Just as it takes a unique character of person to make a home here in the Last Frontier, those of us who have turned a spade in this soil know that it takes a certain kind of plant as well. They need to thrive (or at least manage) with thin and often acidic soils, a short growing season and unpredictable frosts. Perennials need a hearty tap and a diligent steward to survive the extreme over-wintering. Add to these difficulties the great regional climatic variation, and it is no wonder that so many Outsiders still express a mix of disbelief and awe when I tell them about gardening in Alaska. 

There is only one way to develop varieties that can meet the Alaska challenge: saving seed, the intentional selection of the seeds of one plant over another, for the maintenance of some desired trait—flavor, fruit size, frost resistance, etc. As a human technology, such selection has been practiced for tens of thousands of years in some parts of the world. Alaska, however, remains pretty far back on the curve for locally-adapted crop varieties, especially when you consider the 10,000 years of work that created the 40+ land races (thousands of heritage varieties) of maize found in Mexico alone.

Seed saving is experiencing a bit of a renaissance, championed by writers, activists, and organic/natural systems producers large and small. Add to that list our friendly neighborhood growers at Calypso Farm and Ecology Center. Like other growers in the interior, they have been saving seed for years now. But now they are ramping up the practice, building a new seed saving facility and dedicating farmland to a seed-only crop.

Whether by a farm like Calypso or a backyard gardener, seed-saving is the ultimate act of sustainability – not only does it generate locally-adapted crops, it also promotes crop diversity and ensures the viability of resources for the future. Our seed-saving forefathers knew as much, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other pioneer-era agriculturalists considered the identification and development of Americas-adapted varieties to be a priority of the first order. Though rich in fish and game, the only crop foods native to North America are sunflower, blueberries, cranberries and the Jerusalem artichoke, with pre-colonial-era import of milpa crops from the south such (maize, beans and squash) the only exception. Washington, Jefferson and others dispatched agents across the known world, searching for varieties to experiment with in the many colonized places of America. The heritage varieties of vegetables that we know today, and hundreds more that have been lost since the industrialization of American agriculture, are the bounty of their painstaking and arduous work.

But the practice is not for everybody. It takes experience and comes with risk; it is, after all, simply trial and error. Keeping a farm profitable can be hard enough work from the seedling-on, forget the additional care and uncertainty that seed-saving introduces. The many proven, purchased varieties already provide high, consistent yields that can be very attractive to a farmer, and such quality is likely years if not generations off for locally-developed ones. Too, a number of crops won’t produce viable seed in one year. Carrots, for example, are biennials and would need to over-winter before going to seed, an unlikely proposition in Alaska.

Perhaps this is why extensive varietal development was not pursued during the US’s agricultural expansion into Alaska. Early research by the agricultural experiment stations focused almost entirely on increasing Alaska’s industrial agricultural potential, with monoculture grain-crops like oats and barley, and fallow crops like clover and alfalfa. Indeed it wasn’t until the late 1960s and 70s that Alaskan varieties of garden crops began to emerge from these efforts. Today it is not that difficult to find varieties in seed catalogs or department stores labeled for Alaska, but many of these are merely cold-adapted or frost-tolerant. Seed-saving offers us the prospect of entirely new varieties (perhaps even new vegetables) that thrive in, rather than merely tolerate, Alaska’s unique climatic circumstances. How about a carrot that will survive Alaska’s winter?

I would also suggest that the act of seed saving’s ecological practicality is matched, if not surpassed, by its spirituality. Through saving seed, farmer and plant enter into a unique, symbiotic relationship. Each variety comes to take on a character that reflects not only the character of the land but also of the farmer. And he or she changes too, learning from the plants, perhaps to perceive minor changes in the hue of the leaves that warn of disease or nutrient-deficient soil. With time this relationship can become so intimate, in fact, that often-times when a farmer dies, several crop varieties die with them, the knowledge of their proper cultivation having been lost to the world. Hence the apt sentiment expressed by writer Stanley Crawford—that every bit of cultivated land ought to have its own notebook, passed from generation to generation to keep a record of this union.

Seed saving is an act that puts the culture back into agriculture, and heritage back into our foods. I graciously thank and envy all of those who spend the time and attention to do so. If you wish to learn how to do this yourself, there are many great books for which I’d be happy to share the reference. Also, I’m sure that one or many of farms local to your area offers a workshop on the matter.  

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Food, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.