Bitcoin Forum

Way back in the day, seeds were used for commerce.  In many respects, they still are.

I would like to start a seedbank where people can donate seeds for credit and purchase seeds using credit, bitcoins, and other payment methods.

How it works:

You send us 100 apple seeds with the instructions to sell them in packs of 10 for 1 BTC each.

We enter your inventory of 10 packs of 10 apple seeds into our inventory management system.

When someone purchases a package of your seeds, you get %credit in bitcoins.

You may use, hold or withdraw your bitcoins at any time.

Since we use bitcoins, our payment processing fees are low.

Since we use regular mail for transport, shipping costs are as low.

Some seeds are extremely valuable and collectable.  Various trading opportunities exist.

Some seeds have an expiry date and would have to be removed from inventory occasionally.

I'm just wondering how feasible something like this might be or if anyone would be interested in it.

Could prob set most of it up using some opensource shopping thingo.

Any ideas?

To be hones this forum might not be the right audience for something like this. All techies and nerds here. So if you want to do this you definitely should discuss this in another more appropriate forum.

Nerds and techies know more than most about how fast this earth is dying and the need for things like seed banks, affordable and open tools (http://openfarmtech.org), and sustainable energy, I think this seed bank idea is great but probably needs more input from more people that have actually run seed banks and distribution centers.

Yea..was just something I wanted to start before.  The company name was going to be 'The Magic Bean'.

But there are issues...  most countries restrict the importation of plants and seeds....and then you have Monsanto...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH4OwBYDQe8&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH4OwBYDQe8&feature=related)

The merits of developing a seed bank cannot be fully realized until we have a consensus that the benefits of our continued existence outweighs our immediate instinct to continuously fuck ourselves over.

Corporations like Monsanto are the reason we need to make our agriculture as open and in the public domain as possible. It's freakin' food.

The problem is - the proposed concept is a logistic nightmare with the value of the shipping beyond a small number of seeds.
Even more seed are a commodity where trust that it is genuine is very important - imo even most important.

What stops someone selling a similar industrial species for a rare heirloom variety? Even a botanist (I am not one) would need several weeks to determine the authenticity of a stock and it might even be impossible without sophisticated techniques like analyzing several dna samples.

I think the best way to establish a practical project would be to get a decentralized infrastructure in the form of a web of thrust (wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust)).
This could be also helpful for the exchange of other value-able commodities like precious metals, integrated circuits and so on...

I think this is a great idea and I like where your head is at.  When will you be registering a domain?

It'd be nice if it were more than just a seed bank.  In the next few years, I should be able to provide scionwood for various varieties of various types of fruit trees as well as rooted cuttings of various varieties of food-producing shrubs and trees.  I should also be able to provide seeds for some types of trees and shrubs that are fairly true-to-seed, too.  I hope your endeavor succeeds and look forward to hopefully contributing to it soon!