Our funding proposal is on our website: localseeds.org
The Local Seeds Coalition’s mission is to raise public awareness of the role seeds play in our food systems, and to support a thriving, community-powered movement that centers local, regionally adapted, and culturally meaningful seeds.
About halfway through our 96 interviews, I thought we should focus more on capacity building within the seed space: creating and sharing resources. Webinars, educational materials, connection spaces for seed stewards. But through reflection and more conversations, we realized that was beyond the scope of our original mission. It would need to come later, as part of an iterative process. We needed more funding to create those resources well, and without broader awareness of why regional seeds matter, it’s hard to get both the funding and the committed volunteers that kind of work requires.
Community Building: Over the summer we created this Discourse hub as a way to start building connections and sharing resources. We hope it will continue to expand as more people engage. We established regular volunteer hours where people could connect and support each other’s work. Come! Every other Thursday at 5 pm PST. Email localseeds@goingtoseed.org to be added to the calendar invite.
What we learned is that building these spaces takes sustained energy, and that energy is hard to generate without the foundation in place first.
Many Resources Exist: Another thing that came to light: there are already so many underutilized maps, directories, webinars and resources out there that people don’t know about. We would love to help surface and connect those existing efforts. But we can’t make that our focus right now. With limited capacity we need to stay laser focused on bridging to the public.
When we conducted a preliminary review of assets across the seed space, we noticed a gap. So many seed organizations and seed stewards seem hesitant to engage directly with the non-seed-saving public. Our role is to help translate that work into something that reaches gardeners, farmers, and consumers who are just beginning to understand why any of this matters.
How the Strategy Evolved: When our first proposal focused on awareness alone, it presented a problem: How will consumers even know how to find regional seeds? How will the California State Grange implement its regional seed resolution of 30% by 2030 if it’s almost impossible to see where seeds are from currently?
We needed both. So more conversations led to regional labeling. More conversations after that led to adding cultural labeling, which is a conversation simmering in the seed space that needs a safe place to evolve. Cultural labeling is separate from regional labeling. It’s not just about data; it’s about standing on a long continuum of care. We want to acknowledge the Indigenous seed keepers who have carried these traditions forward despite centuries of displacement.
Going Forward: We would love to expand our offerings over time. More webinars, more connection spaces, more educational resources. If you’re someone willing to spend time helping build out these spaces, we welcome you. Fill out our volunteer interest form, and if you can’t make it to our Thursday evening meetings, let us know and we’ll create alternate times that work.
The foundational piece, making seed origins visible through labeling and building awareness of why regional adaptation matters, creates the infrastructure that makes all those other connections more meaningful. Once that’s in place, the resource-building and community-connecting work has something concrete to build on.
What do you think? Let us know.