Climate resilient food systems and community reconnection through radical seed diversity

Diversity is essential to climate resilience in food and farming. Traditionally, agrobiodiversity has been cultivated and sustained through communi­ties’ relationships with seeds. A fluid process of saving, preserving, and exchanging seeds allows for regional adaptation and transformation. This pro­cess results in seed diversity at the crop, variety, and genetic level. Over the last century, agrobio­di­versity has declined at an alarming rate, and simul­taneously there has been an erosion of community seed-keeping practices. A reaction to these interre­lated crises has been an increased push to preserve biodiversity through institutional seed preservation efforts (also called ex situ preservation), which focus on genetic preservation of seeds in con­trolled environments. The seeds are genetic resources that are made available to plant breeders, who solve agronomic problems by creating improved cultivars for farmers. This is very differ­ent from community seed-keeping (also called in situ preservation), which values seed-people rela­tionships and fosters natural agrobiodiversity and regional adaptation. Seeds are seen in direct con­nection to food, and saved for immediate and prac­tical reasons like yield, flavor, and resistance to bio­tic stressors. In traditional communities, seeds are often perceived as kin, as ancestors or living beings with both histories and futures. For institutional seed preservation, collecting and maintaining seed diversity is an imperative insurance policy against future challenges. Ironically, this model erodes community-based seed-keeping efforts and increases dependence on institutional seed preser­vation to maintain genetic diversity. In this paper, we explore declining agrobiodiversity and commu­nity seed-keeping and share our experiences work­ing with a diverse range of varieties from The Heir­loom Collard Project (HCP). We propose that radi­cal seed diversity can jump-start autonomous, community-based seed-keeping efforts, increasing agrobiodiversity and, ultimately, the climate resilience of food systems.