Sowing Future Seeds

It is estimated that farmers produced about 80,000 species of plants before the advent of industrialized agriculture, now they rely on about 150. This has resulted from a number of factors but, over the last two decades, large, multinational companies like Monsanto have taken over family-owned seed companies and focused on producing their own hybrid and patented varieties.

Why is this an issue? These hybrids don’t produce viable seeds and cannot be collected legally and used by farmers or home gardeners.

This means that both home gardeners and farmers must buy new seeds each year from these corporate sources. It also has meant that we are losing the knowledge and techniques of traditional seed saving and plant propagation.

More than that, local, heirloom seeds are better adapted to a local region and become better seeds for that area. They also provide more interesting and unique varieties than are often tastier.

This has led many to recognize the need to preserve the genetic and cultural diversity of the heritage seeds that are left, before they too are gone. In the past year, seed libraries are sprouting all over the United States and the United Kingdom.

Modeled after the public library, a seed library allows members to “check out” seeds in the spring and in exchange, they agree to grow them and “return” the seeds after harvest from the mature plants they have grown in the fall.

There are now seed libraries in Portland, the San Francisco Bay Area , in New York’s Hudson Valley the Hudson Valley Seed Library, and the newly formed Seed Library of Los Angeles (SLOLA). In Great Britain, there’s the Heritage Seed Library that works to “safeguard rare vegetable varieties that were once the mainstay of British gardens.”

Some are for profit ventures, while others are non-profit ventures, and work to provide seeds to all regardless of income level or gardening experience, like SLOLA.

Most seed libraries also provide information and education on growing, saving, and propagation techniques. For example, the Seed Library of Los Angeles is offering an “Essentials of Seed-Saving” seminar on January 29.

If you are looking for a seed library near you, Richmond California’s Richmond Grows Seed Lending Library, has a link to seed libraries in the U.S.

If you don’t live near a local seed library, you can save and share heirloom seeds via Seed Savers Exchange. This non-profit organization mission is “to save North America’s diverse, but endangered, garden heritage for future generations by building a network of people committed to collecting, conserving and sharing heirloom seeds and plants, while educating people about the value of genetic and cultural diversity.” So far, they have saved about 25,000 varieties of heirloom seeds.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Danuta W.

12:33AM PDT on Apr 30, 2012

Thanks for posting.

send a green star

Nanette P.

6:18AM PDT on Mar 20, 2012

Good will prevail eventually. Live is a fight; we have to fight, and we are winning.

Jennifer C.

5:39PM PDT on Mar 14, 2012

Thanks for the post.

Mel M.

1:17PM PST on Feb 24, 2012

Thanks for the article

Kath R.

3:24AM PST on Feb 24, 2012

The colours of those seeds look amazing...long live heirloom varieties.

Shelly P.

8:56PM PDT on Apr 19, 2011

Seed Libraries are the future to stopping the extinction of flora and fauna in this age of pollution and overdevelopment without proper conservation!! These libraries need more public awareness and funding!! Thankyou for posting this article!!

Eternal G.

10:13PM PST on Feb 9, 2011

We need to reintroduce the ways of our ancestors before the industrialisation, complemented with extra knowledge and techniques!

Klaus P.

6:20AM PST on Jan 21, 2011

I grew up during the fourties and early fifties with my grand parents on a farm in Germany. It was just so beautifull, the variety of apples and other fruit and vegetables was so vast, it is now only in the back of my memory. The stuff we are offered now is totally boring, thanks to Monsanto the poisonmaker and also the EU. Grand Dad had to cut down his orchard of exotic fruit under EU rules, because other EU countries had preference. But Germany had to subsidise the rest of Europe and not grow their own. Grand Dad had more apple varieties than what is available at the supermarkets now. We will never ever see apples, pears, cherries, plums and vegies like he grew ever again. F monsanto and the EU. Grand Dad never understood the politics and died a broken man.

Maria S.

6:51AM PST on Jan 18, 2011

Thank you !

Nancy S.

3:19PM PST on Jan 16, 2011

great article