, coming or going? Any? Is the field where you grow out varieties you've received from other countries infested with foreign devils or other pests? Probably not.
Hopefully we can set up "proxies", individuals who will support swaps by re-mailing seed packages for those outside the country of the host. Each host of each swap could decide whether to permit, encourage, or forbid re-mailing.
My own perspective is that going through extra paperwork doesn't make seeds safer.
And the wildly invasive "Water Spinach" (
Ipomoea aquatica Thai: "phakbung", semi-aquatic & sub-tropical) sailed right through customs in a commercial packet from Thailand that I think even said "seeds" on the outside. Fortunately I don't live in Florida or Hawaii - instead of invading and clogging the waterways, I couldn't even keep them alive in a dry cool summer.
I realize there are different opinions about this issue, and I guess mine is a minority opinion.
