Described as an “evangelist of seeds” by Nathanael Johnson of Grist, Cary Fowler is looking to create solutions, solutions achieved through agrobiodiversity. Today, agriculture is confronted with an array of crises, from population growth to climate change. Fowler sees the biological diversity of seeds as the answer through an “elegant response to stresses.” In the film Seeds of Time, Fowler’s solution-based approach to the encroaching global crises with seed biodiversity is portrayed. Highlighted in the film is Fowler’s rivetting and successful campaign for a seed “ark” in Svalbard, Norway, built to withstand all elements. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a secure seed bank located on a remote island 800 miles from the North Pole with a distinct collection of seed samples. This vault was created in the name of biodiversity preservation.

Learn more about Fowler's mission to save the seeds- so they can save us

In the last century nearly 75 percent of our agricultural crops have disappeared. Traditionally, farmers would save and share these seeds with each other, but now, most seed production is controlled by just a few companies. Vandana Shiva explains the importance of protecting the culture and biodiversity of seeds. It’s what she calls seed sovereignty.

Location: Richmond Public Library, Richmond, CA

Featuring: Terry the Book Librarian, Devyn the Library Card Holder, Kelli the Urban Farmer, and Rebecca the Seed Librarian.

Kelly tells us, “saving seeds preserves our biodiversity, builds our local resiliency and maintains our food sovereignty.” A seed library is a place where seeds and information are freely shared for the benefit of everyone in the community.

Free public libraries revolutionized access to books and knowledge. Can seed libraries change what we eat? Our access to local seeds and our knowledge of seed saving has been largely lost this past century. Public libraries offer, preserve and lend books. Seed lending libraries do the same by both safeguarding and sharing heritage seeds, and by housing a seed library at a real library, you can reach a fuller spectrum of the community.”

The inspiration that led to the birth of the Culinary Breeding Network: enter Lane Selman, an agricultural researcher at Oregon State University. Selman works with diversified organic vegetable farmers, helping them better manage disease and pest related problems. Selman began her work on potatoes and knew that the particular variety of a plant can determine whether it grows in a hearty manner or succumbs to disease or pest damage. The 1840 great potato famine in Ireland is a case in point. There are certain potato varieties that are highly resistant to the disease (potato blight, but farmers in Ireland only grew three or four different types of potatoes (despite the face there are hundreds of potato varieties in the world).

Plant breeders, seed growers, farmers, and chefs unite to provide better food for eaters. The Culinary Breeding Network (CBN) hopes to “bridge the gap between breeders and eaters” to improve the quality and diversity of commercially available vegetable varieties and to enhance the culinary experience.

Location: Big Horse Creek Farm, Lansing, North Carolina
Featuring: Ron and Suzanne Joyner of Big Horse Creek Farm

Apples were pivotal to the establishment of American agriculture by frontier settlers. Without Ron and Suzanne Joyner, apples would now be mostly forgotten. Having always believed that heirloom fruits and vegetables are critical in an agriculturally homogenous society, they became protégés of Lee Calhoun. Lee taught Ron and Suzanne how to graft and preserve apple trees. With this knowledge they moved to the mountains of Ashe County where they now raise almost 400 different varieties. They are “collector’s and propagators” on a mission to seek out, collect, and preserve the precious few heritage apple varieties still in existence. They are preservationists.

Preservationists are seeking out, collecting, and propagating heritage varieties to secure their enjoyment and appreciation by future generations.

Each spring, as we plant our gardens, we are participating in a dynamic living system as stewards. Matthew Dillon of Seed Matters takes a moment to reinforce our role as seed stewards and to remind us that agriculture is “inherently a biological practice, secondarily a cultural practice and lastly technological.”

Douglas Gayeton: What is genetically engineered material and what does genetical engineering in food have to do with seeds?

Matthew Dillon: Genetic engineering is a relatively new technology that uses molecular biology to transfer the DNA across species lines in ways that could never occur amongst plants in nature. One of the famous examples of it, of course, is the Flavr Savr tomato, where fish gene – code gene – was transferred into a tomato. Obviously something that couldn’t occur in nature. It was done in order to get traits that the tomato industry felt the tomato lacked, such as the ability to store for a long period of time on store shelves. In general, genetic engineering differs from classical plant breeding because it could never occur in the field. It could never occur in any type of evolutionary setting. There’s no evolutionary setting imaginable in which a brassica gene has resistance to an herbicide like Roundup – this is evolutionarily impossible.

Douglas Gayeton: It seems to me that if genetic engineering can potentially increase harvests or increase the nutritional benefits of a food, that that would be a good thing.

Matthew Dillon: We have to ask ourselves, are we crossing ethical lines in terms of intrinsic nature of plant species? Are we developing an evolutionary approach to crop development that potentially puts our food systems, our natural ecosystems and other systems at risk? In the case of breeding resistance to herbicides into our crop species, we have to ask what if that gene and that trait gets into wild species, how will that impact invasive movement of species across our food landscape and our natural ecosystems? There’s a whole series of questions. Genetic engineering is a concept in and of itself. I think it’s neither good nor bad – it’s a concept that’s technology should be explored. Its application and release to society needs to be taken with a precautionary principle to make sure that any release is in fact going to bring about benefit and not bring about harm.

Douglas Gayeton: We’ve seen in the last generation for the first time, the actual patenting of plants. What is your stance at Seed Matters on that?

Matthew Dillon: Putting the good or bad of genetic engineering aside, the purpose of patents is to provide innovators or authors of new technologies and new approaches with intellectual property protection for a limited period of time in order to increase innovation. In order to get that patent, you need to have come up with the process or an item that is novel and never done before. Genetically engineering probably passes those things – they’re actually creating something that never existed before. The real concern we have at Seed Matters and, I think, in much of the agricultural movement is around patents that are being given for natural characteristics and natural traits. This slows down innovation, slows down competition amongst seed companies and doesn’t allow for the improvement of public good

Douglas Gayeton: On a local level, how can people strengthen their food security by collecting and distributing seeds?

Matthew Dillon: The work of stewarding the natural resource of seeds is not only the responsibility of private seed companies or of a public land-grant university, plant breeders, geneticists – it’s also a responsibility that we can share as backyard gardeners. There’s an incredible renaissance right now in seed saving that’s taking place and it differs from what seed saving looks like for the last 20 to 30 years in that groups of people are coming together to collaborate on community seed projects. To grow seeds together in dedicated seed gardens and share those seeds through a local seed swap, seed bank, seed library.

We all have an opportunity to add a story of agriculture by our participation in it. We want to get those cultural stories alive around these seed projects – that’s an important component of seed. Seed is life story, it’s this encapsulated information. You have what you can see in this ongoing history of plant-human interaction in an encapsulated form that either sits on a shelf in a back storage room for a generation or it can be revitalized season after season and value added to it. When you work with a generation after generation, you continue to improve it and add value and vitality to the seed.

Matthew Dillon is agricultural policy and programs manager at Clif Bar & Company. He also is director of Seed Matters, an initiative of the Clif Bar Family Foundation to improve organic seed systems.

In his role as agricultural policy and programs manager, Matthew serves as the company’s liaison with state and federal officials on organic policy issues. He also works with leaders in the organic industry, non-governmental organizations and academia. At Seed Matters, Matthew directs an effort to support projects that conserve crop diversity, protect farmers’ roles as seed innovators, and reinvigorate public seed research

Where do you buy your seeds? How do you know they are the best: the best for your garden, your farm, your family, your community, your planet?

Every time you buy seeds, you start over. You miss the opportunity to take the best of your previous harvest into the next season. You miss the opportunity to take advantage of the most powerful magic a seed offers. Seeds represent the only truly self-replicating technology you will ever hold in your hand: living, breathing embryos; software and hardware rolled into neat little packages ready to collectively incorporate changes in your immediate environment. If you ignore the potential, you break the cycle.

For 300 generations, humans have been saving the seeds that worked well where they lived. Seeds were saved and replanted again and again in an elegant ritual to create, out of wild plants, the food crops that now feed the world. Our industrial agriculture, in only two generations, shattered this tradition. Up to 90% of the individual and nuanced varieties adapted to each unique ecology, tongue and culture around this beautiful planet have disappeared from widespread use.

When you buy seeds, you can look at colorful pictures. You can read about size, shape, color, maturation, and disease resistance, but rarely will you find where the seeds were grown, or by whom. Little or no story comes wrapped around the seeds to help you properly continue the cycle.

We believe the best seeds are the ones you can’t buy. If you need seeds to start your own reconnection to this powerful ritual, look first to others in your own community who have already discovered this powerful potential. Seed exchanges or seed libraries offer a way to piggyback upon successful local attempts at readapting varieties to your particular climate. If you don’t have a local seed exchange or seed library, start one. Seedlibraries.org can link you with those who can show you how.

No matter what you do, plant something this year, and save your own seeds. Rejoin the ritual. Continue the cycle instead of breaking it.

Bill McDorman is Executive Director and co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance (RMSA), a new non-profit seed conservation organization serving the Rocky Mountain West. He was previous director of Native Seeds/SEARCH in Tucson. Bill founded 3 seed companies including Seeds/Trust High Altitude Gardens and co-founded several non-profits including the Sawtooth Botanical Garden in Hailey, Idaho. He is author of Basic Seed Saving which he wrote in 1994. He and his wife Belle Starr, former Deputy Director of NS/S and co-director of the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance created an innovative week-long training called Seed School, the educational center-piece of RMSA. Recently they launched a signature webinar series called Seed School Online.