The Seeds of Sustainability Preserving the Past One Plant at a Time

摘要

"The greatest service which can be rendered to any country is to add a useful plant to its culture!" Welcome to America—beautiful America!—albeit the America of our past. The quote is from Thomas Jefferson, a seed-saving statesman who set the stagefor agricultural leadership when he exclaimed that his proudest accomplishment was introducing upland rice to the nation's farmlands. The principles of agricultural diversity and regional adaptability were once the very foundation of this country's design—and at the root were the seeds. The USDA allocated at least a third of its budget in 1878 to collect and freely distribute seeds. By 1897 the Patent and Trade Office was supplying over 1.1 billion packets of these USDA seeds to Americas farmers, a practice that continued for nearly thirty years. At the turn of the last century no one owned our seeds. They were part and parcel of the public trust. Nearly every farmer and gardener freely received, saved, and shared them.