Voices of the Bioneers: Saving Seeds of the World

These resources stand between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we cannot imagine. In a very real sense, the future of the human race rides on these materials. The line between abundance and disaster is becoming thinner and thinner and the public is unaware and unconcerned.

-Jack Harlan, retired professor of plant genetics, University of Illinois at Urbana

Two-thirds of the people on Earth live on what they're able to grow. In the U.S., 43 million families now grow part of their own food. At the same time, there is increasing concern about the loss of the world's native seed strains.

The only place genes can be stored is in living systems -- either in the living branches, such as in budwooded apple trees, or in the living embryos of grains and vegetable seeds. Native varieties rapidly become extinct once they're dropped in favor of introduced hybrid seed. That extinction can take place in a single year if the seeds are cooked and eaten instead of being saved as seed stock. Quite literally, the genetic heritage of a millennium in a particular valley can disappear in a single bowl of porridge.

The Immigration of Seeds

Because the U.S. and Canada are nations of immigrants, today's gardeners are blessed with an immense cornucopia of food crops. Gardeners and farmers from every corner of the world invariably brought their best seeds when their families immigrated. Seeds provided living remembrances of their former lives and assured continued enjoyment of foods from the Old Country.

Millions of immigrants came through Ellis Island with seeds hidden under the bands of their hats, in the linings of their suitcases, and sewn into the hems of dresses. You can bet there are seeds carried in today by refugees and immigrants from Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, Laos and Cambodia. We are truly blessed with the best seeds from every corner of the world. Much of this tremendous heritage has never been systematically collected.

This vast, almost unknown genetic treasure is quietly being maintained by elderly gardeners and farmers in isolated rural areas and ethnic enclaves all over North America. Often these living heirlooms have been grown on the same family farm by different generations for up to 150 years. Plants grown in the same location for that long gradually develop resistance to local diseases and insects, and become well adapted to specific climates and soil conditions.

Today, because of continuing deterioration of rural economies, young people are abandoning the land, leaving elderly gardeners with no one willing to maintain their seeds. As this older generation passes away, these outstanding strains will become extinct unless dedicated gardeners are willing to continue planting their unique seeds.

Genesis of a Seed Saver

When my wife Diane and I founded Seed Savers in 1975, we immediately started trying to find other people who were keeping heirloom varieties when they immigrated. Our twin goals were to do everything we could to reverse genetic erosion and to dramatically increase the diversity that was available to gardeners and farmers who were growing healthy food for their families.

Every January, Seed Savers publishes a yearbook that lists all the seeds being maintained by our members. In 1975, that network consisted of 29 people offering a few dozen varieties through a six-page newsletter. Today, the network has grown to 1,000 members who offer 12,000 rare varieties of vegetables and fruits through a 460-page yearbook sent out to more than 8,000 gardeners.

Seed Savers members have used the organization's publications to distribute an estimated 750,000 samples of rare seeds that have never been in commercial catalogs and were often on the verge of extinction. In 1981, many of our members expressed concern that many of their favorite varieties were being dropped from seed catalogs. In response, I spent three years compiling the first edition of the Garden Seed Inventory, a comprehensive survey of the U.S. and Canadian mail-order seed industry.