Starter Kit. Idea 280 of 500. Cluster 14
Seed banks and seed businesses for the heritage vegetables and grains
The mechanism, from the book
The smallholder sells raw to a collector at the gate and the collector sells to a packer who puts his own name on it. Denmark's farmers got rich the day they owned the creamery.
The first step
Collect seed from three heritage vegetables that older growers in one village still keep, record where each came from, and pack it in small envelopes with the grower's story. Sell them at a weekend market and online to home gardeners, and ask each buyer what else they are looking for. The sell-through and the list of requested varieties show which seeds deserve a proper business.
- Who pays first
- A home gardener in the city or abroad who wants the vegetables they remember and cannot find the seed anywhere.
- What leaves today
- Heritage varieties survive only in old gardens and disappear with their growers, while the seed trade is run on other varieties.
Ask first
- Department of Agriculture. Ask whether selling heritage seed needs registration of the variety or the seller.
Check before you spend
Whether selling seed needs registering the variety or yourself, and whether the growers who kept the seed agree to its sale.
Find out these three numbers
- What do home gardeners pay for a packet of heritage seed?
- How many varieties do older growers in the village keep?
- How much seed does one grower save each season?
A comparison from the book
New Zealand. Chapter Eleven
"Then Zespri did the thing that made the real money: it owns its plant varieties."
A kept and named variety is worth more than one harvest, so record where every seed came from.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.