I had the idea of a “virtual stewardship”, a digital place with a list of seeds available in the community. Each one updates his list. everyone sees the catalogue and orders in private exchange what he wants to who owns it.
A kind of rationalization of private exchanges as we have begun to do here :
The serendipity seed swap could be composed only of grex, mix, landrace…
everyone receives it and adds these new varieties of beans in the overall mix bean etc…
If Mr X already took the super bean mix on the way to the seed train in 2023, but he sees that Madame Y has 2 new varieties to add…rather than asking for the seed train he contacts Madame Y live to acquire the 2 new varieties missing from his current project.
But the person who starts a bean project prefers the train to have the latest most complete mixture in Europe.
Thus, two systems that already work are maintained but try to make them complementary rather than similar.
It’s not yet the idea of the century but I hope to advance the discussion. my brain is HS…I will find nothing better I’ll sleep lol
A more simple version would be a catalogue. Our local seed saver association does something like that. There’s still a database with all the info on the crop types. Then every half year you signal in the user database which ones you have seed of. Two administrators collect the catalogue and releases it.
This reflection is really to think about systems (serendipity + P2P + steward )of seeds that should be built on a model of complementarity.
the selected systems must not compete with the others, at the risk of eliminating the two first existing systems.
Keep in mind not to reinvent what already exists…and especially the most simple as possible that people quickly adhere and use it.
This is exactly where we need to focus because in practice it already works today but I noticed in the discussions that they lack the following data to make the system more resilient and above all more used:
who owns which seed? > more community visibility
what is the easiest way to get it? > more efficient exchanges
what is the history of this variety, mix, landrace… ? > more membership to grow
who is working on what type of vegetable and project? > more cooperative work
on which vegetables no project is underway? > more innovation
…
I fully understand your need Malte to organize discussions that go in all directions. If we are to expand the network and be more numerous for even crazier projects, everything must become as fluid as possible on issues of seed stewardship. Let’s free up time by organizing effectively on this subject which is not the most interesting (classifying, sorting)…
To gain even more joy and collaboration on what we all love: growing landrace and doing adaptation gardening projects together
Why not just have everyone list their seed collections up for trade? Maybe there could be a subsection under seed sharing for this kind of thing? Or maybe under all of our profiles. That way we could DM each other for the seeds we want to trade?
Ideally we could list our individual seeds/plants under a section of our profiles. Then that info from the section could be automatically pulled and entered/updated into a community page which shows all available species and the individuals that have them.
I love it! That idea is Fantastic & sounds Quite Easy to implement! We should tell the GTS Team about it, I’d love to make it happen. We could just Crt F the species. Ideally it be great if people could also upload photos too & have a lil description of the seed like flavor, size, yield, preformance, ect.
All of this sounds like we need an app to be up-to-date with all the modern trends it will be Facebook for seed keepers
I had this idea before but it didn’t develop further because it is a big challenge for one person
In my “past life” I was collaborating with one Croatian digital agency and learned a lot about developing apps. They have a foundation through which they support community programs either by giving grands or offering their services in building apps or webpages.
I was dreaming about one app that would unite seedkeepers, and would be as simple as Tinder
In Croatia it would cost between 50-100k euros to develop, but it is possible to make it happen through projects and all kinds of funds that are available for NGOs.
Next 20 years will be a lot about digitalization, and we can either oppose it or just ride the wave and make the best possible results out of it.
an app like « Grexable affinity »
Young moschata svelte and beige, looking for beautiful heavy moschata and orange for landrance population project.
With the application that puts a message when both vegetables are nearby to facilitate their meeting…
more seriously the French fruitier.net model is just perfect. Simple to use and in my opinion easy to implement for someone who knows computer:
A database of varieties enriched by users (the biggest work is thus shared), a good search engine that refers to the file of the one who cultivates it… Bourse aux greffons - les fruitiers.net
It all sounds like great ideas, but with EU laws turning tyrannical with seed swapping set to become illegal in the nearby future as @marcela_v explained. We might make it easy for people who do not like our enthusiasm much, to attempt to get their greedy hateful fingers into our collections.
We need to pray to all the Gods there are so that this law doesn’t get through on EU level, that it actually turns in favour of small gardeners and farmers, and NGOs which are seed banks and exchange seeds.
I bumbed the thread on EU online seed sale restrictions ahead - #32 by malterod to learn more about the possible upcoming EU seed laws. I’d love if any of you who are better oriented could help the rest of us understand better what the main takeaways are as of now.
This actually wouldn’t be hard to create a database for. I’d be willing to take it on after the busy season for the online seed share is past. Who wants to be a beta tester?
I have a handfull of varieties listed on the Seed Savers Exchange, its easy to navigate and could serve as a nice template. I’d love to help beta test.
if it’s simple and beautiful, allows you to have visibility on each other’s crops and seed multiplication, and allows you to have information on the seeds that are circulating in the serendipity seed swap…there is no doubt that people will sign up.
It could also be a prerequisite to receive the package at home.
Another important thing everyone should be able to enter their own seeds and information without going through a moderator who would quickly find himself overloaded with work.
it will be Facebook for seed keepers 
