Our Activities

in 1986 we began our Seed Savers' Network in Australia and continue to spread the seed saving message around the globe. Since early 2006 we have curtailed our hands-on administration of seed exchange around Australia, supplanting it with appealing to a wider audience through film and greater web presence. Our current activities have grown out of our past ones. Here you will see the range of activities we have covered through Seed Savers.

Improving Seed Saving in Australia

In response to the financial crisis, we are keen to elevate the level of seed saving skills of the Australian public through promoting The Seed Savers' Handbook and encouraging the formation of more Local Seed Networks.

Receiving 8500 seed samples

 

From 1986 to 2006, we received 8500 seed samples of every size either at our post office box or dropped at Seed Savers office. We recorded each in a FileMaker Pro database, allocated them an accession number, tested them for viability with our volunteers and multiplied them. One third were multiplied in our Seed Gardens and the rest by our supporters and a team of expert seed savers, that we call regenerators. Now that activity is undertaken by our Local Seed Networks around Australia.

 

Helping  thousands of gardeners create locally adapted varieties

The rare seed stocks have to be shared around the country to be saved from oblivion. By saving seed several times over in a different climate, altitude or soil, new varieties are created; the genetic dice is thrown once again. Some will die in the process, some make it very well: local adaptions began to emerge providing the seed saver was crafty and observant of changes at each generation. For this reason we wrote a guideline for seed production that became the best selling Seed Savers' Handbook.
 

Promoting Food Gardens in Schools

We have a strong programme of encouraging more food gardens in schools through the distribution of our book, Seed to Seed Food Gardens in Schools that gives practical steps for planning, establishing, maintaining and utilising food gardens in schools.

Preparing Slide Shows

We have taken over 10 000 images and eight Powerpoint Presentations. You can see one for schools under Resources.

Producing our documentary, "Our Seeds"

We have produced a one hour documentary, "Our Seeds", aimed at the people of the Pacific, on seed saving practices around the world, seed guardians' lives, and interviews on the international seed situation.  

We have taken 250 hours of HD footage and dream of making a film with wider appeal, for a global audience.

Making Film Clips

At November 2010 we had posted 150 film clips on  the net at www.youtube.com/seedsavers. Some are shot in our gardens at Byron Bay, Australia, the rest in seventeen other countries. Some are with our larger Sony A1P and V1P cameras, others with Panasonic Lumix small cameras, and from October 2009 with an iPhone. it is possible to post clips to the internet even in remote areas of third world countries, making viewing the clips like being there.

You can see several clips on our front page, and below, on a range of topics including food production and distribution systems, diversity on markets, seed collection, cleaning, storage and distribution and a series on wild harvested foods like mushrooms, fruits, nuts and berries.

Here see a few archived film clips that have appeared on our front page:

June in Seed Gardens, Byron Bay - Native Swamphen Tractor Deals with Nut Grass

Shot in the Seed Centre gardens in Byron Bay, Australia. How grateful are we that four local native swamphens love eating our most reviled weed, nut grass! With their huge strong beaks they dig down for the nuts, pull out the stem and, holding it with their long toes, consume the nut. They have cleaned up three square metres of the pest in the space of three weeks.

May in Seed Gardens, Byron Bay - picking Rollinia fruits

Rollinia is a relative of custard apple, but less sweet in flavour, more lemony, more delicious. The tree may be tall, but the fruit is worth the climb.

 

Five seconds of fame on Australian National TV Community Announcement

 

Carrots grown from China sold in Malaysia: where next? In your supermarket?

 

Mandarins and chestnuts imported from China into Malaysia

 

And writing this....If you have serious skills to edit and upload on Youtube please contact us. We also need translators.

 

Growing 130 varieties of tomatoes in one season

In 1988 we grew out 130 varieties of tomatoes in our gardens and passed them around to our network of gardening friends. 

Coordinating friends and volunteers

Volunteers and retired helpers on and near the Gold Coast in Queensland packed the seeds into little packets recording sowing cultivation and usage details. We then sent out each packet to a gardener in what we thought would be a suitable location for that variety. In total we sent out in excess of 500 000 seed packets. Hot potatoes!

Monsanto sues seed savers

From the horse's mouth you can find out what happens to farmers who re-use Monsanto seeds a second time.

http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto_today/for_the_record/monsanto_saved_seed_lawsuits.asp

 

Our archives: pamphlets 

 

Our first ever pamphlet, 1986

 

Pamphlet 1999

 

 

Bookmark/Search this post with