seeds of CHANGE

Regionaly Adapted Seeds for Sustainable Agriculture

By Joe Pellegrino

any farmers today are facing a harsh reality: the price of inputs is constantly growing, while their share in the sale price is constantly shrinking. A large reason this problem persists is the consolidation of production and distribution into fewer, larger rms and the resulting corporate dominance it brings. Much of the public conversation about this corporate consolidation has focused on animal products such as beef, poultry, and pork, but another crucial element that has placed an increasing burden on small- to medium-scale farms is seed. Seeds are essential inputs to any agronomic or horticultural operation. The concentration of the seed market into a small group of mega rms has led to fewer available varieties of seeds, less genetic diversity, less biodiversity in our agroecosystems, supply chain gaps for speci c regions and of course, higher prices.

At RAFI-USA, our goal is to empower farmers, and in an attempt to alleviate some of the pressure on growers caused by corporate consolidation in the seed market, our Just Foods

Mprogram has been developing two projects: Southern Farmers Seed Cooperative and NC Seed Stewards. RAFI-USA’s Just Foods program director Kelli Dale diligently oversees the development of both these programs, which were born directly from farmer input. “I’m not coming out as an expert and telling them how to run their farms, I’m just there as a tool to help them achieve something new,” she tells us.

Southern Farmers Seed Cooperative is focused on agronomic commodity crops, and began as a soybean program. Currently, ve farms comprising 11 farmers grow and share four di erent varieties of regionally adapted soybeans. The cooperative was born out of the intersection of two organic seed trials attempting to nd varieties best suited for Southeastern growing conditions. Trials were done at both North Carolina State University research stations and on organic farms across North Carolina over a three-year period. The results of these trials were very promising, but after being approached for distribution, no seed companies were interested in mass producing seed varieties as they viewed regional niche seed varieties to be an unjusti ed cost.

The allowance for niche is a common problem in pro tdriven agricultural rms, but it is a problem that can be addressed comfortably at the local level if given the opportunity.

A majority of the organic soybean seed o ered by corporate entities was developed in the Midwest, and is far from ideal for Southeastern climates. The same is true of corn, which the cooperative is currently trying to branch into. The process is slow, as seed speci cally adapted to the region can only be found in quantities that could t in a pint glass. However, the cooperative is working hard breeding and replicating corn that could save Southeastern farmers a tremendous headache in the future. Kelli Dale nds this new breakthrough the most rewarding part of the project so far, “These corn lines would probably be sitting in storage somewhere if I hadn’t had a group of farmers willing to listen to some crazy idea about producing a double cross corn line, something that hasn’t been done in North Carolina in almost a hundred years!”

The NC Seed Stewards are focused on NC wild owers, and are composed of members of RAFI-USA Farmers of Color Network. It all began during an advertising campaign for Burt’s Bees, in which the company pledged that for each customer who bought a container of lip balm, 1,000 wild owers would be planted. RAFI-USA was contracted to plant the wild owers on farms in North Carolina. During the process, a surprising problem presented itself. While it is possible to purchase wild ower seed mixes spe- cialized for the Southeast, it is hit or miss whether those owers are ideally suited for the ecotype of North Carolina. Kelli decided to turn to the North Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill as a reference for what could be grown, and settled on four species to grow for a new seed mix. With the rst seeds hopefully being harvested in Spring 2023, this new NC wild ower mix has the potential to assist in attracting native pollinators, adding biodiversity to agroecosystems, and providing new market pathways for NC farmers allowing them to increase their dollar-per-acre output.

Both of these programs assist in bringing new autonomy to regional farmers. With corporate consolidation funneling the seed market into few, expensive options with little diversity, we strive to see farmers taking power back into their own hands. We see the importance of developing farmer-driven programs that address practical problems only truly visible with boots on the ground. While both of these programs are still in their infancy, and ultimately only a piece of the puzzle in pushing the balance of power back in favor of farmers, we are excited to watch these seeds grow.