The Goal of the Canadian Seed Library is to save as many varieties as possible and make them available to everyone. This partnership program connects farmers, seed companies, seed banks, researchers and educators in a mutual effort to save and utilize Canada’s untapped seed and food biodiversity.
About 60 of the varieties in our Seed Library collection are not commercially available and recently multiplied enough that we can offer them to growers. See our Canadian Seed Library web site for details, and check back often because the information is constantly updated as new seeds are acquired, adopted, and re-grown.
The key difference between our Canadian Seed Library and most institutional seed banks is accessibility. We're creating community seed banks across the country, backing up high-quality seeds for safety, and making them available for public access. People need access to publicly-owned seed biodiversity, and communities need to reclaim their local seed security in ways that make sense locally. We help coordinate volunteer efforts by identifying priority varieties for multiplication, back-up, and field testing.
We achieve secure seed conservation by partnering with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Plant Gene Resources of Canada (PGRC) seed bank located at the University of Saskatchewan. This Canadian seed bank protects crop genetics by storing very small amounts of a huge selection of public domain food crop seeds. (Picture a gymnasium-sized walk-in freezer at -20C!). The seeds are accessed primarily by commercial seed growers, plant breeders and researchers, and a few organizations like Seeds of Diversity, mostly for use in developing new varieties.
Our first Seed Library site is at Everdale in Ontario. Seeds are stored in a large freezer, backed-up at the PGRC seed bank, and we're now beginning to distribute them to growers for multiplication and field testing. You can help! We need experienced seed growers to multiply some of the seeds that members have given us, sometimes in very small quantities and quite old but still viable.
With support from the J. W. McConnell Foundation and the Bauta Initiative for Canadian Seed Security, we will set up a minimum of five Seed Library branches across Canada during the next three years. Do you know a non-profit community-based agency that can host a working seed collection? We'd love to talk to you about sponsoring a Seed Library branch in your community!
Want to get involved?
Here are some ways to get involved with the Canadian Seed Library project:
1. Donate seeds
Send us your rare or heirloom seeds to add to the Seed Library with as much information about their source, age, and growth habits as possible.
2. Donate $ - Adopt A Variety
The Seed Library depends on donations to accomplish its goal. You can adopt a whole or partial variety to guarantee its preservation. For every $250 donated, we can save one rare or heirloom seed variety forever. Of this, $50 funds the initial processing and storage of a sample. The remaining $200 is invested in a permanent fund to finance ongoing maintenance costs in perpetuity. Over $60,000 has been donated so far. We’re aiming to reach a target of $100,000 this year. Eventually we hope to adopt 4000 varieties into the library.
3. Purchase rare seed
The Seed Library is now making rare seed varieties available for public purchase for the first time! Since its purpose is to make non-commercial varieties accessible to people, not to compete with seed companies, we will only distribute varieties not sold anywhere else in Canada (as far as we know, anyway - if you sell it, let us know and we'll stop!).
4. Help grow seeds
Experienced seed growers can help the most by regrowing samples of seeds that are in short supply, not available from other sources, and especially those that are older and losing viability.
The Goal of the Canadian Seed Library is to save as many varieties as possible and make them available to everyone. This partnership program connects farmers, seed companies, seed banks, researchers and educators in a mutual effort to save and utilize Canada’s untapped seed and food biodiversity.
We achieve secure seed conservation by partnering with world-class seed banks, such as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Plant Gene Resources of Canada seed bank located at the University of Saskatchewan. This Canadian seed bank protects crop genetics by storing very small amounts of a huge selection of public domain food crop seeds. (Picture a gymnasium-sized walk-in freezer at -20C!) The seeds are accessed primarily by commercial seed growers, plant breeders and researchers, and a few organizations like Seeds of Diversity, mostly for use in developing new varieties.
The key difference between our Canadian Seed Library and an institutional seed bank is accessibility. We're creating community seed banks across the country, backing up high-quality seeds for safety, and making them available for public access. People need access
to publicly-owned seed biodiversity, and communities need to reclaim their local
seed security in ways that make sense locally. We help coordinate volunteer efforts by identifying priority varieties for multiplication, back-up, and field testing.
It's amazing what seed savers can do, but no one can keep gardening forever. Every
year, older seed savers contact us to donate their family heirloom seeds that they
can no longer grow themselves. Even seed companies sometimes drop rare varieties
from their catalogues, or go out of business. We rescue their rare seeds, and keep
them available to the public.
Want to get involved?
There are 3 ways to get involved with the Seed Library project:
1. Donate seeds
Send us your rare or heirloom seeds to add to the library with as much information about their source, age and growth habits as possible
2. Donate $ - Adopt A Variety
The Library depends on donations to accomplish its goal. You can adopt a whole or partial variety to guarantee its preservation. For every $250 donated, we can save one rare or heirloom seed variety forever. Of this, $50 funds the initial processing and storage of a sample. The remaining $200 is invested in a permanent fund to finance ongoing maintenance costs in perpetuity. Over $60,000 has been donated so far. We’re aiming to reach a target of $100,000 this year. Eventually we hope to adopt 4000 varieties into the library.
3. Purchase rare seed
This spring, our Seed Library will be making seed varieties available for public purchase for the 1st time! Because we don’t want to compete with local seed companies, we will only distribute varieties not sold anywhere else in Canada.
-how to access seeds (purchase? Loan?)