I handle seed for the Agrarian Sharing Network Seed Increase Initiative, an established 100% volunteer-driven project based in Oregon, USA. Simply put, our seed team works with a broad network of folk to increase seed on varieties/populations we’ve identified as ‘future heirlooms’. We then freely share that seed through whatever channels we can - historically, a network of community-based propagation fairs we’ve established the length of our state over the past decade or so (though, frankly, a growing challenge relates to how best to further amp up our distribution network, further afield, to handle the quantity of seed now coming our way, as we now regularly find ourselves working with folk increasing seed at the farm- as distinct from garden-scale). This, all part of a very deliberate effort to regenerate, and not simply distribute, regenerative seed.
I’ve been advancing grexes myself, for decades. I’d like to encourage a strategic shift in ASN’s seed increase efforts toward integrating landraces. Our challenge? A good one to have: lack of landrace seed in quantities necessary to support increases at scale.
For example, I’ve just been tackled by a farmer in Missouri (we’re now being approached by folk out of state wanting to participate) who’s enthusiastic about raising a crop for us. I suspect beans would be a good fit. Anybody got any ideas about how we might access suitable bean seed in quantity for a growout? Do we have a resource yet established of other material available for/suitable for increase?
While it would be more of a build-your-own landrace starter, to me this is a great opportunity to experiment with sourcing seed through food distribution channels. I think of beans as one of the easier crops to manage in this regard, as they are widely available domestically, available in some measure of diversity, and to the best of my knowledge pose no risk of CMS or GMO contamination.
You could source high quality organic bean seed from companies like Azure Standard, but if it makes sense logistically I would recommend going to stores yourself so you can see and feel the seed.
One challenge you may have already seen is you would be hard-pressed to be certain of a plant’s habit when its seed is being sold as food.
I don’t exactly get what you’re looking for, but in the specific case of this Missouri farmer, I wonder if there’s a three-way partnership of some kind to be made between your organization, the farmer, and The Buffalo Seed Company (https://www.thebuffaloseedcompany.com/) who specializes in varieties and landraces generationally grown around Kansas City.
Very interesting. Do you mean you have smaller amounts of seed but need large amounts for the farmer to plant at scale? Like the group of gardeners all together produce 50# of bean seed. The farmer needs 300# to plant his field. How to go from the 50 to 300# of seed?
Welcome Nick.
Great project. There’s the seed catalogue and the serendipity seed train on going to seed.
It’s breeder’s portions unfortunately. But maybe some individuals have bigger quantities saved.
I’m in France , i know another French breeder had bags and bags of pumpkin grex seeds. Which he tried to grow out in cut down cover crop by direct seeding and it failed.
That’s pumpkins… I mean you don’t eat the seeds, but beans. If i manage to get a big harvest i’ll safe for two seasons and sharing in the serendipity and some seed exchanges, and the rest i’ll eat. Maybe better to ask for next year if people will all want to safe up to send to your project.
How many do you need?
Thank you for the input. As an aside, an organic farming cohort of mine went to the bins of a local health food store hereabouts some 30 years ago, hauled a basic black bean out of the bins, planted it, and adapted it through the course of the years into a powerhouse local standard. Al Dong’s Black Bean.
Thanks so much for that, Christopher. You do seem to grasp well what we’re attempting and the counsel you offer suggests a useful angle to work.
In truth, the ASN isn’t an organization - we don’t have a phone number, bank account or otherwise - as much as a loose-knit, grassroots project; essentially, an exercise in friendship bonded by and bounded within a shared, sharing ethic focused on agro-biodiversity, whatever than means! Despite our folksy style, we’ve become something of an applied biodiversity powerhouse, around Oregon’s S. Willamette Valley, in recent years. Our events - spread among an array of participating communities - are always free. We keep vendors out, and we share whatever we can, freely, which is just about everything. https://x.com/AgrarianSharing/status/1602779379213688832?s=20
Contracts aren’t our forte as much as handshakes. Neither I nor my crew are personally attached to a piece of this pie. I’ve simply been approached through our very active Facebook group by a friendly, enthusiastic farmer (we videoed for the first time this morning: I trust him to make it work) and, rather than park a named cultivar on him (we’ve got those in buckets), I’d like to see if there’s a way to somehow get a landrace increased. We don’t have a bean landrace to hand in quantity.
I’m checking in on numbers but my guess at this point we’d want between 5lbs - 10 lbs. This would head toward prepared, fenced ground and someone willing to raise it without charge for the common good. A labor of love.
I’ll give the Buffalo Seed folk a call. And I’m still very much open to an individual with a suitable bean landrace who’d be interested in jumping in.
Hello, Hugo. Thanks for responding. I had my first video conversation with the farmer this morning. And the one question I forgot to ask was ‘how much seed’. I’m waiting on an answer. I’ll reply as soon as I can.
Yes, my team works specifically on seed increases. This, born of a great storehouse of experience around experience hosting propagation fairs for communities across our bioregion. Essentially, we found we were sharing an immense amount of world-class biodiversity (typically donated to us by well-placed, longtime friends who own key independent seed companies throughout the PNW), but very little of anything was coming back. A fundamentally unsustainable model, regenerative seed not regenerating., isn’t it? So we decided to try and point our volunteer network at a deliberate, co-ordinated effort to increase seed.
I’ve been trying and repeatedly failing to encourage community based seed increases for some 25 years now. But last year, for whatever reason, the concept finally took. We’ve got a bunch of folk participating. Mostly rural, given the ecological demands.
Yes, the challenge is we need a good deal more seed than folks typically pass around in seed envelopes - though we by no means need enough to plant a field at this juncture. More like enough for tilled ground in a large, fenced farm garden. I haven’t confirmed the numbers yet, but I’ll have specs on the approximate amount of seed we’ll need shortly.
I’m kinda getting used to projects like this - working with folks who live in rural areas hearing about our work who are enthusiastic to provide protected ground with sufficient irrigation and isolation. In this particular instance, what we have is a friendly capable ally who’s willing to freely devote time, space and responsibility to the project. After our first check in, it was clear beans make best sense for him giving his growing conditions, interests, and experience and the like. I have seed for cultivars from our single variety ‘future heirloom’ growouts available in quantity, but no landrace beans to share in quantity, yet.
But just want to give a very quick testimony of a strategy of market gardeners start organise to CREATE modern landraces right now, inspired by Joseph, but in their specific context (European Union, and there specifically south of France, even if as you will see there will be contributors from far far away).
So their matter is “how creating modern landraces as we fear of selling too diversified products on our markets?”, meaning : they already know that bringing more than one variety of carrot is not very welcomed by most clients. One butternut + One hokkaido squash, so one beige and one orange, clearly identified and that is it. etc. Market gardeners are quite poor here, even if working 60 hours a week, so they cannot afford bringing back their production to their farms… That is their kind of broader problematic, .
So then the (genius) idea comes in: start with a ready-cooked dish, and in this case ratatouille: a meal using many vegetables : tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, oignons, and a few others.
So the idea becomes :
this year cultivate many species altogether for ratatouille, and harvest the seeds from all varieties. Those who find enough time can start making crosses or can set plants in ways that favour crosses. Sell ratatouille as some already do. And in that way you simply do not care what your fruits look like, clients don’t see them.
then in October there is an international gathering where everybody is asked to bring seeds of what they have been cultivated. There we will share all lots of seeds between the participants.
next years and so on everybody cultivates this grex and starts local adaptations, towards a thriving modern landraces. Still doing ratatouille until public becomes mature enough to be desiring to buy diversified stuff.
So that does not apply to your specific context and problem, but I think it is worth noting that strategy. Seed increase at first stage made by a network of market gardeners + a few gardeners like me. Just sown all I got in eggplants and peppers varieties, or mixes of varieties and young modern landraces not locally adapted yet yesterday for that purpose, Same story for onions a week ago. And as I was already making ratatouille with these that does not change anything for me.
I think that’s a worthy strategy, Thomas. I’ve been gardening/farming for almost 30 years and though I do not consider myself particularly proficient, I do have an unusual degree of experience wedding visionary agro-ecological approaches to visionary social initiatives in combinations that work well. It has always seemed to me that these weddings of human culture and plant culture in synergies building upon a single, underlying, unifying ecology and intelligence, create synergies that are ‘co-evolutionary’, that is, they. reveal a holistic integrity, power and direction beyond the reach of any individual mind or capacity. I’ve always intuited the landrace model is significant not least for its social dimensions or, as we say hereabouts, its ‘eco-social’ or ‘eco-cultural’ promise. I’m convinced this remains a largely untapped territory. I very much appreciate you are thinking along these lines, too, Thomas.
I’m pretty sure I have at least 5 pounds of the Promiscuous Beans and I think it’s a vigourous and fantastic population compared to others, where I live.
Nick, there’s a video in the course of Joseph talking how he started the population in case it’s of interest.
I haven’t heard from anybody else over the years what they think about this grex. @clweeks?
Just had a long, gloriously heartfelt conversation with Nancy at (https://www.thebuffaloseedcompany.com/about) who is, it transpires, just now looking for someone to handle a bean seed increase. Funny how that happens. We’ve yet to iron out the details but it looks as though we may be able to get what was originally a Lofthouse landrace from her to our volunteer farmer in S. Missouri. As an aside, it turns out she’s also passionately Bolivian about quinoa. And so, along the way, we’ll be porting the best of our PNW quinoa breeding material out of Southern and Western Oregon to her. I’ve got a quinoa monograph in me I’ve been wanting to write for months.
I’ve mixed too much other stuff into my own grex to really be able to judge those seeds distinctly, but I certainly haven’t noticed anything failing to thrive. (I have beans from Joseph, beans from you, beans from Buffalo – all of which originate with Joseph, and then a ton of other varietals mixed in.
Your share, and the pattern of embrace it has directly spawned, would appear to represent a classic example of landraces as a fundamentally bio-cultural phenomenon!
It is so patently clear in the initial conversations unfolding around this particular effort to connect a local grower with a local landrace in the Midwest that we have suddenly assumed an intelligence far greater than our own. The flow is preposterously serendipitous! There’s definitely something to be said for supporting these weddings of green-blooded diversity (bean landraces) and red-blooded diversity (people grexes!) in bio-cultural combinations that click. A little cluster of lovely people have just connected around a single, unifying ecology. Thank you so much for stepping out, Christopher.
The Serendipity is very funny in that perspective too. Some people who had just joined the forum were shy to join it. But did so because we emphasized the importance of us all growing out as diverse seed possible and looking for crosses is a common beneficiary. Heartened by this communal support they became big contributors as well on the forum. Awing and wowing over the package became so uplifting people added it all…
I’ve noted a shift in attitude from weird looks when i spoke to people of what we do, to interest and going “ok, that makes sense…” just this year.
