Seeds
The seed varieties in use today – even those that have been genetically modified – are the product of countless generations of farmers saving seeds from plants with desirable traits, and sowing them the following year. But corporate agribusinesses earn huge profits by interrupting this process: the traits built into their hybrid varieties won't be expressed in saved seeds, and farmers can be sued for saving genetically-modified seeds. The ability of smallholder farmers to save and sow their own seeds is an essential element of resilient, locally-adapted food systems. Seed sovereignty upholds the right to grow, exchange, and preserve open-pollinated seeds, free from corporate control.
Educating the next generation on seed saving preserves valuable, intergenerational knowledge that we are at risk of losing, and empowers young people to become custodians of nature in its most delicate form. Seed saving education also connects children with nature at an early age and encourages them to participate in nature's cycles, from seed to plant, from plant to seed.
Take action
- Add seed saving to a school garden with The Seed Savers' Network's guide Seed to Seed: Food Gardens in Schools.
- The Global Seed Network's Seed Saving Lesson Plans and School Curriculum offer math, science, and language arts lessons centered on seeds for children ages 6-12.
Get inspired
- At the Sahyadri School in Pune, India, students and farmers work together to cultivate and market indigenous varieties of seeds, producing eight tons of heritage seeds per year while learning agricultural and business skills in the process.
Seeds local to your area will work best with your climate, and we encourage you to seek out small growers, businesses and organizations producing open-pollinated, heirloom, locally-adapted, hardy varieties bred and maintained for small-scale agroecological farming.
Take action
- Discover local seed networks and seed suppliers with the following directories, lists and maps: Seed Savers Foundation (Australia), Seed Sovereignty (UK and Ireland), the Organic Seed Alliance (US and Canada), and the Open Source Seed Initiative's seed company partners (worldwide).
- Red de Guardianes de Semillas in Ecuador offers a wide diversity of local seeds grown in permaculture farms and gardens. Check out their catalog here.
- In Mexico, Las Cañadas center for agroecology and permaculture offers this catalog of agroecologically grown plants and seeds.
- Vanastree is a women-run seed-saving collective in the Malnad region of Karnataka, India. Their seeds are all organic and open-pollinated.
- If your country or region isn’t listed here, ask your local gardening club, community gardening organization, permaculture or transition group, or organic nursery, and connect with nearby small-scale, organic, traditional farmers.
Get inspired
- The Desi Seed Producers Company is a collective of organic seed producers and seed savers in India whose mission is "to bring back the tradition of seed saving amongst us by collecting, propagating, and exchanging indigenous and rare varieties [and to] seek sustainable living and a more self-reliant lifestyle." Their organically grown, open pollinated vegetable and cereal seeds are marketed under the brand name "Sahaja Seeds."
If you grow open-pollinated varieties in your garden, you can save your seeds from this season and plant them next year. This enables you to do what traditional farmers have done for millennia: select seeds from plants with desirable traits, especially for an ability to thrive in your particular climate and soils.
Get started
- The Community Seed Network (US and Canada) has curated an excellent set of seed saving resources, for beginners to experienced seed savers, plus recommended readings.
- Seed Sovereignty (UK and Ireland) has assembled an extensive list of guides, books, videos, podcasts and more for all things seed saving.
- The Seed Savers’ Exchange (US) has tips for getting started, as well as specific guides for 35 common vegetables and fruits.
Get inspired
- Read the FoodTank article Twenty Initiatives Saving Seeds for Future Generations, which describes projects from Ireland to Russia, Mexico to Australia – all working to preserve agricultural biodiversity.
Creating a space for your community to grow plants for seed is a great way to build local resilience and preserve rare plant varieties. From season to season, plants adapt to the local climate and environment, passing on information to the next generation through their seed. This makes living seed-saving projects extremely important in the face of our changing climate. As a community, you'll work and learn together to grow locally-adapted plant varieties, become self-sufficient in seed, and share seed as a group.
Take action
- Download How to Organize Community Seed Gardens, a step-by-step guide from Seed Savers Exchange.
- The Community Seed Exchange has collated a number of useful resources, from teaching tools and legal forms to forms for seed libraries.
Get inspired
- At UK-based Down to Earth Stroud, members grow seed for vegetables, fruits, and flowers in their own backyards and community garden plots.
- Native Seeds/SEARCH has a 60-acre seed conservation farm in the US state of Arizona, where they have preserved nearly 2,000 varieties of indigenous desert seeds. They offer small grants and educational programs for communities in the southwestern USA and northern Mexico.
Because of industrial farming, more than 90% of agricultural biodiversity has been lost in the past century. Storing seed from endangered varieties in seed banks is a way to preserve what remains of that diversity, although farmers' fields remain the best seed banks of all.
Take action
- Find a seed library near you with the following lists and maps, each featuring hundreds of initiatives: Seed Libraries (worldwide), Community Seed Network and SeedLibrarian (mostly North America), and the Community Seed Bank Map (Europe). Elsewhere, contact your local La Via Campesina chapter.
- Read a short and thorough overview of seed banks with Seed Savers' Exchange's guide How to Organize a Community Seed Bank.
- Host a seed swap event to gauge interest in a community seed library with Community Seed Network's guide How to Organize a Seed Swap.
- Set up and run seed libraries, banks, exchanges, and more with the Community Seed Network's wealth of Organizational Resources, which also features teaching tools and legal resources.
- Set up a seed saving program with the Kastom Gaden Association's Community Guide to Seed Saving, especially relevant to communities in the Global South.
- Start a seed exchange network with the Seed Savers Network's Local Seed Network Manual.
- Build a small seed exchange box that can be placed in libraries, community centers, cafés, and stores with Nomoola's plans for Share Seeds stations.
- Connect with other seed librarians through Seed Libraries' online community Up Beet!
- Dive deeply into seed saving programs and business opportunities with a training program such as the Seed School of the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance in the US and the Community Seed Banks Academy in Europe.
Get inspired
- The Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, in Battir, Palestine, works closely with local farmers to identify local food crops and varieties that are threatened with extinction. Bringing those varieties back to life can inspire both farmers and the larger community to preserve their bioculture and repair their local landscape.
- Vrihi & Basudha, in India, comprises a folk rice bank that has collected, saved, and distributed 940 indigenous varieties of rice, and a conservation research farm that grows out the rice using traditional agroecological methods.
- Seed Libraries' Getting Started page offers case studies and wisdom from seed libraries across the US.
- The film series Seeds of Freedom Trilogy by the Gaia Foundation explores the global struggle for seed sovereignty through the stories of African communities reviving traditional seed diversity.
- The documentary Seed: The Untold Story follows several seed keepers - people who are reviving ancestral seed varieties and our connection with them - and their struggles against biotechnology companies' control of our seeds and food systems.
- The Legal Resources section of the Organizational Resources page by Community Seed Network shares knowledge and tools to advocate for laws protecting seed sovereignty in your community. These were written for US and Canadian audiences, though the frameworks are applicable elsewhere.
- A Seed Saving Guide for Gardeners and Farmers by the Organic Seed Alliance (US and Canada), provides the “basics of how to grow seed, from choosing appropriate varieties for seed saving to harvesting, processing, and storing seed.”
- The Seed Savers’ Handbook, by the Seed Savers’ Foundation, while written especially for Australian and New Zealand contexts, is widely applicable elsewhere.
- The Manual of Seed Saving: Harvesting, Storing, and Sowing Techniques for Vegetables, Herbs, and Fruits, by Andrea Heistinger, is a comprehensive guide.
- The article Saving Japan's Seed Heritage from "Free Trade, by Local Futures' associate director Anja Lyngbaek, summarizes a discussion with Japan's former Minister of Agriculture Masahiko Yamada about seed sovereignty and trade laws.
- The webpage Related Seed Organizations by the Center for Food Safety lists organizations around the world that are “working to promote plant diversity, food security, and community self-reliance via seed sharing and saving.”
- Peasant seeds, the heart of the struggle for food sovereignty, the December 2019 issue of the Nyéléni Newsletter by La Via Campesina offers perspectives on the struggle for seed rights from farmers around the world.
- The report Who Will Feed Us? The Peasant Food Web vs the Industrial Food Chain, by ETC Group, uses beautiful illustrations to show how traditional farmers are stewarding agricultural biodiversity while producing abundant, nutritious food.