Our mission is simple: to fortify regional food resilience from the level of the seed. With our focus on the Northeast US, we join a global network of local efforts to adapt seeds to changing climate; and keep seeds in the public domain, free of private ownership.
We partner farmers and plant breeders to foster an alternative, community-driven seed stewardship paradigm. Seeds developed, preserved, and shared by and for the people.
Farmers were the original plant breeders. The advent of plant breeding as a profession divorced the growing of crops from plant husbandry. Currently, the overwhelming majority of farmers do not save their own seeds. Professional plant breeding views growers as recipients rather than participants in the breeding process, with some notable exceptions.
We believe such partnerships are among the most effective means to ensure our ability to feed ourselves in a rapidly changing world.
FSF actively conducts over a dozen preservation and breeding projects across multiple farms – what is often referred to as “participatory plant breeding,” or PPB for short. Some are the continuation of work others have entrusted to us; some represent partnerships with independent plant breeders beyond FSF’s core circle.
All are projects stemming from needs identified by growing communities throughout the Northeast, and all will result in open-source, regionally adapted varieties for organic and regenerative agricultural systems.
Crucial to the success of community-based seed systems is the education, re-education, and idea-sharing of everything from seed politics to hands-on skill set building. Simply put, regional seedways necessitate seed literacy. We organize, co-organize, host, and participate in numerous seed-related conferences, workshops, and field days each year.
