Seeds hold a power that farmers have observed and nurtured for eons.

A handful of seeds, like a group of people, holds all kinds of unique genetic combinations. A single seed holds a jaw-dropping, profound wealth of adaptable genetic traits. Farmers have an intimate knowledge of this diversity – the key to the resilience and health of the world’s food systems.

Our Seed Heritage
For thousands of years, farmers have observed their crops, carefully selecting and saving a wide variety of the best seeds from each harvest to plant the following season. They have shared and exchanged seeds freely with fellow farmers.

Every year, farmers planted different varieties of the same crop in separate parts of their fields – here a variety that could withstand drought or frost, there, one that was resistant to pests. Varieties that might grow better in lowland soils versus ones that thrived on rocky slopes. If any single variety failed, there was always a back-up. It’s how farmers have made use of nature‘s brilliant insurance policy: biodiversity.

In this way, over thousands of years, they built an increasing selection of seeds – so-called farmer varieties – that have continued to adapt to changing local conditions with each planting. Today, 1.4 billion people still depend on the seeds farmers save to provide food for their families.

Today’s Dilemma
Large-scale industrial farming has pushed a different type of seed supply system – one that requires farmers to buy new, introduced (non-native) seeds each year; seeds that require chemical fertilizers and pesticides to grow well. This approach was touted as the solution to feeding large populations.

But healthy food systems require diversity to meet a host of needs and challenges – from nutrition to local taste preferences to the ravages of drought, frost, and pests – and introduced seed has tended to focus solely on crops that deliver yield. The results:

• Genetic diversity plummeting among world seed stocks.
• Farmer seed varieties disappearing at an alarming rate.
• Soils becoming seriously degraded by use of chemicals.
• Valuable farmer knowledge of local seeds and ecologies slipping away!

The Good News
Farmers the world over are seeing the advantages of a system that works with nature instead of against it. By working with local seeds, adapted to local ecologies and needs, farmers are using the power of biodiversity to spread risk and to also nurture soils back to health.

For more than 20 years, USC’s award-winning Seeds of Survival program has fostered ecological approach to agriculture, supporting household and community seed banking, farmer-led research, and the conservation and use of traditional seed varieties.

Hungry for More?

• Take a look at Banking Diversity, A short video on how seed saving works.

• Learn more about seed exchanges and Seedy Saturdays.

• Check out our Seeds of Survival Program.