Whether you're a fifth generation farmer, a home gardener, or city folk, everyone can pitch in to help protect seed diversity. Here are a few ways you can take action:
- Cook at home: Prepare more meals at home and pay close attention to where your food comes from.
- Support local farms: Shop at your local farmers' market or participate in a CSA.
- Get to know your grocer: Talk to your grocery store owner or produce manager and find out where your food comes from. Ask that they supply more locally grown produce and diverse varieties.
- Garden: Grow as much of your own food as you can. New to gardening? Start small with easy to grow plants, like herbs. These can be grown indoors or outdoors.
- Save your seeds: Already an avid gardener? Save your seeds! By saving seeds from heirloom varieties and using them year after year, you'll help protect the diversity of crops. Start by saving the seeds of crops you enjoy eating! Get expert tips from Will Bonsall's Essential Guide to Radical, Self-Reliant Gardening.
- Participate in seed saving exchanges: Help protect even more varieties by expanding your garden collection. Order seeds from the Scatterseed Project, and get your hands on new varieties of seeds, further preserving the genetic diversity of crops.
- Donate to Scatterseed Project: Every dollar helps preserve our collective horticultural heritage.
"It doesn't matter so much who carries on neglected heirloom seeds, just as long as someone does, and that someone might as well be me - or you." - Will Bonsall