Mission of Seed Savers and its local branches to maintain plant diversity
Local Seed Savers groups are helping to continue the work of the organisation formed more than 30 years ago.
WHETHER it’s lockdown boredom or pandemic fears around food security, coronavirus has seen a boom in gardening.
Just ask Michel and Jude Fanton, who founded what is now known as The Seed Savers Foundation in Australia in 1986, as a way to share largely heirloom food crop seeds.
“One of the reasons we started Seed Savers — and what has become a great motivator this year — is concern about seeds disappearing. Even in April in the shops less and less seeds were available,” Jude says.
“People like the idea of being more independent.
“Since lockdown we’ve sold five times the amount of our Seed Savers’ Handbook than we normally would and we’re offering free downloads of two of our other manuals during COVID to help people get started.”
Michel and Jude run Seed Savers from their vast edible garden in Byron Bay, initially motivated to start the group by permaculture founder Bill Mollison.
For many years they operated as the peak body, overseeing 150 smaller groups around Australia — from soil associations to garden clubs — also working in 44 other countries, and at one point creating a seed bank of 9000 fruit and vegetable varieties.
“We were concerned about the loss of seed diversity due to less people growing food and saving seeds, and fewer seed companies controlling more of the market,” Jude says, adding that at one point five vegetable seed companies controlled 40 per cent of the global vegetable seed market.
“On a global scale, it is dangerous to reduce the diversity — making it harder to find pest and disease resistant varieties, for instance — and for the home gardener fewer varieties mean less choice and dependence on seed companies for their seed supplies.
“Local networks are an ideal way to stop this loss and also increase genetic diversity by adapting varieties to local conditions and over time creating new varieties of plants.”
Jude, 71, says since 2000, the national body has devolved, now acting as a mentor to local bodies who act independently, tailoring their own seed banks to regional needs.
Violet Town Seed Savers is the poster child of this localised concept.
Started in 2001, the group largely consists of farmers keen to save and protect open pollinated seeds — or non-hybrid plant varieties — suitable and adapted to the central Victorian environment.
Violet Town Seed Savers co-ordinator Sandra Richardson says about 40 volunteers stretch from Benalla to Buxton, with a seed bank of about 300 mainly fruit, vegetable, herb and some flower varieties.
“We live in a low water and high heat area that is frost-prone so a lot of these seeds have been grown here for a long time and adapted to our area,” says Sandra, who lives on a 40ha property at Sheans Creek.
“One of my favourite varieties is Lazy Wife, a bean from the 1800s. But we have about 30 varieties of beans in total, including Kentucky Wonder, which disappeared for many years but is now back in popularity.”
Depending on the plant, in a painstaking process members deliberately send plants to seed from their own gardens. Seeds are then collected, dried, often frozen to remove mites, thawed, then stored in a cool, dry and dark place, before sending them to their volunteer seed bank manager, who keeps a record of what’s in stock.
On the third Wednesday of the month members meet to pack seeds, before they are distributed at the Violet Town market (outside coronavirus).
Seeds cost $1, with all funds raised being distributed back to community charities, such as the CFA, schools and even a Burmese orphanage.
“We make sure the seeds are available for disasters such as bushfires and floods,” Sandra adds.
“Gardening is my life. I used to be a nurse and I’d come home from night shift and the first thing I’d do is walk to the garden to check the plants.”
Jude agrees.
“We have a half acre garden here and among my favourites are French fennel and French parsley, as well as celtuce, a crunchy lettuce like celery,” she says.
“We leave seeds and planting material at our gate for neighbours and friends to pick up. We always have too much produce so we share it with a neighbour who brings his freshly caught fish and another neighbour who loves to make cakes.”
● seedsavers.net
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