Week two of my Churchill Fellowship travels have been spent at Adaptive Seeds, near Sweet Home, Oregon. Adaptive Seeds was established in 2009 by Sarah Kleeger and Andrew Still. I met Sarah and Andrew at the Lets Liberate Diversity conference in Budapest back in October 2022, and it was there that we devised a plan for me to visit them if I was successful in my fellowship application. Fast forward 19 months and on a glorious late spring day I finally find myself at their beautiful farm, nestled at the base of the old cascades, surrounded by white oaks and swallows swooping overhead.
Adaptive Seeds is a 35 acre organic farm, with approximately 5-6 acres currently in seed production. A familiar story with many seed growers, Sarah and Andrew started out as market growers, but their interest in seed and propensity for the more ‘geeky’ side of growing led them down the path to seed growing. Having been market growers, they were aware of the limitation on reliable varieties available to organic growers, and also the lack of locally adapted varieties specific to the Pacific North West, so set out to do something about it.
Prior to starting their own seed company, Sarah and Andrew embarked on their own international adventure, travelling through Europe on the Seed Ambassadors Project. It was through this journey that, according to Frank Morton, they became responsible for the single greatest influx of varietal diversity in the region since the work of Alan Kapuler. They returned with a glorious collection of open pollinated seed from across the world, which formed the basis of their collection.
They now offer a huge catalogue - rare and heritage varieties, Oregon and NW bred, early maturing and northern adapted crops, diverse gene pool mixes or ‘party mixes’, reliable open pollinated varieties for commercial growers, and all with a strong focus on open source (OSSI) and public domain material. Adaptive Seeds feels like it was founded on an understanding that diversity is the key to resilience.
One thing that excited me straight away was the proportion of seed that Sarah, Andrew and their team grow on site – over 80% of their catalogue is grown at Adaptive Seeds. The rest is contracted out to other growers in the local region that they have built relationship with over the years. True to their name, that means that all the seed grown by Adaptive is local and regionally adapted.
One of the benefits of this? In their own words, it’s the plant’s ability to react to changing conditions, such as incoming diseases or climate change, so the food system doesn’t fail as easily as it might otherwise.
When I asked Sarah why she does what she does, she explained ‘this feels a good thing to be doing for the world and for our local food system’ but also for ‘other people’s local food systems. We like to see our work as providing a foundation for durable local food systems in other places as well. So people can do what we have done, take the seeds and help them adapt to their local conditions and tastes.’
Adaptive Seeds can grow so much seed on site through utilising the scale of the farm: they use large isolation distances, splitting their crops across two plots, one each side of the property. This enables them to grow different varieties of the same species on opposite sides of the farm and maintain required isolation distances. Whilst I was with them planting was in full swing, and I was able to help with the final push to get the Cucurbits and other summer crops into the ground.
Observation and intuition are essential skills to seed work. They are always observing their crops through all stages of their life cycle, entering into an intimate relationship with the plants to ensure they produce the highest quality seed. As Sarah commented, ‘Seeing plants through their full life cycle has always been a powerful draw for me. Growing (market) vegetables you frequently only see a small portion of that plants life cycle. Watching a beet or chard plant go through to making seed, smelling the pollen, a lot of people have read about that but few people know the actual smell, that’s pretty magical. It’s a fun sensory thing and a way to connect with the world.’
The team manage their seed crops primarily through making negative selections (rouging any off types or diseased plants), but Andrew also makes positive selections in the plant breeding process, and they are always keeping an eye out for interesting crosses in the field to continue developing diversity. They have many heterogenous populations in their collection, offering resilience in terms of their diversity, but also endless opportunity for future breeding projects as new traits emerge. There are many varieties unique to Adaptive Seeds in their catalogue that are the result of the careful breeding and selection work they have carried out over the years. Both Andrew and Sarah credit the amazing community of seed folk here in the PNW that supported them from the off, and acknowledge the inspiration, teaching and generosity they received when they started taking their first steps into the world of seed growing.
The theme of community once again shines through. The generosity plants have, in providing us with such an abundance of seed, seems to really get under the skin of those who work in the seed world. Sarah and Andrew were nothing but generous with their time, knowledge and hospitality during my stay, and in introducing me to others within their community (more on that to follow…).
Situated in the Willamette Valley, Adaptive Seeds is in an area that is often called the ‘seed capital of the world’. Primarily farmers grow grass seed, but it is also an incredibly important area for Brassica production and other staple food crops. The methods of production of these seed crops, however, are generally on a massive scale, most grown as conventionally managed monocultures.
In conversation, both Sarah and Andrew acknowledge the power that ‘big agriculture’ has over our food and seed system, and that organic seed production at their scale is, on the surface, not necessarily having the impact that they would both like to see. But, they also suggest that sometimes it’s good to reframe what having an impact looks like. It feels ‘more human’ to be farming at this scale - less compromises have to be made in terms of their values and practices. They’re not simply replicating the systems they’re trying to avoid, and being at a smaller scale allows for more respect, for intimate stewardship of the land and ultimately better quality crops.
By making things work at this scale, through demonstrating how diversity brings resiliency, providing secure jobs for local people and offering a replicable business model, they hope to inspire others to do the same elsewhere. They may be ‘small’ in scale, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be mighty in impact.
‘One of the most joyful parts (of this work) to me is being able to pass on the tradition and principled practice of sharing seed, just being open and giving and generous with seed. Seed has always been passed down over the generations from people to people, and being able to be part of that, being able to continue that, within a world of those wanting to patent and trademark and make things their own proprietary thing, claiming ownership over something they just had a small amount of experience with or relationship to…Undermining that human impulse with the other human impulse of sharing and generosity is a really joyous thing. Every time it happens it feels a little bit transgressive, and it’s also old school and important to keep passing it on. It’s why we’re so involved in Open Source Seed, because it’s a little bit punk rock and also keeping something going that’s always been going. We all rely on sharing and we don’t realise it until people stop.’ Andrew Still.