As I am sat here writing this, just over 100 miles north of here in the Cairngorms National Park a whole landscape is burning. The precious peat, the deep carbon store below the ground, is smouldering, fuelling a persistent fire that is slowly burning out of control and in its wake releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it combusts. And the news on the radio reminds me that just across the channel, in mainland Europe, huge swathes of land are also in flames.

Our climate is in chaos, and the reality of this chaos is directly impacting our day to day lives. I’ve been struggling, like so many friends and colleagues, to carry the weight of all this. To understand where to channel all these feelings of fear, loss, anger and ultimately guilt. How to avoid the inevitable paralysis and take meaningful action.

Something I am trying to accommodate amid all this worry is the notion that as agroecological farmers and growers, every day we do this work and don’t give up, we are taking some form of positive action.

Growing local organic or agroecologically produced food seems more critical than ever. As a country we import over 40% of our food. 45% of our veg supply and 83% of fruit is grown overseas. Much of these crops are grown in mainland Europe, and with the long term impact of the heatwave and wildfires as yet unknown, one could predict that there will be repercussions to the food supply chain and what will be available on supermarket shelves in coming months.

Local agroecological market gardens can produce an abundance of food per acre; the diverse and intensive nature of production and focus on soil health means that they have capacity to feed 100’s of local families from just a few acres of land and still have positive ecological benefits. With shorter, locally focused supply chains we have the capacity to be much more self-sufficient in terms of producing our own fruit and vegetables here in the UK. But climate chaos is also impacting food production at this scale.

This week we have been navigating farming without water. It hasn’t rained for weeks, and with a broken borehole pump and delays to its repair out of our control, we’ve had zero irrigation on the market garden for 6 days. Just 6 days, but the impact has been visceral. And fellow market gardeners across the UK are all facing their own version of this story. A persistent heatwave, bone dry soils, a lack of national infrastructure to cope with the demands on increased irrigation - dedicated humans are being pushed to the limits in a system that does not recognise the value of this work. The knock-on effects of this summer will persist well in the winter months and beyond. This system is still fragile. With more support, market gardens can absolutely contribute to the need for less importation and therefore overall food security. But diversification also feels key to this narrative. This could look like growers exploring new and novel crops, trialling alternatives to our staples, expanding into perennials. But that diversity could also come from seed, and the small but potent act of seed stewardship.

I am constantly humbled by the sheer tenacity of plants. In the past week on the farm, plants have stopped flowering, stopped setting fruit, some have succumbed to secondary problems as their cell walls loose turgidity due to lack of water and they become vulnerable to pests and disease. But some haven’t.

And this is where we can join forces with plants to take meaningful action. We can steward crops through these challenges and save seed from those that survive and thrive. Growing open pollinated (OP) crops rather than F1 Hybrids empowers us to do this: they are genetically stable enough that we can reliably save seed from them, but they offer a degree of genetic diversity within a population to give us the freedom to select. As seed stewards, we can harness that diversity through observation: looking for the plants that survive the challenges of this summer, helping plants take those survival skills through to the next generation by saving their seed.

It is understood that genetic mutation creates new traits in a plant, but research indicates that epigenetics also has a role to play, and it might be these subtle shifts that are the most influential when we are saving seed in-situ on farms or in gardens. Epigenetics is the process by which a plant adapts its gene activity to survive an environmental stimuli, without changing their core DNA sequence. These changes are not fixed, they can be switched on or off, and they allow plants to react quickly to changing surroundings. And crucially these adaptations, or ‘memories’, can be passed on to the next generation, so when we save seed from enough plants that have survived this drought, we are helping these plants build a reserve of adaptation tactics to draw upon in the future - creating more resilient crops. And the more diversity we facilitate in the field, the greater the capacity for these plants to adapt.

While attending a recent conference, during a session on the future of democratic seed systems, a representative from a European gene bank suggested that conservation organisations and farmers should be handing their seeds over to gene banks and other academic institutions, as only they had the skills to breed plants that will cope with impending climate breakdown. In some views, farmer stewardship is no longer relevant: it is not fast or effective enough. This is a view that can be easily reinforced by some underperforming OP varieties. Over the last century some open pollinated crops have indeed deteriorated in quality due to lack of stewardship. When F1 Hybrids were introduced during the ‘Green Revolution’, many open pollinated traditional varieties and landraces were left behind in favour of this new technology, and much diversity was lost. One of the benefits of OPs, particularly for organic and agroecological systems, is their ability to adapt and evolve but they need continuous stewardship to do this and to remain relevant. If an open pollinated crop has not been grown for many years or has been grown in a very different climate, they will often underperform as they’re simply out of context. ‘Heirloom’ varieties drawn straight from storage often underachieve because they’ve remained static for too long, or they’ve become genetically bottle necked through too small a population. Something this summer has made very clear is that the climate is changing at unprecedented rates, so to take something out of storage and expect it to grow well is asking a lot. Unstewarded, they simply cannot compete with that notorious ‘hybrid vigour’, or with conventional crops bred to rely on heavy inputs of fertiliser and pesticides. Much like us, these open pollinated plants perform best when learning by doing. And it is important to remember that the potential is there, if we choose to dedicate time and effort to their stewardship.

Emerging new genomic techniques could certainly be a tempting alternative solution to the challenges we now face– Precision Breeding (PBOs) makes targeted DNA changes that can speed up crop development and offer quick fixes for disease resistance, climate resilience and even better nutrition. A drought tolerant climbing bean would undoubtedly be appealing to many market gardeners this summer. It would be easy to react to the fear and urgency spurred on by this heatwave to accept a seemingly quick and targeted solution to a problem.

The problem here (aside from the unknown consequences of gene editing beyond the target trait) is that this system is driven by commercial incentive. It is the opposite of seed sovereignty. To differentiate itself from traditional genetic modification, NGT claims it must be something that could occur naturally in a plant, or through traditional breeding methods. Essentially a trait that the plant already has potential to express. But these Precision Bred Organisms (PBOs) are also considered a technology, and this trait can therefore be patented, dramatically limiting scope to develop any crops outside of this proprietary system. This process includes enforcement of user agreement licenses that prohibit seed saving and the future development (breeding) of these crops on farms. Patents are being used globally to protect corporate interest, and if we choose to rely on just this one option, we may find ourselves locked into a system that ultimately disempowers us further. We are essentially being asked to buy into a vision of a future that belongs to someone else. Although tempting to reach for the ‘quick fix’, arguably patents stifle innovation: limiting access to genetics beyond the lab, PBOs occur to me as just the next rung on a ladder to homogeneity.

According to DEFRAs recent Farming Roadmap 2050, the government wish to encourage ‘adaptation strategies that enhance resilience without exacerbating inequality’. With Precision Breeding having been given the green light in the UK, we need to find a route for these very different systems to co-exist in an equitable and transparent way to secure the future of agrobiodiversity.

Arguably the representative from the gene bank I mentioned earlier was not totally wrong when he suggested we might not be able to act fast enough in-situ. Some of our organic open pollinated crops have, as a sweeping generalisation, deteriorated in quality due to lack of care. But my own experience of on farm seed stewardship suggests there is vast potential still held within these crops, and we could learn from both the plants and our ancestors to unlock and expand horizons. As well as restoring stewardship of OP varieties, we can harness diversity and grow crops as evolutionary and dynamic populations. Through intentionally combining varieties with the specific traits we’re looking for, and facilitating promiscuous pollination to cross up genetics, we are opening up the possibility for plants to be much more responsive to change. And in my experience, this adaptation can happen fast, potentially as fast or quicker than the process of trialling and releasing a PBO, and is much more relevant (and acceptable) to organic and low input systems. Our diverse ‘flock’ of broad beans has been abundant in the field this year despite the challenges. And this is only year 3 of stewarding and saving seed from this population. But in those 3 years it has encountered a vast array of climactic conditions which it has learnt from and adapted to. And I have mentioned in previous blog posts the success of the Cucurbita maxima flock – selected for long term storage and flavour - this squash surprises me every year with its ability to cope with whatever is thrown at it and still produce delicious and beautiful fruit.

This plant breeding approach seems more effective with some species compared to others and it is an ongoing learning curve. But that is kind of the point – there isn’t a one size fits all solution to what is happening right now. It feels to me that breeding for one trait via any method is not a sensible approach to resilience: we need a diversity of solutions. The unpredictability of our future climate implies we should look to both horizontal resilience and vertical resistance for answers. And this is where in-situ plant breeding and seed stewardship does have an important role to play, as plants are experiencing life in real time in the field: experiencing biotic and abiotic stresses as they occur, developing a broader overall resilience rather than a targeted resistance. As well as exploring new and novel crops, and employing the reliability of commercially produced seed, the freedom to carry out this on farm seed stewardship and dynamic plant breeding feels vital for future food security. In these volatile times, it feels foolish to put all our eggs in one basket.

I was asked recently in an interview what gives me hope, and without sounding like a huge cliché, what truly gives me hope in moments like this is seed. Seeds contain so much potential just waiting to be unlocked through careful stewardship. And seeds have this beautiful ability to bring people together and build community, which also feels crucial in these chaotic times. Whether gathering people together through the very tangible practice of threshing and winnowing, or simply through validation: in finding yourself among a group of fellow plant nerds who relish conversations about plant epigenetics, who make complex maps of plant locations to trace flavour profiles to inform selection decisions, folks who trust enough in this process to give over precious space on their land to trial and play and co-create. Among seed savers, there is shared commitment and unspoken understanding that this is necessary work – that the most important thing is that a diversity of seed exists, is grown in a diversity of ways - and that we cannot do this work alone. This gives me hope.

Because what if, by stewarding seed collaboratively, we could begin to shift social norms? As outlined in DEFRAs roadmap, we need a range of innovative approaches to climate mitigation. Collectively, we can generate plant diversity in-situ with speed, and if there is then the freedom to exchange & access that diversity, we can make ourselves less reliant on a narrow catalogue of proprietary and commercially owned seed, and therefore more resilient to whatever the future holds. In advocating for seed and exploring its potential together, we can slowly and quietly become part of a revolution: not just of seed and food, but of land and soil and ecology and community.

Nutrient integrity of food is something that I have been interested in for some time, and has played a large part in my journey further and further into the world of seed. So, I was intrigued to hear that the recent BBC Food Programme with Dan Saladino focused on this topic.

This thought-provoking episode takes a deep dive into ‘dark matter’ – the biomolecules that make up the plants we grow and eat - and explores new science that is revealing the complexity hidden within our food. There are interviews with directors from the Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI), asking the often overlooked question - what is actually in food, and how does that impact us? We have known for some time the importance of secondary metabolites in plants – how they help a plant to defend itself against insect attack or disease, attract pollinators and even how they’re used as a form of communication - signalling to each other, and other living beings, through organic compounds. But this fascinating new research is revealing not only the complex biomolecules found in the plants we eat (the PTFI found over 20,000 specialised metabolites when analysing just 500 of our food crops), but how these vary based on how that food is grown, and the implications of the composition of these biomolecules on the quality of our food, on our health and the health of the planet.

In the same way they provide protection for the plant, secondary metabolites also support our health, offering numerous benefits: from disease prevention to antioxidant properties and anti-inflammatory effects. Conveniently, they are also some of the compounds responsible for flavour in our food – the things that stimulate our taste buds and keep us coming back for more. They are probably the things that encouraged the domestication of plants from their wild ancestors – enticing us, through flavour, into a centuries old relationship with plants. Re-centring our farming practices on increasing these compounds in plants, i.e focusing on flavour, provides an interesting path to reversing some of the damage of industrial agriculture, and healing our relationship with food.

To ensure more of these complex organic compounds reach our plates, we’d need to consider our management practices – in providing more natural growing conditions for plants, there is potential for these phytochemicals to be produced in abundance, the benefits of which cascade along the food chain and ripple out to our wider ecosystems. This involves using lower inputs, creating biologically active and resilient soils, minimising disturbance and harnessing the power of relationship. But considering our farming practices alone is not enough, we also need to consider how we transport, store and cook these crops: to preserve that all important flavour and ensure we benefit from these nutrient dense foods. It seems logical that local networks could be an answer to maintaining that higher nutrient value.

Everything is so deeply connected, to look to solve the nutrient integrity of food by tackling just one part of this puzzle is not enough, we need to be looking at the food system as a whole. Which is why I was struck, although not necessarily that surprised, by the absence of any mention of seed throughout the episode of the Food Programme.

To quote Lane Selman from the Culinary Breeding Network – ‘flavour begins with seed’. So why is it something that is so often left out of the conversation? If flavour can be an instigator for change in our farming system, then in my mind this starts with the process of selecting for that desired quality and flavour, and therefore it all starts with seed.

During the episode there is a wonderful discussion with Franco Fubini, founder of Natoora and author of In Search of the Perfect Peach. Natoora’s simple yet very effective ethos over the past 20 years has been: flavour first. Dan and Franco reflect on the power of focusing on flavour in our food system – describing how joy can be a catalyst for change. Franco suggests that when eating something delicious and full of flavour we experience joy - and because of that joy we are more inclined to recognise the value of the thing we are eating, which in turn drives the level of attention we give to where it is sourced or how it has been grown, driving more resources and care into its production. In Franco’s words, ‘joy helps us design a better food system through our choices’.

But in order for that flavour to reach our taste buds, it needs to have been identified and selected for by a plant breeder or an observant farmer in the field. Using their palette (and perhaps their own sense of wonder and joy) to guide them, the seed of that delicious plant needs to be carefully stewarded and saved with the intention of preserving or even improving that flavour for generations to come. To not consider the role of seed in this story seems, to me, paradoxical. We have been guiding plant genetics to better meet our needs since our days as hunter gatherers. Agriculture and food culture are deeply intertwined and seed is the thread that binds them together. Many flavours that are so familiar to us today have persisted in crop varieties over generations because of this reciprocity and connection.

The work of the PTFI has analysed many of those important biomolecular compounds at species level, but I wonder if they have also extended this research to variety level or cultivars? As described in the programme, if each crop has it’s ‘own special collection of chemistry’, imagine what each distinct variety of that crop might offer? And imagine the potential of genetically diverse populations that have been maintained by people for generations, or are being created anew, collectively and collaboratively with flavour at their heart. Imagine how through our plant breeding practices, we might intentionally increase these phytochemicals through meaningful stewardship – selecting for what tastes good to us and our communities.

Towards the end of the episode, Dan Saladino speaks with Dan Kittredge – founder of the Bionutrient Food Association, an organisation I have been following with much interest for a while now. The Bionutrient Food Association are, in their own words, ‘building a new food culture rooted in nutrient density, soil health and transparency’. They have been developing tools to measure nutritional value of food that can be used at consumer level, with the intention of driving systems change from the ground up. If people were able to measure the nutrient integrity of food in their local store, would this cause the shift our food system desperately needs? In the interview, Dan Kittredge acknowledges that in their extensive research they have seen a dramatic variation in nutrient density, and therefore flavour of food, no matter what soil type, management techniques or genetics are used. Although certain practices such as organic and no-till lend themselves to higher nutrient value overall, Dan shares that ‘you cannot predict nutrient density by a certification label or individual practice’. But the one thing that seems a constant in offering high nutrient integrity seems to be the level of function of the microbiome in the soil. ‘That is the primary causal dynamic of the level of nutrition in the food’. Their research indicates that plants with a better microbiome are healthier, have more complexity of flavour, and are better for us.

So ensuring we are farming in ways that promote an abundant and healthy biological community in the soil seems essential. Through the research of folks such a Dr James White and his team at Rutgers university, we now know that the relationship between plants and microbiology is far more complex than initially thought. Plants acquire a large proportion of their nutrients from consuming microbes, nutrient acquisition is often an active and symbiotic process from which both plant and microbes benefit – the plant is a holobiont – so it makes sense that the microbiome plays such a vital role in the level of nutrition in our food.

Interesting, then, to consider recent research showing how the microbiome of a plant is passed onto the next generation via the seed. The microbiology – those endophytes that have served that plant well in its lifetime – are vectored on the seed coat to the next generation. Once again seed has a vital role to play. Through the act of saving seed in-situ on our own farms or in our gardens, we are facilitating the passing on of that microbiome, giving the offspring of that crop the best possible chance at growing well in the same place, or locally, the next season, and therefore perpetuating nutrient density into the next generation and beyond. And if we factor our management practices into this equation – if we’re saving seed in systems which use lower inputs, have less soil disturbance, and encourage biodiversity (and hopefully bring us a little joy), then the impact of this process on plant health, on flavour of the crop and therefore on our health, could be exponential.

I was having a conversation with a fellow farmer the other day about how we locate water. They were hoping to install a borehole on their farm, and they shared, with some shock, that the company doing the investigations still use a water diviner to locate the best place to drill. ‘We don’t seem to have anything better’. It made me pause, and consider what might be considered ‘better’? A more modern, scientific approach, that utilises technology and comes with a high price point? I wondered if this would be deemed as ‘better’? Is divining not also a form of technology? Just older, and perhaps one that requires a level of trust, and ‘knowing’? Because we cannot scientifically explain it, there seems no logic to it, and yet here we are, in many cases, accepting it – and trusting it enough to invest large amounts of money in drilling wells based on the outcome of the diving rod.

Our relationship with seed was once based on this deep level of trust. This interaction made me contemplate at what point we misplaced this trust, at what point was this knowing and inexplicable understanding lost?

As a culture, we’ve moved away from seed work being a normal part of farm life. We outsourced responsibility for our seed to the ‘experts’ as modern plant breeding methods led to the development of something ‘better’. Much seed is now principally owned and controlled by a handful of large corporations, and this often includes the breeding process. Modern plant breeding has undoubtedly provided us with ways of overcoming some serious pest and disease, and has dramatically increased crop yields, but most of these benefits occur within the very specific context of industrial agriculture: high input, large scale food production that utilises technology to maximise yields and favours intensive farming practices. And in this current proprietary system of automation & standardisation, seeds have been severed from their natural environment.

Farmer led plant breeding and seed stewardship offers a highly dynamic strategy to adapt crops to both biotic and abiotic stresses. But as a farming community in the UK, there seems to be a deep mistrust of our own skills as seed stewards. A common response from fellow growers regarding seed is ‘to leave it to the experts’. But who is more of an expert on your land than you? As farmers and growers we are in intimate relationship with these crops day in day out and are some of the best placed people to steward and guide them in a direction that is most relevant to us. I am not dismissing ex-situ plant breeding, it is vital work and we need all of the tools in our toolbox to tackle the challenges we currently face. But again it comes back to context. In our current system, it has become further and further removed from the relationships of reciprocity that might offer true resilience.

I have been growing and saving seed for several years now, and each season I am surprised, delighted and astounded by the process. I am not a scientist, so I don’t have any peer reviewed research or robust data sets to share to prove why farmer led plant breeding is invaluable. But like the diving rod, the process of seed saving asks us, in a way, to trust in something beyond our own comprehension.

As I have shared before, something I love about seed work is that it requires us to reconnect with plants on a basic level, to slow down and really observe them with open curiosity. Among the crops we are growing this year at East Neuk Market Garden (ENMG), there are several that are now in year two, three or four even, of being saved on the farm or by others locally. While carefully potting up the tomato seedlings earlier this spring, I noticed a dramatic difference in hairiness between the seedlings of farm-saved seed to those that had been bought in. Had this trait inadvertently been selected for? This is totally anecdotal of course, and perhaps requires us to lean into the idea that plants know what they are doing, but to my mind these plants had grown themselves a warm jacket against the cold springs here - learning from their previous generations experiences and adapting accordingly. These seedlings also germinated faster, and were more vigorous than many of the other cultivars sown at the same time, something that is a common observation amongst seed savers everywhere.

Resilience is something that seems to go hand in hand with on farm seed stewardship. Crops become better adapted to their local environment and soil as they get to know their surroundings. And resilience can also be found in the less rigid breeding process and broader gene pool that tends to emerge through this process. Alongside the tomatoes at ENMG, we’re also growing two diverse squash flocks supported by the Going to Seed Farmer Programme. This programme supports commercial farmers wanting to explore the possibilities of evolutionary populations and the longer term benefits that might come from genetically diverse crops. It is innovative programmes like this that are making it possible for farmers to take the leap of faith required to intentionally start stewarding their own seed.

I was very fortunate to have some squash seed gifted to me by fellow grower and friend, Jayne Arnold from Oxton Organics, to grow in this trial. Jayne created this flock several years ago by mixing together some of her favourite varieties of winter squash and allowing them to cross pollinate. She has been saving seed from what survived and thrived since, only keeping seed from the tastiest fruit. Last year Oxton Organics was one of the few market gardens I know of in the UK that had a successful and bountiful squash harvest. Again, anecdotal, but it seems to me that perhaps these plants, diverse in their gene pool and grown in Oxtons soil for several years, were more resilient to the challenges of the season. Another unintended but wonderful outcome of this project has been the community it has created. As a commercial veg box scheme, Jayne didn’t have the luxury of keeping all her squash harvest for seed. So, she took her customers on this journey with her, asking them to send back seed from any of the squash they thought were particularly delicious. Through this participatory process, her customers are now perhaps that little bit more invested in where their food comes from, for they have become part of its story. And this brings resilience in an altogether different way. I’ll be growing this flock at ENMG this season, seeing how it fairs in a new location with the intention of adapting it to the needs of both the environment and community here in the East Neuk of Fife.

Alongside the squash and tomatoes, we are stewarding many other seed crops at East Neuk Market Garden this season. Some are being grown on contract for seed companies, others for ourselves and for sharing. We’re also carrying out several variety trials to see what might grow well, or adapt to growing well, on this agroecological farm in coastal Fife. All of this is somehow slotted into the already hectic schedule of a busy market garden – growing vegetables for 160 CSA shares alongside supplying multiple shops, restaurants and cafes in the area. What I am trying to convey is that this isn’t easy, it’s all extra work. And in the current economical landscape it is asking a lot of farmers to even contemplate adding to their already impossible workloads. But I fundamentally believe that the benefit of stewarding our own seed can be exponential. I.e, it is worth it.

I appreciate that these are just stories that I have shared: anecdotal and without scientific evidence to back them up. But stories can be powerful instigators for change. They open the door to a liminal space, a transitional zone that presents a new way of being. And a new way of being is what is needed, because it occurs to me that the current system is not working: it is not nourishing us or the planet.

In the seemingly insignificant act of growing some seed, we could all be contributing to transformational change. Seed stewardship disrupts the cycle of ownership and contributes to increased diversity and resilience - taking a small but mighty step towards food sovereignty.

I had originally planned to attend the OSGC during my Churchill Fellowship travels last year, but the 2024 conference was postponed. So it was with much excitement that I made the journey back to Oregon in February to attend the event in 2025.

The conference takes place over several days, with optional pre-conference symposiums and farm tours in the lead up to the main event, followed by two jam packed days of workshops, panel discussions and presentations at the conference itself. This year’s theme - weaving visions of organic seed communities - served as an invitation to strengthen the connections that sustain this seed movement while honouring the distinct yet interwoven histories and collective wisdom of seed stewards around the world.

Wanting to make the most of my time back amongst this inspiring community, I was up bright and early on the Thursday morning to catch the bus for the pre-conference farm tours. The schedule for the day took us to many businesses and organisations involved in seed work: from the department of Plant Breeding and Genetics at Oregon State University, to the National Clonal Germplasm Repository, to brand new seed farm Summertime Seed and ending the tour at established seed company Adaptive Seeds. Visiting all of these places in one day reminded me of the proliferation of seed work that occurs in this area. In just one day, we got a behind the scenes glimpse into the huge diversity of jobs and skills required to really keep this seed movement alive, meeting some of the dedicated folks who make it all happen. It brought back the sense of abundance that I so keenly felt during my time here last summer. But what was also very apparent this time round was the growing sense of urgency to do this important work.

With the shifting social and political landscape, many of the places we visited during the tour are currently under threat; through loss of funding, contracts or staff. The impacts of the new administration in the U.S are being felt throughout this farming community. It would be easy to become despondent faced with so many challenges. But rather than succumb to despair, the mood amongst folks that day, and in fact throughout the entire conference, was once of strength and resistance. Seed work is vital work, and those that are involved in it are deeply committed to what they do. As quoted in one of the opening conference sessions: to deny somebody seed is to deny someone existence. This conference - centred around sharing, community and collaboration - felt like a powerful act of resistance in itself. A passionate retaliation against the current political discourse of uncivilization that favours the individualist mindset, and a hierarchical and purist narrative.

And community was definitely at the heart of the Organic Seed Growers Conference, with a programme that covered everything from seed production to policy to seed stories - it is weaving a stronger movement and tightening our bonds through the threads that connect us. As Vivien Sansour shared during one of her panel discussions- ‘seeds have been saving us for millennia’. In bringing us together at this conference, seeds are continuing this great undertaking. By intentionally creating a space to listen to each other, to share seed stories, to better understand our histories and our trauma, seeds offer us a path to healing and to forging new ways of being together.

During my time at the conference, I was invited to share my own seed story at the second keynote session - the inaugural Seedy PechaKucha. An exciting spin on the usual keynote format, 6 of us were allocated 400 seconds each to share our seed focused stories, with the aid of 20 slides that auto advance every 20 seconds. Although initially terrifying, this ‘chit chat’ style of presenting turned out to be a lot of fun, and I felt grateful for the trust and support from my fellow PechaKucha crew. I took this opportunity to share how my seed community back home are sowing the seeds of resistance – through the Seed Sovereignty Programme’s Crowd Breeding Project.

The Crowd Breeding Project is a participatory plant breeding project aimed at collectively curating diverse populations of crops. It was inspired by many projects in the US and Canada, and seeks to restore diversity to our seed system and empower and inspire farmers to engage in the process of plant breeding. One of the most powerful and unexpected outcomes of this project so far has been the community that has emerged; working collaboratively has offer the opportunity for solidarity & support between a group of farmers spread throughout the British isles, and it was a privilege to share this story with fellow seed growers across the Atlantic. Like the Organic Seed Growers Conference, the Crowd Breeding Project is nurturing a culture of diversity and belonging.

As K Greene shared during the Non Binary Botany session, ‘plants are part of how we take care of each other’. They facilitate a mutual flourishing.

Alongside the scheduled conference programme, there were also plenty of features and events running throughout the two days: a highlight being the mini Variety Showcase, curated by Lane Selman of the Culinary Breeding Network. Much like the Variety Showcase I attended back in September, Lane brought folks from this community together over delicious culinary bites that showcased innovative plant breeding and seed work. What felt unique about hosting the showcase in this specific context, however, was the captive audience. Everyone there had a vested interest in seed work, and this amplified the celebratory vibe – a wonderful moment to truly revel in each others hard work and sample the rewards of intentional seed stewardship. I was offered the chance to showcase the work of the Gaia Foundation Seed Sovereignty Programme at the event, and shared stories of more of the amazing seed work happening in the UK and Ireland, albeit without any delicious snacks to share!

From the work of the Open Source Seed Initiative, to reflections on seeds in diaspora, to the importance of the threshing stick! I learnt so much during my time at the Organic Seed Growers Conference, and was once again astonished by the generosity of this community, and all those who shared their experience, skills and knowledge. Towards the end of the conference, during the small seed company round table on the Saturday afternoon, Andrew Still from Adaptive Seeds flipped the script and posed the audience an important question– ‘why did you get into seed work?’ It feels like we’re not often asked to reflect on why we make the choices we do. For me, seed work is fundamental, and I cannot imagine not doing it. But when encouraged to probe deeper and really reflect on why it is I continue to do what I do, what comes up for me is connection. There is the connection between me and the plants that will grow. Between my ancestors who held seeds in their hands, planting them deep in the earth. But also the connection to those who I collaborate with in the present moment, like all of the folks I spent time with at this wonderful event. And my community back home, collectively stewarding seed on its journey beyond our lifetimes. But more than that, seed work offers a connection to the wider cycles of life and the millions of more than human beings that work together to allow these crops to thrive. To the myriad of interactions that occur every second determining how that seed will germinate and grow. Seed work reminds me how everything is intrinsically connected and in relationship.

In a world filled with disconnection and isolation, where our attention is pulled in multiple directions at once, seed growing asks us to slow down, to connect and be present in the moment. I like to think this has a ripple effect, impacting how we move through the rest of our lives, defining the space we make for each other, how we listen and share.

Caring in our own sphere of influence.

The Context

Seeds and humans have co-evolved since the beginning of our existence – there is a deep history of relationship where we worked in collaboration with plants, selecting the tastiest and most productive from wild populations to bring into cultivation, forming a reciprocal relationship that allowed both plants and humans to thrive. But somewhere along the way we’ve forgotten that. And the impact of which we’re only now fully realising. Seed is at the heart of our food system, but it is the thing that is most often least considered, or taken for granted.

As farmer led seed stewardship has dwindled in the UK, importation has increased, and we currently import around 80% of our seed. Although not practical to grow all seed crops here, we can be doing significantly more. The fragility of this import system has been demonstrated both in the covid pandemic and with Brexit. Restrictions on importation of seed since leaving the EU has seriously impacted variety availability for small scale farmers. What happens when the seeds we order each winter don’t arrive in the post?

As well as importing much of our seed, due to the industrialisation of agriculture, most investment in plant breeding over recent decades has been in producing F1 Hybrids rather than Open Pollinated varieties suitable for organic systems. Hybrids are important: hybridisation is the foundation of plant breeding, and they can offer reliability and uniformity for growers. The problem is they also contribute to the commodification of seed. F1 Hybrids are only genetically stable for one generation. Which means if you want to continue growing that variety, you need to return to the breeder or seed company to repurchase that seed each year. We’ve got ourselves into a situation where seed has become a commodity, the control of these seeds in the hands of just a few corporations, and farmers and growers have a serious lack of power and agency when it comes to seed and the choice of varieties they grow.

We are not only becoming limited in inter-varietal diversity, but due to strict plant variety legislation we are also restricted in intra-varietal diversity. Most new varieties, before they can be sold at any scale in the UK, must be registered on the government National Varieties List, and to get onto the list the seed must be proven to be Distinct Uniform and Stable. This means the variety must be novel in some way, plants must have no phenotypic or genotypic variation, and the variety must not evolve or change when propagated. This is obviously of benefit for farmers who need uniformity and consistency in their crops, but it is aimed at large scale agriculture where only significant volumes of seed are likely to be traded. These restrictions leave little room for diversity in the market, or for opportunities for farmer-led plant breeding.

There is also an element of complacency in assuming these static varieties we rely upon will always perform well - our climate is rapidly becoming more unpredictable. By forcing genetic uniformity in all our crops, where is the plasticity, the ability to adapt and respond to the demands of the environment? Then there is the threat of genetic modification, the unknown implications this might have on food security...

All of this has been contributing to a growing sense of urgency and a need for decisive change in this sector. Working for the Seed Sovereignty Programme, and as a commercial veg and seed grower, I was becoming increasingly aware of the limitations of the current system, and I felt empowered to take action.

The intention of my Churchill Fellowship was to visit the thriving seed network of the Pacific Northwest of the US and Canada to explore how an alternative structure: a farmer-led, collaborative and less restricted approach to seed production can facilitate the creation of a more resilient and diverse seed system. I wanted to really unpick what is needed to build a thriving and abundant seed network, and understand what it would take to achieve something similar here in the UK.

I immersed myself in a network of farmers who were very much embracing the radical possibilities of seed, and demonstrating what could be possible if we step outside of the constraints of our current system. Reflecting on my experiences, the essence for building a movement for change here in the UK seems rooted in several key themes: abundance, intentional stewardship, collaboration and freedom.

Abundance

Plants are inherently abundant, often providing us with far more seed than we can ever need. A plant, if allowed, will set seed with many hundreds if not thousands of seed to ensure to continuation of its genetics. Anyone who has ever allowed a brassica crop go to seed will know that you end up with far more seed than you could ever need. They just want to give. The very nature of seed saving encourages you to share, it’s hard to be selfish when you’re a seed saver. In that way, seeds have the power to build community, they are asking to be shared and swapped and traded.

I spent 4 months travelling around the Pacific Northwest and I still couldn’t meet or visit with all of the seed folks I wanted to – indicating the sheer number of people in the seed network there. What I encountered was an abundance of people stewarding or connected to seed, and it clearly demonstrated that we have capacity for many more people doing similar work here in the UK. With more of us seed saving, we can actively challenge the current system of commodity, creating a movement for real systems change.

As plant breeder Carol Deppe proclaimed when I met her in Corvallis, ‘You breed your own values right into the variety’. Every individual brings a bit of their personality to the selection process, each person will be breeding plants just a little bit different to everyone else. I visited many seed companies on my Fellowship, and like the plants they nurture, these producers were able to coexist in relative proximity to each other because they have found their niche, because they all bring something unique to their stewardship. Like a balanced ecosystem, there was no obvious competition amongst the stakeholders.

Witnessing the abundance of seed stewards led me to reflect on what could be possible here in the UK and Ireland. We have a handful of amazing organic seed producers, but not nearly enough. Where is locally resilient seed going to come from, if it’s not coming from us? We need more people to be stewarding and guiding our food crops, all with different priorities and preferences but all working towards a similar goal of growing local quality organic seed. The more people there are doing this important work, the more diversity seems to thrive.

Intentional Stewardship

It is possible to identify all of the logical reasons why we should be saving seed, but all of that is irrelevant unless there’s a connection at a deeper level. We can breed and save seed from all the new novel varieties we want, but unless they really mean something to people and have stories that can be shared, will they persist? Seed needs to be grown with purpose and intent beyond just making money. Among many of the people I visited on my Fellowship, there was the presence of a meaningful relationship between the steward and the seed, and often the wider community. There existed a tangible connection to these varieties. Whether that be for culinary purpose, like the the varieties grown by Uprising Seeds, or the ancestral wisdom carried in the varieties stewarded by Bonnetta from Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance. There was a reason to be growing every seed in their catalogue, and a story behind every variety.

If we are to restore seed sovereignty here in the UK, I feel we need to step outside of the current models of commodity and scarcity, and grow crops that have a purpose, weaving these varieties back into our lives and our culture. When people ask me what seed to save, I always recommend to save something they love, because there needs to be intention and purpose behind the action to give it longevity. Our seeds need to be close to our hearts, they need to be deeply entangled with our communities and with very specific places and environments - they need to be part of the family.

Community & Collaboration

The dominant narrative in our modern world is that humans can exist in isolation, but everything lives in relationship to everything else, and we are no exception. Modern agriculture isolates and creates otherness, this is all causing deep harm. Throughout my Fellowship, I was exposed to a rich community that had embraced the power of collaboration. From specific varieties that seemed to be grown by everyone from Oregon all the way up to Vancouver Island, to the generosity I experienced throughout my travels, to the final couple of days participating in the Culinary Breeding Network Variety Showcase – there was an underlying sense of cooperation rather than competition within the network.

Amongst everyone I visited there was a humbling openness– a genuine interest in each other’s work and a willingness to share and collaborate. This openness fostered a nurturing and exciting energy. With support from organisations such as the Organic Seed Alliance, the Bauta Family Initiative and the Culinary Breeding Network, there was also a sense of belonging and cooperation within the wider food community. It may seem radical in our capitalist society, but through supporting each other in their shared interests and providing transparency and freedom of choice to consumers, this seed network is providing a very viable alternative to the industrial seed system.  

Collaborative ways of working can be harnessed in many ways to incite change – and one of the most exciting methods I encountered on my Fellowship were the many participatory breeding projects: alternative ways of working that are centred in the notion of collaboration. The antithesis of modern plant breeding, these participatory projects are farmer led and non-proprietary. They create opportunity for direct feedback from a diversity of stake holders, from breeders to farmers to consumers, and therefore produce varieties that are fundamentally relevant: like the much-needed varieties of open pollinated broccoli that sprung from Jim Myers work at OSU. This way of working harnesses the power of collaboration, shares the risks and speeds the plant breeding process up. These projects are empowering for everyone involved: they bring people together with a common purpose, diminishing any sense of complacency by inspiring action and innovation.

If we can’t access the crop varieties we need, we need to make noise about it, tell our local MPs, but also feel empowered to take action ourselves. With more participatory projects like this in the UK, we could really begin to take control back of our seed system, maintaining and developing varieties that have purpose and are relevant to us.

Freedom

Working in this way is movement building, and it also requires a large degree of freedom. Freedom and autonomy to experiment, to react and to adapt.

Our current UK seed legislation seems prohibitively restrictive. My experience amongst the seed growers in the Pacific Northwest demonstrated to me the power that can found in having more freedom, and in ‘breaking the rules’. Encouraging on-farm stewardship and having more heterogeneity in crops equips both farmers and plants with the tools to cope, in real time, with the challenges of a changing climate. Hank from Avoca Seeds demonstrated this in his Dazzling Blue kale – by allowing for broader genetic diversity when breeding this variety, some of the population survived the extreme ice storms of last winter and the crop was not lost: ‘overall resilience can only come from diversity’. As our ecosystem changes and evolves around us, so too must we let our plant kin change and adapt. By bottlenecking genetics in modern plant breeding practices, in Hank’s words we are simply ‘breeding for something that humans can think of’ and not letting plants reach their full potential.

We’re so used to seeing row upon row of identical plants, vast fields of monocultures, there is something fundamentally joyful about working with heterogenous crops and the playfulness and delight they insight. This freedom inspires breeding projects like Frank Morton’s lettuce mixes, or Adaptive Seed’s Open Oak Party Mix corn – which are then shared and embraced by others who can take that population in a new direction. Diversity breeds diversity, the benefits of which could be exponential. 

Having witnessed the advantages of this freedom, it feels imperative we start to challenge the current status quo here in the UK and explore all of our options in producing resilient crops of the future. I’m not dismissing the cultural and historical importance of well-loved heirloom varieties, nor do I want to dismiss the value of resilient OP and F1 hybrids when bred in a non-commodified system. They are an important part of this story and the future. But if we become more open to diversity within each crop, to these adaptive populations, we open ourselves up to a vast genetic pool to dip into in this time of instability. What if we let go of the idea of purity, challenge current legislation and adopt a more open approach to genetics and stewardship?

I acknowledge that I only had a brief glimpse into the seed network in the Pacific Northwest, and that they are facing their own unique set of challenges. But my time amongst this established network has given me so much inspiration and most importantly, hope. As I have observed on my travels, so much more could be possible. This is healing work. We could dwell on all that is not working, or we could decide to act, to be part of a movement for change. Together, we could take a step into the liminal space and begin a new way of being, where we embrace the radical possibilities of seed.

It was rather poetic then, that the final few days of my trip coincided with the 10^th anniversary of the Culinary Breeding Network’s Variety Showcase – the ultimate catalyst for community building and collaboration within this network.

The event, held annually, is dedicated to illuminating the significance of organic seed and emphasising inclusivity in the plant breeding process for all members of the food system. When I first arrived in the US back in May, I spent my first week with Lane Selman from the Culinary Breeding Network, and many of the people I had subsequently met on my travels were planning on attending the event, so it was with much anticipation that I said farewell to Canada to make my way back into the US and down to Portland.

Held in the Redd in Portland’s Central Eastside Industrial District, the Variety Showcase draws attendees from the US, Canada and beyond. The sold-out event ran for 4 hours on a sunny September Sunday afternoon, and as part of the volunteer team helping Lane throughout the day, I got behind the scenes experience of how an event like this comes together.

In the months running up to the event, plant breeders, researchers and farmers are partnered with local chefs, who devise exclusive dishes featuring the specific cultivar or line the breeder has been working on. These groups are then each allocated a table at the event to showcase both the seed and culinary work. The space was set out with some 40 stations, each spotlighting organic breeding and seed work.

Lane’s goal for these events is ‘to shed light on the importance of organic seed and engage everyone in the plant breeding process’. The intention is to bridge the gap between eaters and breeders, encouraging conversation and sharing of opinions. The delicious dishes, created by the chefs, celebrate the work of the plant breeder while also showcasing the diversity and potential of organic seed. Attendees have the unique experience of tasting these new and in-development vegetable, fruit and grain cultivars, and giving direct feedback to the breeders. The event offers the rare opportunity to chat directly to those making big decisions behind the scenes.

Many of us are often working away in silos, heads down, busy with the day to day - inadvertently isolating ourselves. The Variety Showcase breaks down all these barriers. For members of the public who attend, it’s a rare glimpse into the organic seed world, allowing them to gain a greater understanding of plant breeding’s role in shaping the food that they eat. And for the farmers, breeders and researchers, it’s all about strengthening their connection to those who eat their food, enabling them to make decisions on the plant breeding process based on direct feedback.

‘The Variety Showcase has been wonderful for me because by working with chefs, I’ve gained new perspectives on the crops I am breeding. This is particularly important for those crops which don’t really fit existing market specs. I think that participatory plant breeding is generally important because it provides direct feedback on breeding needs and objectives and keeps the breeder from developing materials that don’t suit the end users.’ Jim Myers, OSU.

As well as celebrating food diversity within the organic seed network, the event also addresses some of the crucial issues in farming. The 10^th anniversary showcase had a special emphasis on Dry Farming, looking at alternative ways of producing food in these times of climate chaos. Attendees had the opportunity to learn all about the agricultural techniques being used to address our shifting climate directly from the farmers and researchers carrying out this important work. From melons to zucchinis to dry beans, crops that perform well under dry farm conditions were showcased at their peak and transformed into mouth-watering bites that celebrated their culinary attributes. Culinary grains also featured prominently at the event – with chefs and bakers collaborating with university breeding programmes and researchers to shine a spotlight on alternatives to industrial processed wheat. There were galettes and crackers and ginger scones galore, alongside sumptuous loaves of freshly baked bread, all raising the profile of the potential of alternative grains.

Many of the seed companies I have visited over the past 4 months attended the Variety Showcase – embracing the opportunity to get together and celebrate. And celebrate they did! My main takeaway from the event, from setup to break down and beyond, was the sheer joy that it seemed to bring about. Everyone involved, from Lane and her amazing team of volunteers to the participants and the attendees, seemed just so incredibly happy to be there. The Redd was the perfect venue to create a festival atmosphere, and with nearly 700 people from all parts of the food sector attending, the event certainly felt like a celebration.

The Variety Showcase offers everyone who attends the freedom to play and explore and form connections. From art exhibits displaying the beauty that can be found in everyday fruit and vegetables, to tastings of bourbon made from local corn, and plump beetroot mochi’s that had people queueing for more. The event brings people together with purpose and creativity, an opportunity to celebrate each other and everyones hard work.

The power of this event once again lies in relationship. If the Variety Showcase didn’t happen, I imagine all the stake holders involved would still continue doing what they do: breeding plants, growing crops, developing culinary dishes. But in coming together, in fostering connections through this brilliant event, their collective impact is far greater. Relationships develop, stories are shared, memories are created, community emerges and suddenly the seed has more meaning than simply being just another variety of lettuce. Crops are assimilated into community and culture, and diversity thrives. In bringing all these people together under one roof, the Culinary Breeding Network Variety Showcase has a profound impact, lasting far beyond just the one afternoon it is held each year.

Blue Raven Farm is a beautiful 5 acre property located near Corbett, north east of Portland. Nestled amongst woodland in the Sandy River catchment area, Jen and Casey Aron have been stewards of this land since 2015.

Jen Aron and I met through the Integrity Soils CREATE programme last September, and immediately hit it off. Sharing a love of soil and connection to nature, we spent the following 8 months taking a deep dive into all things regenerative farming together, becoming study partners and firm friends. Although CREATE was held in the UK, it attracted people from across the world, and Jen was one of those folks who had made the extra effort to participate from afar. As luck would have it, it turned out Jen is based in Oregon, one of the first stops on my planned Churchill Fellowship travels, so it was with much excitement that I first visited her farm back in May.

Jen has been farming since 2008, originally working for OSU extension, she battled with the struggles of annual tillage and fertiliser applications in conventional organic systems for many years before shifting her focus to agroecology. Realising that there must be another way to farming, Jen started to explore one of the most complex ecosystems on earth – soil. She signed up for the Soil Food Web School and sought out all of the groundbreaking research she could find in this emerging area of science. These explorations beautifully coincided with her and Casey’s move to Blue Raven Farm, providing her with a space to test out her newly acquired knowledge and eventually leading her to CREATE.

As Jen came to recognise and understand all of the billions of microorganisms under her feet, her practices leaned to minimising disturbance of their homes through reducing tillage. And once she better understood the beings that inhabited the soil, it was a logical next step to look at ways to feed and nurture them, so Jen started to use extensive cover crops in the rotation, leaving organic residue in situ when clearing beds to feed and support the biology below. There are no herbicides or pesticides used at Blue Raven Farm, instead Jen chooses a more holistic approach, making her own fungally dominant compost and vermicast extracts to stimulate biology, and inoculating seed before planting with trace minerals and biology.

In centring management practices around soil health, Blue Raven Farm has overcome some impressive challenges over the years. Symphylans that historically decimated root systems of newly planted crops are but a memory, and the weed burden within beds is drastically reduced. All of this has been carried out with the primary focus of running a thriving CSA scheme - the ecologically abundant soils producing healthy and nutrient dense crops which have been shared, up until recently, with the local community. Providing 60 CSA shares from just half an acre, Jen applied the regenerative practices she was learning to grow a bounty of delicious produce, delivering to the Mt. Tabor, Troutdale and SE Portland areas for 24 weeks of the year.

In 2024, Jen took the brave decision to take a break from growing for the CSA scheme, instead focusing her attention on CREATE, and fully embracing her role as a soil health advisor with the East Multnomah Soil & Water Conservation District (EMSWCD).

‘I’ve always been a farmer and an educator, I’ve never been able to pull those things apart. My very first farm gig was teaching, I was learning how to farm and turning around and teaching it right away, for a lot of years. And so it’s always been that. I think it’s always been about trying to get folks to connect to the soil, to the earth, to food and back to themselves.’

Jen works with the EMSWCD at their Headwaters farm near Gresham, where they run an incubator programme offering affordable and accessible access to farmland, resources and training for motivated and experienced individuals wanting to start their own farming businesses. As a soil health advisor at the site, Jen mentors programme participants, helping them navigate the complexities of farming on their lease plots, and empowering them to understand and grow healthy and resilient crops. The site at Headwaters is on marginal agricultural land - historically a ball and burlap tree nursery – and Jen has been working with the team there to run exciting soil health trials, encouraging a move away from traditional heavy discing and tilling and offering guidance in a more regenerative approach to soil management.

Understanding that everything is in life is intrinsically connected, Jen takes a whole systems approach to her work, not necessarily looking for those ‘silver bullet’ solutions, but instead asking lots and lots questions to better understand what is happening in each context. Jen is accompanying each of the farmers at Headwaters site on their own unique journeys of exploration, sharing all that she has learnt from a place of equity, integrity and love.

Back at Blue Raven Farm, soil is still at the heart of it all. When Jen and Casey arrived at the farm they planted hundreds of native trees, wildflower strips and an orchard, and the break from farming for the CSA this year has allowed them to focus attention on these aspects of the site, as well as on improving infrastructure. But soil has not been forgotten – Jen has sown the farm with incredibly diverse cover crops, inoculated with an array of biologicals and trace minerals. There are roots in the ground across the farm to encourage as much photosynthesis as possible, releasing those all-important root exudates to feed soil biology and store carbon. I helped to sow some of these on my first visit in June, and it was a joy to return and see them flourishing later in the summer. Extra exciting for me has been the emergence of some stewarding of seed crops at Blue Raven Farm…I wouldn’t want to take any credit for this, and it has been amazing to accompany Jen on this journey in understanding the connections between the soil and the seed. Last winter there were intense ice storms across this region, and many crops that would usually overwinter perished in the extreme conditions. Amazingly, some coriander plants survived this icy barrage, and Jen decided to allow these plants to go to seed, seeing the potential in their ability to survive for future crop resilience.

Spending time at Blue Raven Farm has been an important part of my journey. Although not a seed farm, my time here has been a persistent reminder of the connections between seed and soil health.

A recurring theme in many conversations throughout this trip has been that plants do not lack agency. There appears to be intention behind their behaviour and the relationships they form. In fact, in her recent book, The Light Eaters, Zoe Schlanger goes as far to say that plants ‘design the world around them to meet their needs’. This could certainly be said to be the case when it comes to the plant microbiome – the complex microbial assemblages formed by the plant. New research is revealing how a plant will actively select a microbial community to pass on to its progeny via the seed. It makes sense, therefore, that we do everything we can to help facilitate these relationships - by creating the most abundant and healthy environment for plants to flourish, and aid in passing that resilience on to the next generation via intentional seed keeping practices.

Blue Raven Farm offers a glimpse of what could be possible when these seed and soil narratives come together, and that has been incredibly exciting to witness. The farm has been such an inspirational place to return to on my travels. Always thriving with life, even in its rest year there is a sense of abundance and vitality. A home for all, it was exciting to hear Jen speak of what the future might hold for this very special place:

‘This education that we’ve just got from Nicole (Masters) and the CREATE team...how do we bring that to folks? Farmers work so hard to make so little, and they need all the help they can get. We need all the help we can get. I would like there not to be economic barriers for growing food that’s more resilient against climate change that we’re all dealing with, that’s making our jobs harder. And diversity is everything. It’s everything everything everything. From the community to the voices that are contributing to these big questions that we have, these potential solutions. And everybody working together to come to this place of greater understanding – we need all the voices. Just like we need all the microbes, we need all the birds, we need everything. Diversity is the crux - it’s everything.’

Jen is natural listener and a knowledgeable teacher, and it feels to me that Blue Raven Farm could become a hub of inspiration for others looking to move towards more holistic approaches to soil health and farm management. A place that could nourish and energise. With an acute understanding of the connections between plants, soil and seed, there’s a sense that anything is now possible for Blue Raven Farm.

And a story that is common amongst many in this network is the seemingly accidental but ultimately intuitive way a lot of people found their way to seed. One of those ‘accidental seed farmers’ is Fiona Hamersley Chambers of Metchosin Farm.

‘I never started thinking I was going to do this. My favourite variety of spinach when I was market gardening disappeared from the catalogue I was getting it from, which was West Coast Seeds. And I thought they grew all their own seeds. So, I went to William Dam and I looked in that catalogue and it was gone from there and I thought that’s weird. Ok well I’ll go to Veseys because Veseys will have it, and it was gone from there too. And suddenly this light bulb went off and I thought, wait a minute, and I phoned each of them, and I said – do you grow your own seeds?’

Discovering that none of the seed she had been buying for use on her farm was grown locally, Fiona set out to become a seed keeper.

‘I had some of the seeds left of that variety, and I just started saving them, and suddenly I had a kilo of seeds and all I needed was a quarter cup, and that’s how it started. The accidental seed grower!’

That was in 2004, and Fiona has now been keeping seed for the last two decades. She offers a hugely diverse seed catalogue ranging from vegetables to fruit to grains and pulses alongside a native seed collection from her base at Metchosin Farm. Located in the rural outskirts of the island’s capital, Metchosin Farm was unlike any seed farm I had yet encountered. Perhaps reflective of her English heritage, the farm is a beautiful medley of seed crops, perennials, orchard and meadow, all meandering into one another offering soft edges and little sign of the typical regimented rows. The farm felt like an old English garden, fennel sprouting from cracks in the ground and vines clambering over weathered archways, surrounded by borders of lavender. It felt cosy, helped by its location - nestled in the rain shadow of the Olympic Peninsula - Fiona explained how it was possibly one of the best climates in the world for growing seed.

Although she seemingly stumbled upon seed saving, Fiona is no amateur. As well as stewarding heirloom varieties, Fiona is often creating new ones too. She is an avid plant breeder, and through meticulous observation for any off types and crosses in the crops she grows, she has nurtured several ‘Metchosin Farm Originals’. I was lucky enough to get to taste one of these on my tour – the Strawberry Cherry Tomato is a variety Fiona has been fine tuning for many years, sweet and tangy with a beautiful pinky colour, it was a treat to sample. Then there’s the chard that she has been selecting for unique colours and for resilience. She often earmarks plants that volunteer themselves around the garden, offering exciting new colour combinations and growth habits to add to the gene pool.

An ethnobotanist by trade, Fiona is no stranger to our profound historical relationship with seed. Alongside seed farming she has written and contributed to many books, and this background plays a fundamental role in her work. As Fiona showed me around her beautiful farm, she drew my attention to several crops and shared their rich history. One of these was a humble potato, and after digging around in the soil Fiona handed me one of the tubers:

‘There is this myth that people were hunters and gatherers – but people cultivated extensively here, it was not a wilderness. This potato is a proxy record for land tenure management’

The potato she handed me was a Haida potato, traded in the 1700s by Spanish conquistadors who arrived on the B.C coast, it has been cultivated by First Nations people in this area for over 250 years:

‘They were growing and trading these all the way down to California within 3 years.’

Suddenly I no longer just had a tuber in my hand, but the weight of centuries of co-evolution.

Something that has punctuated my conversations with many farmers on Vancouver Island is not only how we make this local seed work more possible, but also how we go about reconciling the history that often accompanies seed. As Simon at Good Earth Farm acknowledged – in the ‘modern western world’ we are often guilty of thinking we are the sole creators or owners of varieties – ‘but what about the 8000 years of seed saving that went on before you?’ This work involves dismantling the colonial mindset, and recognising that plants and humans have co-evolved for hundreds of thousands of years, any ‘new’ variety is the result of centuries of relationship and stewardship before us. Modern day seed stewards and plant breeders, even with their dedication and unique skill sets, are simply a continuation of that story. As we heal these relationships, perhaps it’ll become easier to acknowledge and remember.

‘When people say they have a black thumb and they can’t grow food, I say don’t be so arrogant! These plants have millions of years of evolution and sometimes thousands of years of coevolution with humans, they know what they’re doing, it’s pretty hard for you to mess it up. Just give them some basics of light water air and some decent soil and they’ll do the rest.’

Fiona is passionate about continuing this relationship through sharing her skills and inspiring others to get into seed saving. She offers experiential workshops on her farm, as well as educational sessions for young people.

‘What I think is critically important is the diversity of skill sets. We have a food skills lack - it’s the difference between shallow and deep ecology, where people say oh I should buy my food locally in the same way that you do recycling. But not really looking at what a local food system is, and if you don’t produce your seed… if you don’t have seed security you don’t have food security, and seeds often are almost entirely left out of the conversation.’

A stone’s throw from Fiona, fellow farmers Robin Tunnicliffe and Sasha Kubicek of Sea Bluff Farm are also passionate about placing seed at the centre of conversation when it comes to food security. Sea Bluff is a 10-acre farm perfectly positioned at the base of a gentle incline, sheltered from the nearby ocean breeze by a stand of beautiful old trees. Robin and Sasha kindly offered to host me during my visit to the south of the island, and I got to spend several wonderful days with them at their farm. Like many of the people I have visited, Robin considers farming to be ‘heart work’, and seed plays a central role at their farm.

Robin is one of the co-owners of Saanich Organics, a community of women farmers from small certified organic farms who work together to supply fresh local produce to the Greater Victoria region. Many of the vegetables grown on the ten acres at Sea Bluff Farm feed into the residential veg box scheme that Saanich Organics facilitates, and Robin and Sasha also host a farm stand on site offering delicious locally grown veg directly to their community throughout the week. Sasha left his role of an accountant several years ago to join Robin in farming full time, and with the help of a brilliant team they now grow an abundance of vegetables, fruit and seed for their local community.

The main focus of the business at Sea Bluff Farm is food production, but seed also has an important part to play. With concern over the narrowing corporate control of their seed supply and lack of regionally adapted organic varieties, Robin and her co-owners of Saanich Organics decided to become part of the solution by starting their own seed company: Seeds of the Revolution. They received mentorship from the BC Eco Seed Coop and the Organic Seed Alliance, providing them with the skills to produce the highest quality seed, and they now offer a diverse catalogue of locally grown varieties for both home gardeners and farmers. At Sea Bluff Farm, Robin and Sasha grow several seed crops on contract for Seeds of the Revolution, as well as saving many varieties for their own reuse.

I had some beautiful chats with Robin during my time at Sea Bluff Farm. A hugely empathetic and considerate human, seed keeping was a topic that seemed close to her heart, and a non-negotiable in her work as a farmer. Like Fiona, it hadn’t necessarily been her intention to grow seed, but the practice seemed to find her.

‘I was inspired to start seed keeping through (the late) John Navazio. I got involved in the Organic Seed Alliance, and I just loved energy of all the seed breeders when they’re all together, it’s so fun, and inspiring and refreshing and empowering. I think as a farmer there are just so many forces oppressing you and to have control over one little part of it, just feels so good…it gives me hope.

I went on an exchange to India and I saw the role that seed played in the lives of these small farmers, and it was just very inspiring, and it just kind of drew my attention to all the issues with seed.’

Robin recollected an experience during her travels that proved powerfully formative:

‘We were visiting a seed saver, a woman who had a hundred varieties. We were sitting down and having a Q&A, there was language barrier. I said if I was a new grower and I was coming to this area, what would you tell me to grow? And she looked at me, and I felt like she didn’t understand, there was a big pause, and I thought, is that the dumbest question that’s ever been asked or…

She paused, and then she had all these pots of seeds and she started rearranging them, and she said: Well, if it hasn’t rained for a long time but you think it’s going to rain, then you’re going to want to plant these ones. They won’t yield as much, but you’ll get a crop. If you think it hasn’t rained and it will not rain, then you want these ones, they germinate in atmospheric moisture, you know you won’t get a huge yield but you’ll get something. If you have a parcel of soil that is fertile you’ll want these ones. If you don’t have fertility then these ones…If you have old people in your family you’re going to want these ones because these grains are softer for teeth, and if you have babies...

She just went on and on. I was like, woah, I think about nothing, I just think about how I stay alive as a farmer, because it costs so much to grow all this stuff and I have to get a return on it and then labour is so much but it’s so worth it and I wish I could pay people twice as much. I’m just so market driven, but she was in this survival, thriving, ultimate community mindset.  It was pretty humbling. It was this deep multilayered experience.’

This encounter beautifully illustrates how far-removed western culture has become from any intimate relationship with seed. Each of the varieties, or likely populations, that the woman described were deeply entangled with that community and with that very specific place and environment. They were part of the family.

Inspired by this encounter and subsequent travels, Robin has made sure that seed is at the heart of the business at Sea Bluff Farm. They make a point of stewarding and saving varieties that they know do well for them as market crops – responding to their community’s needs. They also trust in our ancestral connection with plants. Clubroot had been a problem at Sea Bluff Farm for decades, and previous owners has warned Robin from growing any brassicas on site. Not one to be deterred, and trusting that the plants might offer a solution, Robin started saving seed from plants that display any sign of resilience to the disease, along with experimenting with biological controls on the crops themselves. Several years later and there hasn’t been a case of clubroot for some time – in fact all the Brassicas I saw in the fields looked luscious and healthy. This required a leap of faith from Robin and Sasha, it required them to think beyond an instant fix, and ultimately trust in the relationship of reciprocity between themselves and the plants as their ancestors had.

Robin’s conversation with the seed saver on her travels in India also brought home to her how vital diversity is. Each of those varieties described by the woman were for a very particular situation, whether that be climactic or cultural or community driven.

‘Diversity to me is, when I get clubroot, there are strains of Brassicas that can overcome that, I need that breeding I need access to that. There are varieties that have coexisted with clubroot for millennia. Where are those? We need those. That’s what we need to feed people. The tomatoes that can deal with the extremes. I think Canada has such a varied climate, we have the high arctic and they’re growing tomatoes up there and they can kick it because they have their 20 hours of sunlight, but they can’t grow the same ones that we have here. So, they need breeding for far north short season, so there are things that can work for them. One thing that scared me was realising how much seed is grown in the central valley of California, and how much food is grown there. Large seed companies are just motivated to grow for that small climate that is obviously perfect for many vegetables. But what if I live on a cold wet windy coast? We need varieties that work here.’

Through embracing the practice of seed keeping, Robin and Sasha now have several varieties of brassicas that demonstrate clubroot resistance, a winter hardy chard, and many other crops that thrive on their farm through this intentional stewardship.

‘Dealing with the seed, it just reminds you of how generous nature is. It’s such a generous process, you plant one plant and that plant will give you hundreds of seeds. What more do you need? Seed is such a grounding thing, it just shows you how abundant the world is and we just take, and we don’t think about what abundance we’re given.’

Another farmer acutely aware of the generosity of plants is one of Robin’s mentors - Mary Alice Johnson of Full Circle Seeds and ALM Organic Farm. Mary Alice has been a farmer and seed keeper for over 30 years: a true elder and a knowledge keeper, meeting Mary felt like a significant moment in my travels and an encounter I won’t forget in a hurry.

Mary Alice has been farming at her 15 acre organic farm in Sooke, in the south of Vancouver Island since 1994. While I was staying at Sea Bluff Farm I made a day trip out to visit Mary. Primarily growing vegetables to feed her local community, she too started exploring seed almost by accident:

‘The first year I was farming, there was a bunch of runners left on the vine, they had dried, they were you know the rejects. But I collected them and I just sat in the grass in the Fall and shelled them and they were so beautiful. And I said, I want to do this for the rest of my life! It was that that really grabbed me, the seed part of it was so beautiful, the whole completion.’

She quickly learnt that saving from the rejects was not the way you were ‘supposed to save seed’, but by then she was hooked. Mary has been producing seed ever since, saving almost all of her own for reuse on the farm, alongside offering a diverse catalogue for sale through her seed company, Full Circle Seeds. Like several of the farmers I have encountered on my travels, Mary artfully combines market vegetable production with seed saving, and heartily believes one compliments the other.

‘You get a lot of feedback from the customers that eat your food, they’ll tell you oh that’s really delicious – now that’s good feedback for seed saving!’

The culinary aspect of a variety is important to Mary – varieties that make it into the Full Circle Seeds catalogue must prove their worth in the kitchen and taste delicious. And not necessarily for cooking, but also for preserving beyond the summer months. While I was visiting, we spent an hour or so at her nearby house and chatted over coffee as Mary prepped and canned the glut of courgettes from the farm.

‘Yesterday we had a farm stand and people came down and we talked about the food they were buying and their lives, and it’s just a real connection with them, and them eating the food. And I’ll see them next week, and the next week, and the next week. There’s a huge connection with people and I love that. I never thought I’d enjoy selling stuff, I was a teacher before I started farming and I always thought selling stuff wasn’t that cool. But now I find my selling is often teaching, when I sell something I’m often teaching them something about it.’

There is intention and connection behind every variety that Mary Alice grows, nothing is grown just for the sake of it. As a seed ‘elder’ with a reputation as a talented seed steward, she has been given many varieties over the years by family, customers, neighbours, or those simply wanting an unusual crop to be made available to others within their local community. All of these varieties hold a story and are unique, and Mary works hard to ensure their stories continue far beyond her stewardship.

My day spent with Mary was simply wonderful. The sheer pleasure and delight she finds in her work was palpable, and we sat for several hours discussing her journey over the years. Part of the emerging seed movement back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, Mary fondly recalled attending some of the early meetings of those involved in the Abundant Life Seed Foundation and the subsequent formation of the Organic Seed Alliance. She has known and followed the work of fellow seed keepers such as Frank Morton for decades, and it was a privilege to listen to her memories of the movement here in the Pacific Northwest. My lasting memory of my time with Mary Alice will be the sheer joy she seems to find in her work. Her eyes sparkled with excitement as we inspected and harvested the ripe lettuce seed, and there was such an intuitive peace that fell over her as we cleaned seed in the barn loft later in the day. Like so many others on this journey, it’s hard to distinguish who found who, if Mary found the seeds or if seed work found Mary, but her love for it all seems timeless.

‘It’s a full circle, there is a beginning a middle and an end, and why would you not want to see it all. Why wouldn’t you?’

My first stop on the island was to meet with Lisa Willott, David Catzel’s colleague and fellow FarmFolk CityFolk Seed Security Programme Coordinator, whose role it is to connect the seed growers based here. Lisa is based at the Sandown Centre of Regenerative Agriculture in North Saanich on southern Vancouver Island where she carries out many of the trials and breeding work on the ¼ acre she manages there. Similarly to David, Lisa works with farmers and community groups across the island, connecting and collaborating to foster a resilient, sustainable and equitable food system in B.C.

Lisa and I spent the morning together walking her plot at the farm and discussing many of the trials she had been running this year, including some of the heat tolerant lettuce trials that I’d also seen growing at Fraser Common Farm. It was so interesting to have the opportunity to compare the two trial locations, and observe the differences in plant performance first hand. Only a short journey across the water, and the varieties that were doing well for Lisa were very different to those that were thriving on the mainland. It was a great demonstration of how important these trials are to really home in on regional adaptation and resilience.

During my visit, I also had the chance to see one of the much talked about FarmFolk CityFolk mobile seed cleaning trailers. Lisa was in the throes of planning the autumn tour with the island trailer, and it was currently being tidied and primed ready for its journey. Lisa will spend several weeks on the road from September, touring the main island as well as some of the smaller surrounding islands, making stops at seed farms, community groups and anyone else who needs help with cleaning their seed. Inside the trailer was a veritable treasure trove for any seed enthusiast! The Winnow Wizard took centre stage, alongside a Clipper, a vacuum seed cleaner and a thresher. Then there were the array of sieves, screens and other paraphernalia essential for the seed cleaning process. FarmFolk CityFolk have devised a set of handy ‘how to’ guides for all of the on-board equipment, making this trailer incredibly accessible for anyone who needs to use it. The trailer is a lifeline for many seed growers on the island who would otherwise have to rely on cleaning all their seed by hand. Practical benefits aside, the seed cleaning tour also offers a unique opportunity for Lisa to connect in person each year with her wider seed community. The tour provides a chance to engage with farmers across the islands and share news and bring stories of others within the network. It’s also somewhat of a talking point and does a fantastic job of drawing attention from members of the public, stimulating important conversations about seed saving and offering an opportunity to showcase the benefits of locally grown seed.

One of the farms who rely on the mobile cleaning trailer each season are Good Earth Farms Seeds in the Comox Valley, so while I was in the area I arranged to drop by for a visit. As a small company, Good Earth Farm Seeds have limited infrastructure for seed cleaning, so the FarmFolk CityFolk mobile trailer has been a huge help to their business and enables them to do the bulk of their seed cleaning when it passes through the region each Fall.

Simon and Heather Toole started farming in 2004 - initially combining market farming with seed growing, they shifted the focus of their business entirely to seed 4 years ago. They offer a catalogue of around 65 varieties of organic vegetables flowers and herbs, all grown by themselves at their farm in Black Creek on the eastern side of Vancouver Island. They sell their seeds online and at several stores across Vancouver Island, as well as offering an on-farm pick up service. And as part of the B.C seed community, they also grow for the B.C Eco Seed Co-op. When I visited, the rows of pea seeds were in their final throes, the courgettes were gigantic, and racks upon racks of seed were drying down ready for the arrival of the cleaning trailer in a few weeks.

Throughout my travels I have often circled back to relationship being at the heart of seed sovereignty. Encouraging more people to explore their relationship to seed seems vital for future resilience, as does inspiring more seed keeping. But ensuring the quality and vitality of that seed is also an important part of the story. Good Earth Farms Seeds is a meticulously managed seed farm – Heather and Simon care deeply about the quality of their seed and steward their crops accordingly so that they can offer the most resilient and abundant varieties suitable for this very specific climate. They grow vegetables that they find delicious, herbs and flowers that have purpose and connection, and Heather brings the wisdom of her indigenous ancestry to all their seed keeping practices.

During my short time with Simon, a large part of our conversation was centred around that increase in quality that can come from having a local, thriving seed system. Small scale regional seed companies are competing against the global seed giants, so customers need a reason to look beyond the packets that dominate every rack in every store. This is where relationship and stories come in, not only do they offer something unique and relatable to the customer – a USP so to speak - the connection and seeds stories often found in these local networks can ultimately impact seed quality, as there tends to be more love, care and dedication poured into their stewardship. As Simon perfectly summarised, investing in local seed is like purchasing ‘hand crafted furniture vs Ikea furniture’. This intentional seed saving can give rise to healthier, more vibrant, and higher quality seed. Then there’s the longevity – open pollinated varieties can be grown in perpetuity by the community–evolving to the local climate and growing from strength to strength. But there also needs to be systems in place to ensure this high quality, reliability and consistency for the customer: a reason to look beyond the corporate giants.

To ensure high quality of their seed, Simon and Heather have invested time and energy into building soil health at their farm, creating optimum growing conditions to produce the most vigorous plants. Understanding soil as the foundation that supports life, they use a minimum tillage approach, applying inoculants, utilising cover crops and woodchip mulches to increase biological life in the soil, and they try to work in harmony with the living communities they share the land with. This is intentional stewardship, and as we walked around their farm, the crops were clearly benefitting from this care. There was barely a hint of powdery mildew on any of the maturing courgette plants, almost unheard of in a maritime climate like this, and all of the plants I observed were flourishing.

As well as experimenting with regenerative management practices, Simon has also been discussing potential ‘vigour test’ trials with the University of British Columbia, with the aim of gathering scientific data to prove how good stewardship can lead to improved quality and longevity of seeds. As he pointed out, the current germination testing required for a seed packet is a bit of a grey area - ‘a seed may germinate, but will it necessarily grow into a thriving plant?’ Is a germ test result a true reflection of the potential vigour of the plant that will emerge? And in what context?

Simon’s concerns about quality and the current state of our seed system were tangible. ‘It comes down to the fact that we fundamentally undervalue food, and seed is a bi-product of that. We seem to have a culture of fundamentally undervaluing.’ Farm labour is regarded by many as unskilled work, and the price on the seed packet rarely reflects the skill, environmental impact or work that went into producing it. The benefits of local seed systems can be exponential, but how do we make this work economically viable for all? Simon reflected: ‘We’re trying to plug this beautiful thing into a capitalist system.’

Good Earth Farms Seeds are dedicated to organic and regenerative practices that not only improve the quality of their seeds, but also health of wider ecosystems. The value in locally grown seed can be far reaching, and shifting the narrative of our current seed system seems to hinge on people recognising that value beyond the price on the seed packet. This shift requires education, inviting people into an alternative, more regional way of operating, and the work of organisations such as FarmFolk CityFolk feels essential to empowering this change. In supporting seed farmers like Simon and Heather to produce a higher quality end product through initiatives like the seed cleaning trailer, but also in creating opportunities to engage with the wider community and educate folks far and wide about the importance and wider impact of quality, locally grown seed.

As Carol Deppe proclaimed when I met her back in June – ‘we breed our values right into our varieties’. Without a diversity of people doing this important work for a diversity of reasons, I feel we will always struggle to find a truly resilient seed system. Everyone who nurtures and stewards a seed crop will do it in their own unique way. There isn’t one way to solve this problem: there isn’t a silver bullet answer. There are many ways, many relationships, many answers. Which is why inspiring curiosity in others in the practice of seed keeping feels so vital. The Gaia Foundation’s Seed Sovereignty Programme in the UK has been carrying out this crucial work for several years now. And one of the original inspirations for the programme was the work of the Bauta Family Initiative on Canadian Seed Security. So it was with much excitement that I travelled across the border from the US into Canada to spend some time with their B.C regional representative, David Catzel.

David is the B.C Seed Security Programme Manager for FarmFolk CityFolk (FFCF) - British Columbia’s oldest and largest food and agricultural nonprofit organisation. The Bauta Family Initiative often partner with existing regional organisations such as FFCF, who already have seed work integrated into their programme, so David’s role, although regional, is part of Bauta’s national seed movement.

David is based at Fraser Common Farm, a cooperatively owned community farm in the Fraser Valley, just southeast of Vancouver. It is from this beautiful farm that he carries out much of his work, and where he kindly offered to host me for my visit. A hub of the local community for over 40 years, Fraser Common Farm is home and friends to many of the region’s nonprofit organisations, including Glorious Organics, FarmFolk CityFolk and the B.C Eco Seed Co-op office.

David has been involved in farming in the region for over 20 years, and subsequently has a vast network of connections in the seed world and beyond. In his role with FFCF, he supports local seed production and seed security by providing seed education, skills training and infrastructure to increase production of high-quality seed bred and adapted for the B.C climate. At Fraser Common Farm he stewards several seed crops: some regional trials including the BC medicinal plant and seed project, and nationwide initiatives like the Canadian Organic Vegetable Improvement Project (CANOVI) heat tolerant lettuce trials. Off farm, he frequently visits seed growers in the network to offer support and mentorship.

‘A big part of diversity is having more growers growing seed. 200 years ago, every farmer and gardener grew some seeds and I can imagine if I grew a broccoli and you grew a broccoli and someone else grew a broccoli, they’re all going to diverge a little bit and there’ll be diversity in that. Now when we have all our broccoli coming from 5 fields around the world or something, we’ve just lost this incredible resource which is the diversity of the number of people saving seeds and doing selections in different areas. I would love to get back to all farmers growing seed.’

From farmer field days, mentorship programmes to citizen seed trials, David and the B.C Seed Security programme support as many people as possible to participate in the seed growing process. And they don’t just work with farmers, they have a diversity of approaches to maximise impact and really get people thinking about seed. As their name suggests, FFCF also engage with those outside the realm of land work, hosting annual Feast of Fields events to strengthen connections between farm folks and city folks through celebration. Much like the work of the Culinary Breeding Network, these events help to bridge the gap between consumer and farmers and raise awareness of the complex journey of food from seed to plate.

‘I love getting people excited about growing seed – especially farmers! It’s not that hard, most of them do save some seed, they don’t think they’re good at it, so I feel like a big part of my job is encouraging them that they have the skills to do this. Farmers know best how to select seed - it’s being done in their field - of course they’re going to select seeds that work for them. Encouraging them that they know how to select, they know how to observe crops and choose them, and the other part is encouraging people to think of themselves as seed breeders and not seed savers. If you’re doing a good job of seed saving then you’re seed breeding. You don’t have to breed a new variety to do breeding. If you do any selection at all you’re doing breeding work. Just to encourage people that this is not necessarily about academia, especially the type of breeding we’re talking about: open pollinated, natural plant pollination, observation and selection. That’s something every farmer has the expertise to do. If you’re doing a good stewarding job of a variety then you’re actually breeding the seeds of the future.’

Empowering farmers to step back into the role of seed stewards and recognise the significance of the work that they do is a vital piece of David’s role. As our climate shifts and changes, participatory and farmer-led breeding offers a very viable solution to seed security. Having more people carrying out this work with a diversity of approaches is critical, and looking to the future is key:

‘You don’t know anymore if you’re going to have a cool season or a hot season or if it’s going to be extremely cold and wet in the spring and then drought conditions by the end of June. I think if you are breeding a uniform crop that does well in drought then you also need one that’s bred to do well in wet seasons, and you’ve got to grow both of them. Or, you breed more diverse populations then you’re always going to get a yield each year, and in some ways there’s going to be self selection happening every year you save seed.

There are some great heirlooms, there are these beautiful heirloom tomatoes that make delicious tomatoes, and you get one delicious tomato off the plant! Lets work on that, lets breed a new variety that makes many delicious tomatoes on a plant. There’s a farmer on the sunshine coast that we work with who likes to say ‘Our job is to breed the heirlooms of tomorrow’. The breeder continuously selecting varieties so it’s still in catalogues in 50 years because its diverse enough to weather the storm of different climate changes.’

David and I had many conversations throughout the week comparing notes on the commonality between our seed programmes. One big similarity was the importance of making space to listen, of creating conditions for connection and following patterns of natural emergence. An incredible outcome of FarmFolk CityFolk’s grassroots work has been the BC Eco Seed Co-op. Started in 2012 by a handful of farmers who loved seed saving, FFCF supported them in their mission to increase the quantity and quality of ecological and organic seed grown in BC. The Co-op has since grown from strength to strength and currently has 30+ members on farms across the province. The motivation behind the Co-op was to promote the benefits of locally adapted, well grown seed and provide an outlet for sharing the abundance that those growing seed crops were finding themselves with. As David explained, ‘there were always lots of people saving seed, it might not have been incorporated in their business plan, but they saved seed.’  The Co-op offers an alternative income stream for those farmers, and for those interested in diversifying. Many members are market farmers who grow one or two seed crops each year. The Co-op allows members to pool resources, infrastructure and marketing as well as generating a collaborative space for sharing of ideas and support.

And more and more members join the co-op each year. In response to this growing number of people interested in producing seed and to help build capacity for organic seed production in the province, FarmFolk CityFolk have provided three mobile seed cleaning trailers equipped with an array of cleaning tools and equipment. Every season, David and the team tour the trailers around the region, visiting farmers and community groups who would otherwise have to rely on cleaning their seed by hand. These trailers are a valuable resource for the local seed network – increasing efficiency and reducing labour costs while improving the quality of the finished product, as well as providing yet another opportunity to bring seed producers together and create a community around seed.

One of the joys of my week at Fraser Common Farm was in experiencing the community that has emerged there. With several organisations and businesses based on site, there is inevitable cross pollination. Glorious Organics is the main farming business on the property. Primarily growing organic vegetable, flowers and fruit for local restaurants, farmers markets and a CSA scheme, they also grow and sell seed for BC Eco Seed Co-op. Glorious Organics is managed by Mark, Cassie and Susan, and their ethos is rooted in cooperation, communication and community. I had heard about Glorious Organics through the radicchio network – fellow lovers of this bitter veg, Mark was one of the farmers on the Culinary Breeding Network’s visit to Italy several years ago, and works closely with Lane at CBN and Brian at Uprising Seeds. Living up to expectation, the fields were plentiful with chicory when I visited, alongside a wide diversity of vegetables and those all-important seed crops. Every year, the Glorious Organics team grow several seed crops for B.C Eco Seed Co-op - when I visited the fava beans were drying down perfectly in the august sunshine – and as they are based on site they get access to David’s help and expertise and the convenience of the seed cleaning equipment.

I got to spend just a snippet of time with the Glorious Organics team, but it was clear that they are a passionate and dedicated team, committed to growing sustainable and nutritious food and embracing the community that supports and surrounds them. It was impressive to see the common thread of seed weaving all these amazing businesses together on one site, and having an impact on so many people who pass through this farm. As I have been meeting all these wonderful people - at Fraser Common Farm and throughout the entirety of my travels - what occurs to me is that increasing diversity in our seed system is not just about increasing plant genetics, but proliferating intentional stewardship. And with more people doing this work in their own unique ways, diversity will naturally flourish.

Deep Harvest Farm is a certified organic seed, vegetable and flower farm on Washington State’s Whidbey Island. Annie and Nathaniel have been growing on Whidbey for 13 years, and this is their 8^th season on their current plot. Unlike many of the farmers I have visited on my journey so far, Nathaniel and Annie are not only seed growers, but they also run a thriving 100 share CSA. And as well as growing the veggies and seed, they also hold their own seed catalogue: they are essentially a market farm and seed company all rolled into one.

On the day I visited them it was unseasonably wet. When I left on this trip, I was told that sometime in May or June it stops raining in the Pacific Northwest, and no precipitation falls from the sky again until September. As someone who has lived a lot of their adult life in Northwest England, this seemed unfathomable. But, up until now, it had proved accurate. It’s one of the many reasons this is a prime seed growing area – crops can ripen and dry down in situ, they can be harvested and left to further dry out in the field as there is very little chance of rain. Crops getting wet and moulding away on the plants is just not a common thing. But for a couple of (actually, quite joyfully refreshing) days in late July, the skies opened and I found myself stood in the field being pelted by some sideways rain blown in from the Puget Sound. It didn’t, however, stop me experiencing the delights of Deep Harvest Farm.

Deep Harvest Farm is located towards the south of Whidbey Island, a stones throw away from the ocean. 10 acres in size, the farm is a thriving habitat of annual crops, hedgerows, flowering perennials and orchards. Annie and Nathaniel made the decision to leave their city lives in Portland many years ago after catching the ‘farming bug’, and moved to Whidbey Island to attend the Organic Farm School (OFS). They deliberately chose to focus on seed from the start – the OFS at the time held contracts with High Mowing Seeds and taught seed production as part of their curriculum – and it has continued to play a central role in their farming practice.

Nathaniel – ‘I was into conservation biology before farming and I found it pretty slow and slightly demoralising, this receding baseline that you’re trying to fend off the whole time in the natural world. Whereas in farming, these people are actually actively stewarding hundreds of varieties on their own and saving the genetic material that’s out there from going extinct. I was just fascinated by the idea of it from a conservation perspective. I got drawn to seed before I even started farming…the idea of serving biodiversity through farming.’

Working from the premise that a thriving local food system starts with regionally adapted seed, Annie, Nathaniel and team are currently producing upwards of 40 seed crops each season at their farm, alongside bountiful vegetables, salad and herbs for their CSA. They offer around 170 varieties in total of locally grown open pollinated seed in their seed catalogue, growing the vast majority of this themselves, as well as contracting with a selection of other organic growers in the PNW. Within their diversified model of market farm and seed farm, the seed varieties they grow are very much about flavour and suitability for market.

Nathaniel – ‘Us having a market farm in addition to the seed company actually gives us the concept over what we’re trying to do as we’re testing things out on our farm all the time. Being able to test all of our varieties in a market garden context I think is pretty cool. And having that as a credential requirement for a new variety that makes it into the catalogue, I think is pretty unique in a way, to seed companies of our size. Most companies focus on really unique things or rare things or some really cool growing characteristics but not necessarily commercial viability.’

One of the ways they test marketability of each variety is through running variety trials. Each year, Deep Harvest Farm source and trial multiple varieties of flowers and vegetables, often testing multiple strains of one variety (the seed bought from different sources) against each other. They are extremely critical in their selection process, only choosing the varieties that can really deliver in terms of taste, productivity for their CSA and ability to thrive in their challenging climate.

Annie – ‘We are passionate about vigour! We have a lot that we’re working against here, just with pest pressure so that is a high criteria. And the wet and the cold. The slugs are gnarly. And doing the variety trials is probably one of most fun things we do on the farm. Picking them all out, tasting them, choosing one we’re going to pass on to our broader community…feeling like wow we just found a fava that knocked all the rest of them out of the park! It just feels so satisfying.’

Varieties have to earn their place and provide Annie and Nathaniel with a yield sufficient to supply their own community with food. Closing the loop on inputs, they use over 80% of their own seed for their CSA crops, so varieties in the Deep Harvest seed catalogue are tried and tested year after year for their performance in an intense market farm operation. Neither Annie or Nathaniel seemed dogmatic about only using open pollinated varieties - they still rely on some hybrid varieties for their CSA, namely brassicas and spinach – and Nathaniel acknowledged there are just some crops that organic open pollinated varieties aren’t quite there at in terms of vigour and yield. They seemed to have an awareness of the value that can be found in having a diversity of plant breeding methods, and access to that all important germplasm:

Nathaniel: ‘You would think, why does the US need more than 5 carrot varieties? You know, that’s a valid question. And then you do a variety trial, and you test out 20 of them and only 1 of them is really worth growing. And it’s like, wow, I’m glad there were 20 and not 19! Every added variety might be the best choice for a certain bioregion or a certain climate or pest or weather conditions. So, the more options you have, the more adaptability you have to specific conditions, especially when you get into the more marginal growing conditions…like us!’

Like Brian and Crystine at Uprising Seeds, Deep Harvest Farm consider themselves stewards rather than breeders, and work in relationship out in the fields with their crops to ensure the seeds they grow are vigorous and resilient to their marginal maritime climate and relevant to their community. They have, like most folks I have visited, their own breeding projects that they dip in and out of, but for the most part their focus is on the selection process and really getting to know their crops.

Nathaniel – ‘There’s longevity (to seed work), being able to steward something and work on something that’s multiyear and even multi-generational. We, people, pass down varieties to other plant breeders and farmers and keep improving things for the long term, in perpetuity for others that will come after us.’

There was something wonderfully familiar about Deep Harvest Farm, with the market vegetable and seed crops thriving side by side. Like many of the places I have worked back home, there was an abundance of life. It seemed a brilliant demonstration of the value that comes from a diversity of approaches to seed stewardship, in particular the weaving together of food and seed production. The duality of this approach giving Deep Harvest Farm their uniqueness as a seed company.

After my time with Annie and Nathaniel, I drove a little further south to visit the organisation that supported them in their early days of farming: the Organic Farm School. A learning centre for anyone wanting to grow food at community scale, the OFS trains new entrants to develop and manage small farms focused on ecological, economic and social regeneration whilst simultaneously offering opportunities for the local community to learn about their role in strengthening local and regional food systems.

Each year, new students arrive in early spring to begin their intensive residential training programme, and they spend the following 9 months learning the practical, theoretical and business skills it takes to become a food producer.

I was particularly keen to visit OFS as I had heard that seed played a big part in their curriculum. They have been growing seed on contract for some of the larger seed houses for many years, and students play an active role in caring for these crops. When I arrived, the barn was heaving with recently harvested brassica seed waiting to be threshed.

After being welcomed by Judy Feldman, Executive Director of OFS, I was introduced to Jeff Markette, Farm Manager, who gave me a tour of the farm. An experienced farmer and rancher, his lifelong passion for good food was palpable in our conversations. Jeff is responsible for teaching and modelling the practices of regenerative agriculture to students each year, and together with Research Director and Senior Instructor Andrew Corbin, Field Supervisor Mindy Woodward, and Field Assistant Kevin Holton, they bring together the very practical realities of running a farm with the science and research fundamentals to provide students a holistic overview of organic food production. As well as being involved in the day to day running of the farm, students get weekly classes covering everything from the farm finances to exploring cutting edge research in soil biology. And seed is a key part of the curriculum:

Jeff -  ‘For our students, to see in what we’re doing, through the broad diversity of everything we’ve got going on here, that there are lots of ways to be a farmer and seed growing is one of those ways you can do it. And, as we see with climate change and how important it is to have our own staple food in our own climates and bioregions, how important it is to have seed that is diversified and also local to that region. We see, sometimes when we buy from a large seed house and when we buy local, the germination rates are wildly different, even though it’s like 98% (on the packet), yeah maybe that’s 98% in Georgia but it’s not here so I think that’s where it’s important.’

The farm school are currently growing several seed crops on contract, and have been involved in many variety trials over the years with connections to the Organic Seed Alliance and various public breeding programmes. By including seed stewardship and trials in their curriculum, they hope to demonstrate to students why this diversity is so vital in our food system.

Jeff - ‘I think that diversity in seeds is super important: we talk about losing lines of seeds - they’re becoming homogenous and it’s all going in one direction. Bringing back the diversity for eaters, for growers, for seed people and just broadening back to what food used to be, and looking at what food is now – trying to widen that scope a little bit.’

Along with the seed work, the OFS strive to expose students to as many farming skills as possible throughout their core training programme. During their time at the school, students are responsible for all aspects of farm management, from harvesting and weeding vegetables, to wash/pack, to caring for livestock, to cutting hay. OFS is a working farm, and all the produce grown and raised there is sold to local businesses and via a weekly farm stand, with students in charge of sales . As well as welcoming locals to the farm stand each week, they also host the weekly Farm Friday Community Pot Luck, sharing food with members of the wider community with an emphasis on local seasonal eating. Through regularly opening their doors, students have the opportunity to share and celebrate their important work: strengthening the food system through community. Making connections, forging relationships.

Jeff - ‘I do what I do, specifically farming with these students, because I get to come into work every day and it’s like a challenge, and every day farming is a puzzle and we’re trying to figure out what puzzle pieces go where. And I get to come to work with really passionate excited exuberant people that really want to be here, and we’re all doing that together and its super fun. And giving people food here at our farm stand and that connection – people are going to take this product home and they get to feed themselves or their family or friends. I love food, food is such an amazing thing and we get to be the bridge to that, to give people that food.’

It was an inspiring few days at the Organic Farm School, meeting and working alongside this year’s brilliant students. They are all clearly passionate and dedicated to their work and to building a more equitable food system. And with Deep Harvest Farm just down the road as inspiration, I hope that seed stewardship has a part to play in many of their futures.

Someone recently asked me why I do what I do – it’s a question I have been asking many people on this trip but it was the first time someone had returned the question. I do this work, I think, because of love. A love for all the living things around me, and a heartfelt desire to remind others that we are a just a thread in this complex tapestry of life. The day after I was asked that question, I opened the front door first thing in the morning to the presence of a young coyote. I sat quietly for several minutes watching her intently sniffing around the edges of the tree line, until she trotted off into the undergrowth. It provided an unanticipated moment of calm – a fleeting connection with another living creature. The dominant narrative in our modern world is that humans can exist in isolation, that the natural world is just the backdrop to our own activities. But everything lives in relationship to everything else, and we are no exception. I often worry about the unfolding consequences of this disconnect. How do we remind people, how do we begin to heal these relationships? Growing food and stewarding seed is a path I have found to restore that connection for myself, and in sharing the joy I find in this work and illuminating the beauty and intelligence of other living communities, I hope to inspire these affectionate alliances in others.

On this journey around the Pacific Northwest, I have met so many incredible humans who are also navigating this path, all in their own unique ways. To be in relationship with seed feels like old knowledge. To steward seed is a way of re-entangling ourselves with the rhythms of life, and each other. Uprising Seeds are a seed company I have followed from afar for some time. Their love for their work seemed tangible, as was their awareness of it being part of a wider picture, and a conversation starter:

‘My hope has always been that, in this work, seeds will be a force of connectivity in our world. An opportunity to learn about and from one another, a way to connect with the cycles of the seasons and our places, and a way to connect our past and future with out present selves.’ (Brian, exert from their January 2023 blog)

Uprising Seeds are based in Bellingham, WA, just south of the border between the US and Canada. Crystine Goldberg and Brian Campbell started their seed business in 2007, inspired to help increase the availability of quality organic and open pollinated varieties adapted to maritime northwest climate. They have a strong focus on the culinary qualities of the crops that they grow. It is this, and the relationship - the food stories, social equity and cultural connections - that feels at the essence of their work.

Uprising Seeds are currently farming on 5 acres, with 3 of these in annual production on a rotational basis. They grow the majority of their seed on site, working with just a handful of other farmers who grow on contract for them. Their catalogue is expansive, with hundreds and hundreds of varieties of vegetables and flowers, and between 125-150 of these are grown out each year at their farm. Defining their work as stewardship, they perform variety maintenance and selection with deep care. I arrived to spend the week with Brian and Crystine right at the start of harvest season and was able to assist them with bringing in the first of this years seed crops. The fields at Uprising Seeds appear as a beautiful patchwork, hundreds of species of plants growing side by side. Lettuce plants rise up tall, bursting from their compact forms sending out clusters of florets, just starting to form those feathery parachutes that - if left too long - will float off in the slightest of breezes. Neighbouring these were the brassicas and pole beans, and row upon row of tomatoes, all selected primarily for their delicious taste, and of course their stories. The first of the seed crops ripe and ready to harvest were several varieties of pea. We pulled these out of the ground, roots and all, and laid them out on large sheets of woven fabric to dry down in the July sunshine.

As well as helping out in the field, I was given a behind the scenes look at their seed cleaning equipment and warehouse space. Deliberately keeping their work at human scale, the team mostly use screens, box fans and the obligatory Winnow Wizard (number 13 no less!) to clean their seed crops. Their warehouse, situated a few miles from the farm, houses the bulk of their seed collection, and Brian and Crystine have a great team of employees helping them tend to and share their extensive seed catalogue.

Uprising Seeds don’t necessarily see themselves as plant breeders, although they are definitely dabbling in several breeding projects. Their intention is to steward a diversity of crops that are relevant to themselves and their community.

Brian - ‘The culture, the relationship is essential. We can breed all of the new novel varieties we desire, but unless they really mean something to people, then will they stick? Biodiversity with lasting impact is borne of deep relationship with place and community. It’s not just about breeders or farmers. There’s no technological fix (to our biodiversity crisis) without a cultural shift in how we relate collectively to food and farming.’

Crystine - ‘Diversity cannot be created by an individual.’

A common thread in many conversations throughout my trip so far is that the radical possibilities of seed lies beyond their genetics. Resilience can be found not only in genetic diversity, but also in the connection that comes from sharing seed, from the act of cooking and sharing a meal together. In cooperation and collective care of crops. In their stories. Can we inspire these relationships by shifting plant stewardship as not just held by the ‘experts’, but also back into the hands of the community at large?

Crystine – ‘The interesting part too is we do have diversity, it’s just who’s voices are elevated. And who’s experiences are looked upon as relevant? And so the diversity is there 100%, it’s just who is considered some sort of hypothetical majority or voice that is deemed worthy of listened to and being celebrated. That’s the thing, it’s all part of it.’

Brian and Crystine’s own stewardship is centred around the culinary use of the crops that they grow and the meals that can be created from each individual variety. They have been collaborating with Lane and the Culinary Breeding Network for many years, exploring the possibilities that emerge from cultivating this community and collaboration around food.

Brian – ‘In my head there’s not a separation between agriculture and food culture, its just a continuum, when we plant seeds of things I have the dish in my head that I’m looking forward to. There are lots of things that we plant that there’s a single thing that I really enjoy making maybe once a year, I feel this connection with this one thing, that’s why I grow it because there’s this one thing that I want to eat. It’s a seasonal thing.’

One of their many exciting collaborations is the Gusto Italiano Project. Born primarily from a mutual love of radicchio and a desire to further establish it as an anchor of the autumn and winter produce season in the PNW, Uprising Seeds and the Culinary Breeding Network partnered with innovative plant breeders Smarties Bio in Italy to offer the largest collection of radicchio, endive and escarole outside of Italy. Sharing culinary and cultural context to the seeds, growing information and recipe ideas, they are working to create a shared community through the foods that they love.

As well as the glorious radicchio, when I asked Brian what crops he felt most connected to, he shared that they all had significance, but he did note several of the brassica varieties that they have been carefully stewarding for several years. From cabbages to cauliflowers, they have been working in reciprocity with these crops to adapt them to this region and offer varieties that will provide their community with luscious greens with many uses throughout the year.

And it's not all about the culinary aspect. Uprising Seeds also offer an extensive catalogue of flower seed. It seems some things they grow simply for the sheer beauty and joy that they bring. Flowers grown for their aesthetic value, and for all the other creatures that will benefit from their presence - almost beauty for beauty’s sake. The beds swelled with the delicate dusty grey blooms of ‘Amazing Grey’ shirley poppies, the sunset hues of ‘Orange Wonder’ snapdragon, and the impressive cones of Echinacea. Perhaps all this was to encourage those moments of pause, of connection with another living being, like that I experienced with the coyote.

Crystine – ‘It’s about noticing, 100% being aware and being present. Because if you’re not present then you’re not aware and you’re not noticing. We can’t all be present all the time and aware and noticing and all these lovely flowery things but that’s what keeps me moving, not only in the seed world, but that’s what keeps me alive, and I can’t imagine living this life without being constantly amazed... But it is a privilege to feel it as much as I do and I recognise that.’

Walking around the farm, a cacophony of colours, shapes, textures and life, I was certainly in awe. Uprising Seeds offer an abundant and diverse catalogue of seeds. All of their varieties are open pollinated, and there seems to be nothing proprietary about their stewardship.

Crystine, Brian and I discussed the endless generosity of plants – they are arguably the antithesis of the scarcity model of modern economics. They deliberately produce an abundance of seed to disperse it far and wide. We may try and be proprietary about the varieties we ‘create’, but they have other ideas. Crystine pointed out the irony that plants often use us – dispersing themselves on our clothes, on vehicles, in the postal system. We think we are in charge, when in fact, it’s a dual relationship, a conversation.

Crystine - ‘We don’t really know who is choosing who, and seed certainly transcends individual ownership.’

This wonderful seed farm has left a lasting impression on me, and much to reflect upon. Crystine, Brian and their family kindly welcomed me into their home for the week, and we had many thought-provoking conversations. Our chat meandering through many topics but most often coming back to this idea of relationship. What is apparent is that we need to be in relationship with these crops and assimilate them into our everyday lives and culture again for them, and diversity, to persist.  

What happens when we shift from seeing seed as commodity, as just another farm input, to something like a member of our extended family, someone we could learn from? What if we make time to observe and listen to them, share a story or two, uplift and celebrate them? Perhaps then we could all be nourished in relationship with one another.  

Faith and David have been stewards of the 100 acres of land at Midnights Farm for many years – part of a thriving agricultural community in the San Juan Island chain, they regularly open their home to visitors and other local farmers, bringing their community together to tend and nourish. Nestled amongst woodland and not far from the sea, the land is a patchwork of pasture, cultivated land and water. The Sunday I arrived they were hosting a local farmers gathering, an opportunity for farmers from across the islands to compare notes, share knowledge, and as it turns out, listen to me give an impromptu talk on my travels so far!

A slight detour in my seed journey – Midnights Farm is not a seed farm – they produce vegetables for the San Juan Islands Food Hub & restaurants, and meat from their herd of cows. Alongside the produce, David also runs an amazing composting operation. As a drop off point for the local community, people bring him all of their garden waste and in return he offers beautiful compost for islanders to buy, as well as experimenting with woodchip and biochar. Midnights Farm is a thriving agricultural hub in the middle of the island.

Faith - ‘To tend our community by feeding them and also tend our community by creating a space that holds a place for learning and conversation and friendship and coming together in different ways. To farm, one needs to be continually learning because there are so many different elements from seed soil and animal health and composting and all of those processes, how we best work together, make decisions together, there’s so much to learn and we have to learn every day and that’s one of the beauties of it.’

Always continuing their learning, they have recently started to explore the world of seed, recognising that it is a vital part of the farming narrative, Faith is growing a chard crop on contract for Ferry Boat Seeds this year. Part of their motivation to continuously evolve and diversify what they do at the farm is to bring resilience in the face of ever challenging conditions:

Faith – ‘The climate crisis, how we engage with that, what we can do in terms of adaptation and building resilience in our community is a huge driving force, that drives us to do what we do. It’s the greater overarching lens that we’re always looking through’

A bountiful and restorative place, it was a joy to base myself at Midnights Farm for the week. It was an extra treat to be picking and be eating fresh veggies from a market garden again, and there was something very grounding about helping Faith and the team plant chicory ready for winter salad – likely in sync with my farming community back home. It felt comforting that although thousands of miles away we are all working with our hands in the soil to nurture plants that will nourish us into the winter months.

Beyond Midnights Farm, I spent a few days exploring the island and visiting several other land based businesses. First stop was Still Light Farm. A relatively new farm, Lena and Andrew Jones signed an agricultural ground lease for the 42 acre site with the Lopez Community Land Trust in 2022. The Land Trust was established to support a resilient local food system and healthy local economy, it holds land in perpetuity and offers lifetime leases for those looking to embark on their own farming journey but who may otherwise find significant barriers to accessing that land. It has enabled Lena and Andrew to make a home here, providing a pathway for them to do what they love and feed their local community.

Still Light Farm’s mission is to offer resilient food and seeds to their community using ecological practices that prioritise biodiversity. Strolling around their farm, it was quickly apparent this place was full of life. Dedicated to leaving large areas of the land to habitat, amongst the rows of vegetables there were agroforestry areas, perennial strips and expanses of cover crop left to flower to provide important shelter and food for insects and bird life. They grow carbon rich cover crops, hoping to build organic matter and fungal community in the soil, regularly mowing to generate biomass and allowing cover crops at least two years in their rotation to build soil health. As well as cover crops, Lena uses lots of inoculants, and has an on farm wormery. They work to encourage relationship, in all its forms, and like the fungi they strive to nurture beneath their feet, they weave a complex network that brings soil health, seed and their community together.

It was through connection to their local community that Lena acquired a nursery business from a local couple looking to retire, and for the past year she has been growing vegetable starts for sale in various stores across the island. Inheriting the business has provided an important income stream whilst they get to know the land here, and provides an exciting opportunity for Lena to run variety trials, slowly introducing more locally adapted and OP varieties to their collection. As well as the nursery business – and realising they needed to quickly find their niche on this small island - Lena and Andrew chose to focus on growing storage crops. This harmoniously linked with their interest in seed, and they have established a successful dry bean CSA scheme. They currently aim to grow between 800-1000lbs of drying beans each year, offering two shares for members to pick up throughout winter months. They grow endless varieties, and it was exciting to see these being produced on scale at their farm. As we walked alongside the rows of beans, Andrew shared the stories behind each one – there was Brighstone, an heirloom said to be found in a shipwreck off the coast of the Isle of Wight in the 1800s, and more recent cultivars developed by UC Davis specifically for high yields in organic systems.

Beyond the beans, Lena has also been experimenting with growing populations, seeing their value in bringing resilience to their farm, she regularly trials heterogenous varieties particularly if she is able to source them from neighbouring islands.

‘We live in this really really specific climate, this island that is essentially in a rain shadow, and we have pretty difficult soils and we only have rain for half of the year, and our access is limited. And so the potential for adaptation here I think is really rich, for making crops that grow much better specifically on the San Juan islands.’

It was inspiring to see how Lena and Andrew are so sensitively integrating into their new landscape, both in how they tend the land and also in the crops they offer to nourish their local community. Seed was very much at the heart of their business, whether it be to be for direct eating or saved and shared for years to come.

‘My relationship with seed is – there’s two parts to it, first part is I really enjoy working with it and the diversity brings so much interest into that. The seeds can be so beautiful, the plants themselves can be so beautiful, we get to spend so much time with them when we’re growing them for seed so we get to learn with that plant in a much deeper way that you would do if growing it say for lettuce, and you’re cutting it and eating it. I love the beauty of the seeds, the way they all look different in your hand, the way they grow differently. The plants then come out different from that, you get to observe them and walk through them and you can really pull different traits out. But then I also think the diversity is really important, right now in particular, because without it we start to be so limited in our food selection and we start to lose this experience of being able to save the seeds from the crops that we grow, we lose the ability to adapt the seed to where we live.’

Continuing to seek seed stories on the island, my next stop was Barn Owl Bakery, to meet Sage Dilts and Nathan Hodges. Nathan and Sage’s story is intertwined with Midnights Farm (they were their incubator site until they moved to their current land several years ago), and much like Midnights and Still Light Farm, their business seems to be co-created by the community that supports them. Barn Owl Bakery is a farm-to-table business -  a craft bakery and grain farm with tradition and flavour at their core. Fresh baked breads, pasties, cookies and crackers are available at their bakery farmstand Thursday-Saturday, with fresh bread coming out of the oven at 3.30pm just in time for tea.

When Sage and Nathan moved to the Lopez in the early 2010s, the Community Land Trust were looking at developing a staple crop seed base on the island and had begun sourcing heirloom and heritage grains for farmers to trial. Their participation in these trials introduced Sage and Nathan to the idea of heritage and heirloom grains and the difference between these and modern varieties. Inspired by the diversity they saw, in 2013 they embarked on a journey of educating themselves in wheat varieties, opening a whole world of possibility. As bakers, they soon realised that access to these grains was a problem, they couldn’t just order 5000lbs of an heirloom wheat flour, so they made the decision to start growing some. In 2014 they planted their first seed, and the rest, as they say, is history. Barn Owl Bakery is now a thriving island business, with queues forming daily of people patiently waiting to buy a loaf of their nourishing bread or a tasty pastry treat.

The bakery has always been at the heart of their business, grain farming is secondary to the bread and with no official budget for grain growing they work within these constraints. But it has been a deliberate choice to grow and use these heritage varieties. As they explained, the process informs the product:

Sage - ‘If you wanted to have a bakery that didn’t have any relationship to the landscape at all then yes you could just have non-organic grain, but when you understand how much the landscape is impacted by wheat growing practices and then how people can’t eat bread. The whole picture has to be there. You have to reduce the nitrogen load on the soil and the water system, you have to reduce the nitrogen load so you’re not amping up your gluten levels and making it indigestible for people. You amp up that gluten so the bread can go through an industrial process. You don’t use an industrial process so you don’t need that. But then you have to stay at a certain scale because the bread has to be worked by hand. We couldn’t do what we’re doing if the wheat was anonymous and that part didn’t matter. I don’t think the whole picture would be compelling enough to our community and I don’t think it would be compelling enough to us, just to make bread for breads sake. It’s not as interesting, it’s not alive. It has to be coherent, the whole conversation has to be coherent.’

In their fields, they grow only standard height, traditionally bred grains. As Nathan put it, those with ‘no glassware involved’ in their creation. They source grains from seed banks, often starting with 5g packets, and spend time trialling what grows well on Lopez Island.

Nathan – ‘first year out of seed banks, seeds are always really grumpy’

So they don’t make any decisions in that first season. Instead they save and grow them out again, and then start to make selections. There are obviously ones that won’t work in their system succumbing to diseases or exhibiting poor vigour.

Nathan - ‘But some, some we’re like, woah who are you?’

With the best selected, they carry on the seed expansion process until they have enough to test bake. Grinding up a pound and a half of each variety, they run it all through the same process to compare performance – at this point it’s about baking quality and flavour. They weigh up the agronomic and baking characteristics: if it performs well in the bakery and in the field then they continue to grow and bulk out the seed stock.

Sage - ‘We’re growing out seed you can’t find. A lot of varieties we’re growing we bought in little packets and we spent at least 5 years just getting it up to quantity, as there’s no one here who has the seed that we want. And it’s now adapted to our area.’

Nathan - ‘We feel like there’s value in keeping these grains alive both as a genetic resource but also because we think they have real potential in our community.’

Nathan explained how these heritage grains have potentially deeper root systems, higher nutrition, and they can exhibit drought tolerance. It’s a commitment, and can be a long process liberating these varieties from their frozen status in a seed bank, but the benefits can be exponential.

Nathan - ‘I’m interested in the unbroken chain of experiences that is contained in the seed, the genomics. Wheat has an enormous genome, it’s huge compared to humans, and then there’s epigenetics…they carry a lot of information with them so when we plant out a seed it has this unbroken chain back thousands of years in agricultural systems…We think of it as leveraging the experience and wisdom of that grain into what we’re doing.’

They also have a current interest in landrace and population grains for those very reasons.

‘I think evolutionary populations are really cool, there’s research that shows they yield equivalent to genetically uniform modern varieties, and that’s awesome, you know, why not? It makes some much sense. Horizontal resistance, adaptability, the climate is so variable on this island year to year, if I have a lot of different diversity in my fields I can count on something every year versus if I have put all my eggs in one basket. It’s really only a matter of time before some pest or disease or climate event occurs. I do think the rate at which new varieties are getting developed is pretty similar to the rate at which the evolutionary pressures on the grains themselves are happening. I have nothing against wheat breeders! I think it’s great, they’re so excited about what they’re doing and their heart seems to be in the right place. But then there’s the whole intellectual property piece of it, patenting, PVP varieties that I understand from a logical place but I’m not interested in participating in that system’

Nathan described himself as a ‘both/and person’, making space for both stable varieties and heterogenous mixes in their fields.

‘There’s such a fluidity to seed, I’m always a little bit uncomfortable with the language around seed purity or seed genetics. I grant maybe more agency than I should to my seeds, but you know, they’re wild beings. They’re going to evolve, they’re going to adapt, they’re going to think things through. They’ve got an agenda. And they mix, they just always mix. You can’t keep them not mixing because they get stuck in equipment and boots and birds pick them up and drop them. We walk through every field and there’s going to be off-types. There are certainly varieties where I’m attached to them as varieties, as individuals, so I guess I do put effort into cleaning out the combine between harvests. And I would never think about mixing them up until I have grown them for a while and got to know them.’

Aspiring to know each variety intimately feels important. Many of the conversations I have been having lately circle back to relationship. The relationship the seed has with the soil and living communities it grows amongst, the relationship those plants have with the human that tends them, the relationship of that seed beyond the farm as it is shared, perhaps transformed into something delicious to eat.

I had a glimpse into how these relationships can contribute towards a robust local food system during my week on Lopez. A small island, with a lot of heart.

My destination was Ferry Boat Seeds. One of the more unusual seed companies on my travels, Ferry Boat Seeds offer contract organic seed production in a business-to-business model, rather than curating their own catalogue. Ferry Boat was founded by fellow Brit, Louisa Brouwer in 2018 and is now jointly run by her and husband Brook. I was put in contact with Louisa by another Churchill Fellow, and she and Brook kindly welcomed me into their life for the week to get a behind the scenes look at their business.

Both PhDs in Plant Breeding from Washington State University, Louisa and Brook are passionate about keeping diversity in the food system while also supporting the work of independent plant breeders. They currently have 6 acres in production at their main site, and lease several other sites across the island. They work with over 10 seed companies and research organisations across the US to steward stock seed, aid with variety development and increase parent lines. Ferry Boat Seed’s focus is on field scale production of mainly dry seeded crops, their core competence being spinach, chard, beets and brassicas. The scale of Ferry Boat’s crops was something I hadn’t much encountered before, each crop often spanning up to an acre – their fields full of rows and rows of spinach, brassica and beets heaving with abundance, their beautiful seed heads drying down perfectly in the July sunshine.

Fixed on quality at every stage of production, Louisa has an incredible eye for detail and is committed to producing the highest quality seed. There has been a dramatic loss in quality and genetic diversity in organic seed in recent years due to lack of investment– with attention often given to breeding varieties suitable for conventional chemical-based systems. Ferry Boat Seeds are determined to change that by raising the standards in the organic sector and producing the highest possible quality seed for farmers.

Louisa - ‘Keeping diversity in the food system and promoting the free exchange of plant genetic resources while also supporting the work of independent plant breeders, which means plant breeders are compensated for the kind of work that they do is important. The ways that we try and do that with our business is through working with small independent seed companies, supporting the variety development process of plant breeders employed by those companies. We love to help steward stock seed lines and help do growing and selection work that’s going to bring a new variety to the market. We feel we can leverage our plant breeding backgrounds to help with that. That’s a really big driver for us.’

Analytical and methodical in their production methods, Louisa and Brook have embedded careful plant health procedures into their management practice, and closely observe their crops at all stages of their life cycle: they are meticulous stewards. They mostly grow open pollinated varieties and populations, but they have no philosophical grievance against F1s, understanding them to provide reliability and useful breeding opportunities. It comes down the system, and how these genetic resources are respectfully shared. Along with vegetables, they also steward many flower seed crops and work with the island’s Salish Seed Project bulking up native seed stock for restoration projects. Through their work, Ferry Boat support many facets of plant breeding. There were isolation cages out in the field housing inbred vegetable lines destined for hybrid production, alongside perennial sunflower trials and beets bred specifically for culinary value.

Louisa - ‘Diversity suffers is there isn’t widely dispersed access to plant genetic resources, because just by the nature of communities being varied, and local ecosystems being varied, if there aren’t initiatives in plant breeding and plant selection taking place by different people in all different places diversity will be less. Diversity should be a goal in itself because it’s part of resilience. But it’s also part of joy, and it’s beautiful. We suffer as a species if access to plant genetic resources is too firmly restricted. There has to be balance. And diversity suffers if everything is totally open, if you enforce open access to plant genetic resources and therefore it’s not possible to ever make money, proper money from breeding. Because renumerated plant breeding is also part of generating diversity. We have to find a balance in that somewhere. There’s a place for most things, and its kind of hubristic for anyone to say they know the ‘one way’ to do things, anything.’

As well as supporting vital plant breeding work, Ferry Boat Seeds also offer custom seed cleaning services. Proactive from the offset and seeing a need in the sector, Louisa invested in quality seed cleaning infrastructure in the early days of the business. They clean seed throughout winter months, offering this service on anything from very small lots to 1500lbs: providing another income stream for the company and an important resource for smaller seed growers or those looking to start out on their seed journey on the islands. As well as the obligatory Winnow Wizard, they have a gravity table, de-bearder, airscreen and belt cleaners, along with endless screens, sieves and winnowing devices. This was exciting stuff for someone who is used to cleaning seed with a humble zig zag cleaner! It made me reflect on the importance of access to this equipment within the seed growing community back home, and the barriers that prevent many people investing in this equipment. Throughout my stay, we had several conversations hinged around the difficulties of the ‘mid-scale’, those farmers not growing on hundreds of acres, but more than just a few. Machinery, equipment and labour seem to be a challenge in this area, and there is a risk that as scale of production increases, the values driving the business can be forgotten. Ferry Boat Seeds seem ambitious to scale up, and very conscious of maintaining their connection with the land, continuing to steward their crops at a human scale to maintain that vital relationship to the plants.

Brook – ‘Having diversity of scales within the organic seed industry is really important, if the current system is really big, or really small, how do we build out some of those middle parts of that seed production system so we’re not stuck in any sort of spectrum of seed production, that’s important. So that we can produce volumes and lots and lots of high quality organic seed for lots and lots of farms.’

Louisa – (as a mid scale grower) ‘you have agility and the ability to supply smaller quantities and the big suppliers don’t have that flexibility. But you also have efficiency that smaller operators don’t have and the ability to invest in equipment.’

Having been travelling in the US for over two months, it was a surprisingly grounding experience to spend time with another British person. Even though we share the same language, US and UK culture can be very different, and there was something restful about spending time with Louisa and her family. It was also an opportunity to share news of the seed world back home, and hear her thoughts on the current state of affairs. One of the driving forces behind my Churchill Fellowship has been to fully grasp the impact the UK’s strict rules around homogeneity and variety registration might be having on our seed industry. Immersing myself in a seed community with very different legislation and observing the innovation and diversity that emerges from more freedom has been revelatory.  

In the UK, for a new variety to be marketed, it must first be added to the national plant varieties list. For it to be registered, it must pass strict DUS testing, and depending on the crop this can take between 1-3 years. This process is not cheap, and significant amounts of plant material are often required. Most vegetable and grain varieties fall under this legislation. These rules can be important, and help protect farmers from crop loss and poor seed quality, but they were created within a conservative mindset for industrial scale agriculture and do not consider the nuances within our farming sector. The rules present a significant barrier for some independent plant breeders and for the dynamic management and evolution of organic varieties on farms by farmers who might want to take the next step in sharing these seeds with the wider market. A business like Ferry Boat Seeds working with a broad range of organisations and plant breeders would quite likely struggle to exist within the constraints of the current legal framework back home.

Louisa - ‘I’m shocked because it seems like there is a serious downward trend in the quality of plant genetic resources that will be available to UK growers, and that could be difficult to reverse. Having access to a wide selection is a really critical part of success for growers.’

Louisa reflected that for organic farmers this, combined with Brexit restrictions on importing seed stock, is bad news. What occurs to me as being needed in these times of instability is resilience, and diversity is an important source of this. And it’s not just about genetic diversity. It’s about diversity of scale, diversity of people doing this work, diversity of relationships with these plants. In Louisa’s own words, what keeps her doing this work is the ‘elemental joy’ that comes from that relationship.

Brook - ‘There is a fundamental connection to managing the plants in the landscape and that relationship, it’s stupidly humbling in terms of having to figure out how to grow these crops. Seed specifically, and the diversity that can come out in breeding projects, it’s about possibility. New combinations that are fun and different. Plant breeding is to some degree about making decisions quickly, having that experience of walking through a field and you have thousands of things to choose from and you need to get it down to hundreds or tens or ones, there’s something about that process of trying to be in touch enough with the plants and what’s going on and understand a little bit about the biology of pathogens, and about the environment you’re growing in, it becomes an intuitive decision.’

I had a wonderful week at Ferry Boat Seeds. Louisa and Brook bring sharp minds and deep care to their seed stewardship, committed to learning and continuously improving their work, their business demonstrates that diversity both in our relationship with plants and in our approach to seed work is just as valuable as that which is held within the crops themselves.  

The majority of the grains we consume in the UK and US are refined – from your average loaf of sliced white bread to the digestive biscuit you dip into your cup of tea – and this is having accumulative impact on our health, and wider ecosystem health. The refining process removes more than half of wheat’s B vitamins and all its fibre. Studies have shown that the average fibre intake of UK adults is less than half the recommended amount. The consequence of this reduced dietary fibre is a population of people more prone to heart disease, higher cholesterol, stroke, obesity and type 2 diabetes.

But all is not lost. There are amazing organisations, bakers, farmers and millers working towards a healthier and more equitable grain economy. On our road trip around the Skagit Valley, we visited one of the leading bodies carrying out this work: WSU Breadlab.

Breadlab was founded in 2010 by Dr Stephen Jones in response to growing concern over plant breeding practices controlled by the large chemical companies. Stephen moved away from the world of breeding Roundup ready wheats, and started working directly with farmers, actively engaging with those local to the Skagit Valley to ask them what they needed from their grains and what they wanted him to work on as a plant breeder. In a collaborative approach that saw farmers and plant breeders coming together to make things work better for everyone, WSU Breadlab was formed. One of the first varieties released was Skagit 1109, bred specifically for maritime Pacific Northwest climate, for farmers in this very region.

Breadlab are Washington State University researchers working outside of the commodity system, with a goal of introducing the concept of better tasting, healthier, affordable bread. They create and breed wheat, barley and rye varieties that are better for eating, and better for soil and farming practices. Their goal is the change the way the world views and eats wheat.

Stephen had recently retired from his role of Director of Breadlab after many years, so the day we visited we were met by Janine Sanguine, Outreach & Education Manager, and Robin Morgan, former PhD student of Stephen’s and now continuing his work on coloured and perennial wheats. Janine and Robyn gave us a tour of the impressive facility at the WSU campus: from the milling room to the seed store, it was a unique glimpse into what happens behind the scenes in the facility. After our tour, we sat down to eat some delicious freshly baked scones, drink coffee and chat all things grain.

Janine leads the lab’s outreach and engagement projects, spreading the word about the important work carried out there, and educating both adults and children about the benefits of eating whole grains.

‘I loved baking, I grew up on a farm, but I never understood the seed. We took it for granted you find the seeds and you buy them from somewhere. I never gave a second thought to my people’s heritage and where that actual seed came from.’

At WSU Breadlab, the focus is very much on that seed, and on the whole grain system – from plant breeding to trialling varieties in the field to milling and finally to baking. They are not just working with the plants, or working with the end food product, they are doing both, and demonstrating a practical and replicable supply chain. By working collaboratively and considering all stages of the process, a regional grain economy is emerging. There are now local mills, and a local malting facility.

‘The most critical thing is the mill, for us, that’s how we turn it into something that we can bake our bread.’

Janine explained the importance of breeding varieties that can function well as a wholegrain to make it a genuinely viable alternative to the current refined offerings. When selecting varieties, they very much consider the production methods – how to get volume and sliceability in a loaf – and look at the current demand of the industry to see how they can offer a practical alternative.

Robin – ‘Wheat is a staple crop grown all over the world and a lot in the US, it’s a commodity crop that has exploded everywhere, and the main purpose is to produce refined flour. Taking the grain, milling it then removing the bran and germ and just keeping the refined flour and using that. That has been the standard use in the industry. The problem with that is from a nutritional perspective it’s impoverished. The system is so big it doesn’t change on its own. Flour mills offer refined flour, bakers bake with refined flour, people eat white bread. And then the loop continues, they ask wheat breeders to produce varieties that will make refined flour. This process has been going on for a 100 years or so in Europe and North America, despite the fact that we now know that in US more than 90% of people are lacking dietary fibre requirements. At one end we have grains from which we remove the fibre, and then we have people that don’t have access to fibre. So, it’s a major disconnection between the food production side and the public health world.

So here at the lab we develop wheat varieties that can function well as whole grain. Because some of the concern in the baking industry or the flour industry is that if we are using wholegrain, we will lose some of the loaf body, our loaves will be denser if we keep the bran, or the flavour will be bad if we eat the whole grain, or it's not what people want. All of these things are just arbitrary things, somebody said that’s what we want but the reality of it is through selection and through breeding we can address all of those things. We regularly bake bread with whole grain wheat and don’t make bricks! They’re desirable breads, delicious. That’s one of the main reasons we do this work.’

Another important reason is the impact it is having on our farmland and wider ecosystems. In the UK, grain and cereals account for around 71% of the arable crops, and a large percentage of these are grown in conventional, chemical-based systems and often as monocultures. That’s 4.4 million hectares of agricultural land being farmed in a way that is potentially contributing towards soil degradation, biodiversity collapse and pollution of our waterways. This is not the farmer’s fault. This is arguably the result of an industrialised food system that places unachievable demands on the farmer, without adequate compensation or respect for their work, human health or the wider ecosystem. The grains like those being developed at WSU Breadlab offer diversity to this otherwise homogenous landscape – their breeding process focuses on resilience, adaptability and nutritional integrity, these plants are being bred for resilient regenerative systems that do not rely heavily on chemicals to produce a yield.

Beyond the plant breeding, Breadlab are creating a bread product that is approachable, accessible and affordable. They are also building community around that bread and working to push boundaries and change habits. Breadlab don’t simply offer the grain and the seed, they offer the food, the stories and new traditions centred around growing, processing and cooking practices. They share a building with the King Arthur Baking School, and regularly host baking workshops and culinary classes for the local community.

Janine - ‘We’re trying to provide an alternative pathway so people know they don’t just have to eat what’s given to them’

The work of the Breadlab team is far reaching. They work with many farms across Washington State and beyond, one of the more local collaborators is Chimacum Valley Grainery. Not far from Port Townsend, we headed out to Chimacum Valley Grainery (CVG) for a tour and to see some of WSU Breadlab’s varieties in action. CVG is an 80 acre farm organic farm in the fertile valley soils along Chimacum Creek. Crystie and Keith Kisler took on this land in 2004. A fifth generation farmer from Eastern Washington, Keith is carrying on his family’s grain growing tradition and together with Crystie they are bringing a reverence to the land and acknowledging the complexities of our current time. As well as being a productive family farm, they also house a stone mill, wood fired bakery and craft microbrewery. CVG are deeply committed to providing locally produced nourishing food to their community. As Crystie explained, they work at a very localised scale, growing most of their grains on site, sometimes sourcing from other like-minded organic and regenerative growers in the region. Their mission is to grow food for local people, and they currently produce a vast diversity of grains, including some of the heritage and more modern varieties bred by WSU Breadlab - all selected for flavour and nutrition and ability to thrive in Western Washington’s maritime climate.

As well as stable varieties, they grow blends or populations, such as the Climate Blend wheat: a mix of 4 varieties for a diverse mix of genetics with resilience and a rainbow of nutrition. They mill all these grains on site in their stone mill, and the flour is then used in their bakery or sold to the local community. As well as bread, they also produce grains for pasta making, and have diversified into brewing, with a floor malting facility and on-site microbrewery. With soil health and human health at their heart, Chimacum Valley Grainery was an incredible example of how producing nourishing food at a localised scale is possible, their success strengthened through collaboration with organisations such as WSU Breadlab. Together they are demonstrating the possibilities that come when we restore continuity between the landscape, community and sustenance.

In creating these alternative grain economies, Breadlab and farms like Chimacum Valley Grainery are aspiring to a more abundant and thriving human and natural landscape. And this is happening back home too. Inspired by WSU Breadlab, UK Grainlab is doing vital work to create a more diverse UK grain based economy: building a resilient, nourishing and equitable food system with shorter, healthier and more diverse supply chains. They host events several times a year that bring farmers, millers, bakers, plant breeders bakers, cooks, scientists and academics together to learn from each other. Very much like Lane’s work with the Culinary Breeding Network, they are bridging the gap between all the stakeholders in this community. And there are now collectives springing up across the British Isles offering an alternative human scale non commodity pathway for grain. Having most recently lived in the Southwest, I got to participate first-hand in the regular Southwest Grain Network meetings and witness the power that arises when communities come together to make change happen.

As well as short supply chains, there are also organisations such as Wildfarmed working at a nationwide level. At the recent Groundswell festival in the UK, Andy Cato, one of Wildfarmed’s founding members, spoke about their endeavour to meet the world where it currently is. Wildfarmed recently surveyed UK consumers, and results indicate that 76% of people don’t eat sourdough bread. At a nationwide scale, they are looking for progress over perfection, and although in an ideal world they would like to see everyone eating complex wholegrain diverse products, right now they are working within complexities of the current supply chain to bring consumers closer to their food supply and the revolutionary farmers that enable that grain to reach their tables in a more ethical way. Making change happen one loaf at a time.

Although within a different framework, both these organisations, like WSU Breadlab, appear to be working towards a similar goal: of tending the land, of nourishing ourselves and building community. There’s strength in diversity, and it’s inspiring to witness all of these amazing folk working in their own unique ways to achieve real positive change.

In the words of Bonnetta during our visit to Breadlab: ‘We need to find ways of bringing people together around the common good, and what’s better than bread?’

Wild Dreams Farm on Vashon Island was one of those places I was really hoping to get to, but it was looking unlikely with the logistics of my planned route. As luck would have it, Micaela from OSA had organised a visit there during our three day road trip with Bonnetta and Susana, and so it was with much excitement that we travelled by ferry to Vashon to spend the day with Jennifer Williams at her beautiful farm.

Less than 2 acres in size, Wild Dreams Farm is nestled amongst old trees and hedgerows on the west side of Vashon Island. Transformed by Jen and her family from a blackberry thicket to a market garden to lavender farm to homestead and finally into its current form of a biodiverse food, medicine and seed farm. Arriving at the farm on a swelteringly hot day, it was a welcome relief to wander amongst the dappled shade of the surrounding trees and listen to Jen share her story.

Jen has been farming this land for nearly 20 years, small scale farming in peace with the soil, the creatures and the earth. The vision of Wild Dreams Farm is to ensure abundance and biodiversity in our culture and in our food system for generations to come by breeding open pollinated vegetable, herb and flower seed which nourish our human and more than human communities. As Jen gave us a tour of the farm, her respect, care and attention for this land was self-evident. Perennials, annuals and seed crops are interwoven throughout the garden, life thrives here, and the garden exudes abundance. Diversity is at the heart of Wild Dreams Farm – from the rainbow of colours in the poppy populations, to the thrum of insects feasting on the flowers and herbs in the perennial beds. Life is busy living.  

One of the values of the business is to nurture that life, and re-culture and restore relationship to the land and to each other through food and seed. To that purpose, Wild Dreams Farm offers many seeds with deep cultural significance, and those that have travelled with a story. The Monachine Pole drying bean, for example, was nurtured in the gardens of writer Angelo Pellegrini here in the Pacific Northwest, and founds its way to Vashon Island many years ago, passed between the hands of friends. Then there are the dye plants grown for seed and harvested for workshops run by local natural dyer and artist Monica Wilson - further exploring the multitude of ways our relationship to plants is so deeply embedded in our everyday lives.

Jen sells the seed she produces through a combination of wholesale racks in local stores and online via her website. She sells small packets, and like many other smaller seed companies, these are primarily aimed at the home gardener. But in reality, many farmers looking to diversify their market crops also grow some of the varieties Jen is offering. Several of the farms I have visited on my travels are trialling some of the more heterogenous varieties available in the Wild Dreams catalogue, predominantly looking for more options to build resilience into their systems in these challenging times. Something I am encountering time and time again on this trip is the sense that farmers are navigating a tension between needing uniformity and yield for market, and the increasing need for more diversity in their crops to improve resilience to unpredictable weather patterns. Vertical resistance doesn’t seem to be cutting it, and there is a shift to exploring the horizontal resistance found in these on-farm and evolutionary breeding techniques. Some of the OP varieties and diverse populations may not (yet) always deliver the desired yield, but they do offer heterogeneity: an evolutionary strategy to adapt to an ever-changing climate, and one that relies on a kinship between plants and humans.

Jen acknowledges that the farming and plant breeding world still prioritises uniformity over diversity in most crops, and while understanding that focus as important in some contexts, she likes to remember and remind her customers that diversity yields beauty, disease resistance, climate resilience and a genetic repository for future plant breeders. There are many evolutionary populations on offer in the Wild Dreams Farm catalogue.

‘(Selling diverse populations) suits my values around biodiversity and breeding for resilience – I just kind of think why not! I’ve been watching adaptation happen fast in these crops, in one or two years things can adapt. We can have these climate events, but in these populations there’ll be something that survives – it’s ultra cross resilience.’

From the Maxima Mash Up – an intentionally genetically diverse winter squash mix created by Katie of Saltwater Seeds – to Jen’s first original farm bred variety ‘Wild Dreams Kale’, selected from one of Frank Morton’s Wild Garden Seed population kales that are now naturalised on the farm and popping up everywhere, providing a minimum effort marketable crop.

In embracing diversity in her work, in her own words Jen is rerooting herself and culture back to the earth.

‘There’s the botanical value of how this diversity allows for a broader expression of genetics of the plants, that is critical both now and into the future for creating new varieties. But I also think of the social and cultural value of diversity in terms of not just plant communities but human communities, and how as I think the ethos of strict sameness in all of our food crops can also reflect ideas of strict sameness in our communities, and I don’t want anything to do with that. It’s the sort of eugenics attitude laid across the plant world and that’s not what the plants want. Their job is to keep themselves going into the future. I feel like that visual representation of a broad variety of what a plant can look like - maybe that can translate into some kind of cultural acceptance and into broad ideas of what we can all look around and see, and call that beautiful. Because right now we don’t call that beautiful. We separate and divide, and we do it with ourselves and we do it to plants, and I don’t think that’s what they want and it’s not what I want.’

As well as growing seeds for the Wild Dreams Farm catalogue, Jen is also custodian of several precious seed crops from the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library (PHSL). Palestine has been considered one of the world’s centres of diversity, particularly in wheat and barley, in their own words ‘these seeds carry the DNA of our survival against a violent background that is seen across the hills and valleys’. The PHSL was founded in 2014 by artist, researcher and writer Vivien Sansour, who has since worked with farmers in Palestine and around the world to preserve ancestral seeds and biocultural knowledge.

Heirloom seeds tell us stories, connect us to our ancestral roots, remind us of meals our families once made at special times of year. The Palestine Heirloom Library is an attempt to recover these ancient seeds and their stories and put them back into people’s hands.

Bonnetta from Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance works closely with Vivien and the PHSL, and it is through this connection and through being part of the wider Ujamaa family that Jen came to be custodian of these treasured seeds. She is currently guardian of Abu Samara wheat, a variety of fenugreek and an heirloom squash. Our main purpose for visiting the farm was to enable Bonnetta and Jen to connect, and report on these precious crops, and I watched both women come together across the beds, running ears of wheat through their hands, sharing tears of grief and in solidarity.

In the wake of the atrocities occurring in Palestine, these plants growing on a small farm thousands of miles from where they belong are holders of both grief and hope. Despite it all, the Abu Samara wheat were standing proud in the field, full of vitality and embodying a defiant desire to live, to grow, to rebuild.

My day at Wild Dreams Farm was one of deep connection and conversation. Jen has created a beautiful, nurturing and healing space in which all life is welcome and thrives. At the end of our day together I asked Jen what it was about this work that brings her joy.

‘I do all of this, sometimes I’m out here by myself and I think all these things and get all twisted up about what I’m doing and what’s going on in the world. But then having people here and walking round and having these conversations, it’s just the relationships created and the bringing people together. That’s what brings me joy.’

Bonnetta was visiting OSA from the east coast, and Micaela had planned a series of tours around the local seed network for us during her stay. So, on the Wednesday morning, Bonnetta, Micaela, Susanna (OSA) and I set out on an epic road trip together. It was a memorable few days spent with a group of powerful women all working to restore relationship with seed. Although not based in the Pacific Northwest, Bonnetta and UCFA work in partnership with many organisations across the US, and OSA have accompanied them since their emergence during the pandemic in 2020.

The Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance is a BIPOC led collective working with and supporting emergent and seasoned growers who cultivate heirloom seeds and grow culturally relevant plants for food and healing. The alliance works to provide more opportunities and support for growers from historically oppressed and marginalised communities. They currently work with over 400 growers and 60 partners across the US, recognising the need for increased diversity in agriculture and in the seed industry specifically, and aim to bridge the gap between prospective BIPOC growers and the wider seed community.

UCFA has four main programme areas: seed grower recruitment, seed farming education, seed farming and seed sales. Through the Ujamaa Academy and the Ira Wallace Seed Seed School, they provide BIPOC growers with instruction in seed farming and seed saving via online classes and face to face learning. They then support these growers as they develop their skills, and provide a pathway for their seeds to be dispersed to the wider community through the Ujamaa Seeds catalogue.

UCFA view seeds as more than a commodity, but as vessels of culture. The dramatic decline in regional and adapted food crop diversity has also led to the loss of regional farming traditions, and culture and cuisines that accompany these crops. The Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance works to return culturally meaningful seed to BIPOC communities, and to reconnect people to their traditional foods.

As Bonnetta explained, ‘We need to make seed breeding relevant, it has to be something people want to eat…and the stories are essential.’  UCFA create space for conversation with the communities they work with, they listen to their memories of cuisines, often meals their Granny or a family member used to make. Then the work begins to deconstruct these authentic dishes and recipes to work out what the ingredients are. They then source the seed of these crops and work to up-skill farmers in lost seed saving practices.

‘We can’t just offer the grain and the seed, we have to offer the food, the stories, the traditions. Whatever we can do to restore that culture to help people have hope. So, we grow it, we clean it, but how do we cook it?’ They’re assisting growers through that process too, ‘empowering communities to feed themselves. Our reason for being is to hold onto traditional foods, that’s the catalyst for food sovereignty. That’s kind of the definition of food sovereignty, having access to these foods.’

Many of these crops that UCFA are sourcing and distributing are traditional landraces, inherently diverse populations that have been stewarded by communities of people for centuries. This seed rematriation is a step towards cross cultural reconciliation, bringing seeds home to their communities of origin and to those with a direct relationship with that seed. Bonnetta described the diversity and beauty found in many of these crops: ‘(This diversity) is there to protect us, for instance within the beautiful Nanticoke squash, some squash are very small, some are huge, all these different manifestations are in there. And they have different characteristics that they bring to us. If we destroy those crops, that landrace that had that diversity, maybe we wont have what we need as the world changes, as the climate changes, as society changes.’

Listening to Bonnetta, it made me reflect on the ancestral wisdom that is held both by humans and the seeds they have travelled with over time, a wisdom that is so often dismissed by modern society. Bonnetta regularly refers to herself as a ‘Granny’, an elder who brings wisdom and knowledge to help heal and repair. ‘The grandmother that sits in the rocking chair that you kind of ignore, well now you need her! She has a role in society again, that was stripped from her by modernity, granny is important with her stories, and her recipes, and her methods.’

Acknowledging the power in these memories, UCFA, in partnership with Princeton University, have been collecting oral histories of people who have worked to preserve Black and Indigenous seed and foodways. Often interviewing the eldest people in communities to capture their memories on what was in their grandparent’s garden. Through the Heirloom Gardens Oral Histories project, more than 100 oral histories have been collected so far, with a goal of 250 by end of this summer. The plan is to house these stories in the National Museum of African American History & Culture, to make them accessible to communities to which they have been lost and begin the process of healing relationship with the land. ‘As we tell these stories it motivates people, it touches their hearts.’

Community, culture and family are at the heart of UCFA’s work, and they uphold the spirit of cooperation within the seed movement. The alliance supports all marginalised and oppressed communities, including those impacted by the recent conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine. ‘We try to respond to a situation, and say to people it’s not too late. We can recover, we can learn and we can build this knowledge again. Our way of responding to crisis is giving them seed and letting them get started. Lets get out there and lets plant some seeds. That’s the method by which we attempt to heal communities. It seems baffling to some people that we start with seed, but whatever we have to do to help people to have the material it takes to build a new reality, a new society. Food sovereignty, the threats, what we hear in the news everyday and we see, many people are very much afraid of what the future holds in this country, but while they’re doing that, we’re planting seed and growing grain and reclaiming that knowledge and farming techniques.’

The work of UCFA is vital, through forming alliances and partnerships across the US this is very much healing work- both in this current time of social conflict and unrest but also in addressing generations of historical trauma and displacement from land, culture and seeds.

I learnt such a huge amount in my short time with Bonnetta, and I am so grateful to her for sharing her wisdom and knowledge. Our conversations led to some deep self-reflection, and the drive to further explore my own ancestral roots. Something she said on our last day together has stuck with me since we parted ways, perhaps because it so beautifully echoes the path we all choose in our relationship to seed. Bonnetta recalled how as a young child, a family member gave her sage advice: when abundance comes your way, do you choose to hold it tight in closed palms, keeping it only for yourself, clinging on, stifling and crushing it in your grasp so it withers away? Or do you choose to hold it in an open palm and give forth what you receive. Whatever it is you hold may well leave your hands, but it is free to evolve and emerge and bring joy elsewhere. With open palms you are open to bounty, and everything else life may bring your way.

OSA evolved out of the Abundant Life Seed Foundation which closed its doors after a tragic fire destroyed the office and most of the seed. Out of the loss came the determination of its founders to continue to support seed keepers to preserve seed in perpetuity in the field. Rather than focusing on purely preservation work, OSA was founded to fill the gap in formal instruction about organic seed production and improvement, to ensure that seed skills and knowledge were enhanced and passed on over time.

OSA‘s mission is to serve growers working with seed across the US through three main programme areas: participatory research, practical education and legal and cultural advocacy. These areas are grounded in the desire to increase seed quality and quantity of organic seed available to organic farmers by developing networks and connections between seed growers, seed companies, university researchers, policy advocates and other seed organisations. OSA prioritise partnerships with organisations and individuals aligned with their values, and embrace opportunities to amplify movements for community sovereignty, racial equity and social justice.

During my time with the OSA, I was hosted by Micaela Colley, who has worked for the organisation since its fledgling days. Micaela has had many roles with OSA over the years, including a spell as Programme Director. Her current role is Research and Education Co-Director, co-leading programmes focused on organic seed production and plant breeding. Micaela is author of several publications, and in 2022 completed a PhD focused on organic and participatory plant breeding from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Micaela was a rock star in hosting both myself and Bonnetta Adeeb from Ujamaa Seeds & Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance during the same week, and she arranged an incredible multi day tour to many of the seed folks in the area (more on that to come…).

Early in the week, I accompanied Micaela to OSA’s offices in downtown Port Townsend for their weekly team meeting to meet more of the OSA family online. It was comforting and familiar to be part of a gathering of people with similar motivation and intention as my colleagues in the Seed Sovereignty Programme team back in the UK. Listening to the team share their updates and news of projects they are working on, it was reassuring to know we’re all working towards a similar vision.

As well as getting a glimpse behind the scenes at the main office, I also visited the OSA Research Farm several times throughout the week. The research farm is based out in Chimacum at the Finnriver Farm & Cidery, just a short drive from Port Townsend. It is here where OSA runs many of its organic variety trials, plant breeding and seed production projects. This farm is essential to much of OSA’s trials and breeding work, and it was amazing to see their setup. OSA were collaborators in the NOVIC trials that I have heard much about during my travels (Micaela was one of the researchers on that team) – and they continue to collaborate with farmers and universities in national projects including the Carrot Improvement for Organic Agriculture (CIOA) and the Tomato Organic Management and Improvement (TOMI) project. Farm Manager Kayla Ierlan and Research and Education Associate Susana Cabrera-Mariz showed me around the site.

As we walked the field, the highlight were the carrots being grown as part of the CIOA trials. Isolated from cross pollinating with large cages, there were 18 varieties being trialled to establish their suitability for organic systems. Kayla explained the selection criteria was largely focused on concentrated colour, sweetness and disease resistance. She was particularly excited about the diversity of colours that the carrots displayed – purple with yellow cores, raspberry blush, and some beautiful yellow carrots that didn’t seem to be exhibiting the green shoulders common in yellow varieties. These carrot trials stemmed from hundreds of varieties drawn from the GRIN database and from the breeding work of Dr Philipp Simon of the University of Wisconsin. The trial has been running for 8 years, and they are on the cusp of releasing stable varieties to the farming community. Trials like CIOA allow the team at OSA to compare and evaluate the diversity within crops in real organic conditions. They can take the risks for the farmers and make informed decisions on what varieties are likely to thrive in organic systems, and breed from those that are particularly successful. I asked Micaela about the importance of this diversity:

‘To me it comes down to the word possibilities. Diversity is the promise of possibilities for the future, possibility to adapt, to change, to enjoy different things, to grow no matter what the conditions are. So diversity is essential for our crops to continue forward. And human diversity is equally essential so that no one is carrying the load of ensuring that we have food in the future. And ensuring that the crops we breed fit the climates, the cultures, the preferences, the potential of everyone and not just a few.’

‘There’s nothing better than spending an entire afternoon with a bunch of famers in a field and looking at plants, and realising that everybody sees the plants through a different set of eyes, and I get to see through a lot of different eyes because I have the opportunity to walk through field with a lot of different people. To me that’s just the potential embodied. There’s nothing like noticing…when you’re out in the field looking at plants, your eyes, your mind quiets and moves away from worrying about all the big picture, all the needs and should and woulds, and you just start noticing patterns and textures.’

OSA works collaboratively with and educates thousands of farmers and agricultural community members across the US each year – largely through on farm and online events and resources, but they also bring the whole seed community together for the biennial Organic Seed Growers conference. I asked Micaela why organisations such as OSA are important for the future of seed.

‘OSA is an alliance. It takes an alliance to bring diversity to the work. We don’t just need OSA, we need a diversity of organisations, a diversity of models, a diversity of approaches, a diversity of leaders. So, OSA is just one vehicle for connecting seed people with other seed people, and seeds with seed people. That’s how diversity spreads, that’s how knowledge spreads. I’d say OSA plays an important role, but clearly we need the diversity in alliances in and of themselves, and OSA is just one of them.’

Susana Cabrera-Mariz is one of the newest members of the OSA team, she is based at the Research Farm with Kayla, and as well as working in the field her main role is to support the research and education programme in Washington State. Susana has organically farmed for 8 years, as well as holding a Masters degree in Anthropology amongst extensive agroecological studies. We travelled together on the seed tours throughout the week, and I had the opportunity to chat to her extensively about what inspires her and keeps her in this work.

‘Hands in the soil! There’s nothing better than being able to get your hands dirty and to be covered in soil. I think it’s very much an embodied experience, so I really appreciate being able to be present with myself and with the beings around me. I also love sharing, sharing whether it’s knowledge about the plants or seed or food. I think oftentimes the work can be difficult, but when we’re able to share it’s beautiful and very very rewarding.’

Susana is committed to participating in the creation of a just food and seed system that supports cultural reclamation and sovereignty efforts. I asked her for her thoughts on diversity in food and seed sovereignty:

‘It’s important for resilience. Not only resilience in a human’s need to exist capacity, but in a cultural and a heart resilience. We need diverse food systems and seed systems because they represent our own diversity and the beautiful things that we bring to the world. And so, when I think about diversity, I think of all the different people and all the different beings that make up that system. Whether it’s the seeds, or the microorganisms in our soil or the humans that tend the seeds, or the birds that rip your seeds out of the soil and eat them! All those things are beautiful and create a memory and they tell a story. I think those types of stories and those memories allow us to exist and to thrive. I think without having diversity in the food and seed system we lose so much and a lot of things we lose are not just plant material, but rather a way of being, a way of seeing the world, a memory, a food way, a way of relationship in many ways.’

The team at Organic Seed Alliance aspire to return the power of seed into the hands of growers. Their brilliant work promotes an abundant and diverse supply of ecologically seed that will hopefully be tended in perpetuity by skilled, diverse and interconnected communities of seed stewards. It was powerful to see the team at work during my week in Port Townsend, and inspiring to witness the impact these types of organisations and alliances can have on building community, and working towards an equitable, abundant and resilient seed future.

My first visit was to Saltwater Seeds in the Chimacum Valley – a collaborative partnership between farmers Katie, Sam and Joanne. Saltwater Seeds are a relatively new seed company. Both Katie and Sam have worked at OSA in the past, and are experienced farmers and seed growers. Joanne was off site the afternoon I visited, but Katie and Sam kindly gave me a tour and shared their story.   

Saltwater Seeds are committed to community, and to finding, selecting and stewarding varieties that are delicious, beautiful and well adapted to their maritime climate. It quickly became clear that this was the first seed farm I had visited that had very similar climactic conditions to home. Tomatoes can’t easily be grown without protection here because of late blight, and moisture levels year-round provide numerous challenges to getting plants through their life cycle and for drying down seed crops. To grow resilient crops that will tolerate these conditions, they rely on the diversity within the varieties, and also on some population breeding.

Diversity is a big thing at Saltwater Seeds. It was exciting to see several populations in the field – from a long running storage onion grex that they have been developing, to an ‘accidental’ poppy population that provided bursts of colour on the sunny July afternoon. Chatting to Katie and Sam, they couldn’t comprehend doing the work they do without access to heterogenous material. They try to breed for a wide variety of climate events, having seen swings in their own climate over recent years. Like others I had visited, Katie views our rapidly changing climate as an important selection opportunity for farmers - ‘extremes are selection events’ - but she also acknowledges that the current agricultural system isn’t set up to support this. ‘You have contract growers that can’t harvest their chard because 90% of it died over winter and they can’t justify the expense of weeding it and irrigating it for the rest of the summer.  If there was a way for us, us as a culture or civilisation, to compensate those growers and allow them to let those crops that would otherwise be a complete loss go to seed, and make that selection, I think we could be making some major headway with climate resilience. We already have growers who are growing all of the most important food crops, it’s just a matter of figuring out it’s not just the breeders who are making those selections.’

Adaptation to this region and taste are both high on their selection criteria. Although a fairly new company, Saltwater Seeds already have over 130 varieties in their catalogue. They mostly cater for home gardeners, and this gives them a fair amount of leeway in terms of acceptable diversity within their crops. Their customers don’t necessarily require that ‘all important’ uniformity that our current agricultural supply chains so often demand. Saltwater Seeds sell the majority of their seed packets through local stores, unusually for a seed company these days, only a small percentage of their sales are via their online store. This means their seeds are truly regional – they are predominantly grown, sold, and regrown here on the Olympic Peninsula. They grow their seed crops across multiple sites - as tenants rather than landowners this is part out of necessity, part for isolation purposes. But as a collaborative it works well, with each team member filling a niche in terms of their role within the business and taking responsibility for different jobs at each site.  

As we walked the field, I asked Katie about soil health - I had noticed that they didn’t seem to cultivate, and she explained this particular piece of land had never been cultivated in the time they had been there. They use a rotation of cover crops for fertility and then terminate and use tarps to cover the beds in late winter before planting in spring. This keeps the jobs at human scale, but also is more in keeping with how they would like to treat the land, with respect and little disturbance. Aside from cover crops they use minimal inputs - just selecting from what survives and thrives. Not content with experimenting with their varieties, they also play with diversity within these cover crops – creating elaborate and beautiful mixes to build soil health and attract a huge community of insects and wildlife. They even save seed from these when they can.

Their love of their work was tangible. Both Sam and Katie excitedly talked me through various varieties they were stewarding – from the ‘Fantasia’ carrot population – originally part of Micaela’s work with OSA, then selected for flavour by students of a local elementary school – to Maritime melons, to a local Puget shelling pea gifted to them by Tessa Gowan of Seed Dreams. As we wandered row upon row of their sweet pea crops, Katie talked of potentially starting another breeding project – making some deliberate crosses of their favourite varieties. They often get off types appearing, and both Katie and Sam delighted in the possibilities these accidental crosses presented.

Sam: ‘This time of year gets surreal, just look at this place it’s crazy!’

Katie: ‘It’s what gets me going! It’s the thing, the reason we do this thing, is to be able to interact with the plants and find and steward diversity.’

Sam: ‘I think our brains are wired to do this, we’re all like - this is special! Or this tastes really good! - lets keep doing that. Diversity is highly important, it’s the necessary piece to get the resilience factor. It’s how you’re going to create something that’s going to be flexible, and tolerate whatever’s coming. And I think it’s just more fun, its more enjoyable work, as opposed to things without diversity!

Katie: ‘Sometimes we buy seed and grow out a variety and that’s what we do, but it’s not my favourite thing to do. We just do it because people need to be able to buy certain varieties – Dark Star for example – it’s a great variety of zucchini. It’s a good example, it doesn’t need improvement, it’s awesome. But, I just think there’s something quintessentially human about being able to interact with the plants in that way (through selection), it’s like dancing.’

Relationship and the people element plays a big role in their business, from consciously sharing their work with their local community, to making an effort to keep everything at human scale at the farm, using minimal machinery to ensure they maintain that strong relationship with their crops. As a collective, they also recognise the benefit of having many eyes observing each plant, and we all agreed that we need many many more people doing this vital work.

Katie: ‘Diversity of people is so important. What I am drawn to could be totally different to what someone else is drawn to. So having as wide a range of people working on these things is going to give us a much wider range of things that people love and care for and steward.’

I absolutely loved my afternoon at this beautiful and abundant farm. Sam, Katie and Joanne are inspiring seed stewards, and are embracing all the joy that can be found in the critical work that they do.

In this time of crisis and unrest, all of the amazing seed companies I have visited so far on this journey bring me so much hope. As they summarise eloquently on their website, Saltwater Seeds ‘envision a world where agricultural work is valued as the essential work, of a vibrant agricultural community, thoughtful farmers, engaged farm workers, longtime residents supportive of small-scale, local farming, and a willingness to continually question the role of agriculture in colonial imperialism, unequal land access, and institutionalised racism. Together we are envisioning and enacting systems that will become more just.’

First stop was Josh Volk at Cully Neighbourhood Farm. Josh is a long-standing member of the organic farming community in the Portland area, and author of several books on small scale farming practice and farm tools. I met Josh in my first week in Portland where we chatted seed over a pizza at Lovely’s Fifty Fifty, and he was kind enough to follow up with a tour of his current farm setup in the Cully neighbourhood of northeast Portland.

The site is an urban farm approximately 0.9 acres, nestled in the heart of the neighbourhood on land owned by the Trinity Lutheran Church & School. The farm feeds around 50 members during the summer months, and 25 throughout winter via a CSA scheme. Cully Neighbourhood Farm caters for the needs of the residents of the area – offering small shares of seasonal produce that are an ideal amount for an individual, couple or small family.

Almost all the crops grown at Cully Neighbourhood Farm are open pollinated, and Josh saves seed where he can. Josh prefers heterogeneity in the crops he grows, as the scale of the CSA means it’s much more efficient for him to do one planting rather than several successions. For this reason, having diversity within a crop is ideal. He looks for varieties that are likely to fulfil this need, Peace Seed’s ‘3 Root Grex’ for example allows him to offer beetroot over a longer season. He needs to supply something different to his customers each week, and this crop fulfils that in one bed, providing three phenotypically different beetroot from one sowing.

‘I realised at some point, it doesn’t really matter if everybody gets exactly the same thing, as long as everybody gets something decent. Having that realisation was very freeing.’  He makes it clear to his customers when they join that not every share is going to look exactly the same, there will be variation, but it will all be quality locally grown delicious produce.

It was clear Josh is committed to providing diversity to his customers, often something unique that they can’t find in the local store. He also seemed drawn to varieties that carried a story or had cultural or historical relevance to the Portland area. The seed of the sauce tomato he grows was originally given to him by a local pizza restaurant owner, who himself had been handed the seed in a paper towel at a fundraising event by someone who’s ancestors had immigrated here from Italy. They had carried that seed with them, bringing a piece of home. He had many similar anecdotes as we wandered the farm, and it seems he gets a lot of joy out of the seed saving process.

‘When I save my own seed, that is always the highest quality seed that I have, in terms of the vigour. For whatever reason, bought seed doesn’t match that. The chard I’ve been saving for 7-8 generations, I have seen it move in a direction. I’ve grown it multiple different places. With stuff that’s easy to save, it’s nice to have extra seed and it doesn’t cost more to have extra seed. It’s part of my fun, too’

As well as the crops, I was excited to see some of Josh’s tools and design principles in action at the farm. As we toured the site, Josh pointed out the ergonomic wash station, designed to limit back pressure, and the famous Farm Hands Cart – a simple bed-width frame with options to switch out multiple platforms, effective for most farm situations and of a size and structure that is easy to load. It can also incorporate rolling bed markers to enable multi-tasking. Cully Neighbourhood Farm was one of the smallest market gardens I had been to in a while, but it was no less abundant than larger farms. These smaller urban plots are just as vital for food sovereignty. Being placed so centrally within an urban community, these farms are important for providing locally grown food, for forging connections with the consumer, and weaving together the threads of seed production and culture. When I asked Josh why he does this work, he shared that ‘I love growing. It’s grounding work, and hard to imagine not doing it’.

After spending the morning at Cully Neighbourhood Farm, I headed south to visit Luke Maurer at Zenger Farm’s Furey Field site in East Portland.

Furey Field is a Winter CSA farm, offering fortnightly shares to up to 50 members in the local area between November and April, and it is one of the first CSA programmes in the state to accept food stamps. Zenger receives funding as a CSA Partnership for Health (CSAP4H) – a collaborative produce prescription programme that involves federally qualified health centres, farms, nonprofit organisations and academic institutions. CSAP4H holistically addresses issues of food access and community health while driving healthcare spending into local agriculture. CSAP4H targets areas of Portland where poverty and chronic disease converge: the produce grown at Zenger is distributed within the community by the healthcare providers, providing regular access to affordable healthy foods to residents. This is important equity work, and another example of these peri-urban farms providing a unique service to their communities, whilst strengthening food sovereignty.  

As well as providing food for the community, the farm also offers volunteering and educational opportunities. The day I visited, Luke had several local people volunteering with him helping to weed the garlic. As the volunteers were set to task, Luke showed me around the farm, and we had lots of brilliant chats about folks I’d visited so far, and what he’d like to achieve in the future at the site. Like Josh, Luke values genetic diversity in the crops he grows. Being a winter CSA, he primarily needs crops that will survive a harsh winter. Uniformity is not a priority for him, what is critical is that the plants are winter hardy. Diversity, in this instance, is a huge benefit - if some of a heterogenous crop don’t make it through a harsh cold period, others might. He’s less likely to lose the whole crop if not every individual plant is genetically identical. A perfect example of diversity bringing resilience.

As well as cold tolerance, Luke has a big focus on flavour in the varieties he grows– he wants whatever he grows to taste delicious, as he knows this means the food will be more nourishing for the members. ‘An onion is not an onion is not an onion. I know the flavour difference’. They source a lot of their seed from small seed companies who prioritise culinary use, many of whom I have visited, or will be visiting, on my travels.

‘F1 hybrids, and seed from larger companies is consistent, but things are changing. We’re not trying to maximise, we’re trying to optimise.’

Luke emphasised the importance of sourcing seed locally and of bio regional adaptation, especially with the extreme swings in climate we’ve been experiencing in recent years.

‘Things are growing and adapting constantly, that is the way of life and evolution and this planet. The plant knows this place better. Anywhere we can be growing out diverse crops and giving them a chance to make seed. To be a repository for those genes that make plants adaptive to this place.’

It was brilliant to see these two very different peri-urban farms in the Portland area providing an important resource for their local communities.

My last farm visit in Oregon was to Tanager Farm in Corbett. Brindley and Spencer are in their 9^th season of farming together, initially starting out their business with the help of the Headwaters Incubator Programme, they have been farming at their current site for several years. The day I visited, Brindley was off site, but I met Spencer for a tour of the farm and a chat about all things seed and soil.

Tanager are passionate about food justice, soil health and working towards equity in the food system. As stewards of the land, their priority is using an ecological approach that minimises inputs whilst maximising the health and nutrition of plants. They limit mechanical tillage, encourage life in the soil and grow a wide diversity of plants to support the whole farm ecosystem.

Tanager’s approach to farming is always evolving, and it was inspiring to hear how they are always looking for new methods and practices - experimenting to find what will work best within their context.  

I was especially excited to see some of the Going to Seed trials. We have both participated in the Going to Seed online community and are interested in ‘adaptive farming’ - namely growing regionally adapted diverse populations. Tanager were 2024 recipients of the GTS Farmer Support Programme, which provides financial, technical and marketing assistance to production farmers who want to breed their own locally adapted crops. This has allowed Spencer and Brindley to start their own diverse populations on site and experiment with more adaptive farming methods. When I visited, there were several beds dedicated to these trials in the market garden, one of the main projects was based on the milpa style of planting using a combination squash, beans and corn.

The corn in the trial came from 3 sources: a purchased OP variety, a diverse population sent from Utah, and the same diverse population that had been grown out and saved by another local Oregon farmer last year.  It was fascinating to see these crops, particularly the opportunity to compare the different seed side by side. It was very early days, but it was clear that the most healthy and vigorous plants at that point in time were the diverse population that had been grown out and saved locally the previous year. It made me reflect on something I have pondered for a while, and was summarised nicely by John Kempf in a recent Regenerative Agriculture podcast – ‘seeds are vectors for microbiomes’. Could these locally saved seed have brought with them a microbiome well suited to these soils, perhaps giving them a head start here at Tanager?

During my time at the farm, Spencer also showed me the fava bean flock, a population of his own creation which he hopes will cross pollinate and adapt over future years. They sourced as many different varieties of favas as possible to start this flock, seeking unusual varieties from small seed companies to combine as much diversity as possible.

Spencer and Brindley are also experimenting with more unusual offerings for their CSA members. They are running a trial of soup peas, growing multiple varieties together and looking for plants that grow well in their climate to provide an alternative source of protein, but that could also have a multipurpose as a cover crop. Spencer mentioned that they are particularly keen on the hyper tendril trait (seen at Peace Seedlings) for this purpose as it helps the peas support themselves in the field.

It was a brilliant afternoon spent wandering the land, and witnessing the enthusiasm for innovation that Brindley and Spencer both bring to their farm.

All three of the farms I visited are employing crop diversity to meet a very specific need that contributes to their success. From providing fascinating stories, to cultivating resilience, to inspiring innovation, diversity has a big role to play within each. It was wonderful to see how, with some creative thinking, small farms can provide unique services to their community and contribute to a truly local and diverse food system.