One Seed Bank Per Eco-Region (The Goal).
Within The Cascadia Bioregion - USA
Overview & Goals
Seed banks-exchanges need to be local and updated ongoing and ideally, they need to be accessible for as many hours as possible. The Cascadia Seed Guild was created in October 2023 during a tour to create Regenerate Cascadia. And we have two overall goals.
To create 4 Bioregional Seed Propagation Centres in the Cascadia Bioregion.
To create 1 Permanent Seed Bank-Exchange in each Ecoregion of the Cascadia Bioregion. (That would be 75 in total).
Where We Are
According to The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) fresh food in the USA travels an average of 1,500 miles from farm to table. Additionally, most food is eaten in cities, towns and villages and yet, as the previous USDA number shows, we grow-produce very little food close to where we eat it.
When we then add in the ongoing effects of climate-change on large-scale remote farming, it becomes ever clearer that our current, somewhat centralized food systems are foolish at best and very fragile at worst.
This map shows the USA food supply system, one other important item to consider is how dependent this system is on fossil-fuels, not just for transportation and farm equipment but also for fertilizers. Estimates show figures of 70-80% dependency and here is another angle on this “Currently about 10 to 15 calories of fossil fuel energy are used to create 1 calorie of food”, this can be found in this article from some years ago. Fossil-fuels are finite, so these are not good dependencies to have. So then, what do we do about this?
Create 4 Bioregional Seed Propagation Centres in the Cascadia Bioregion.
Create 1 Permanent Seed Bank-Exchange in each Ecoregion of the Cascadia Bioregion. (That would be 75 in total).
Expand this nationally and globally.
In doing this, the most difficult asset-material we need to enable this is of course #seeds. We have over 1,800 varieties and many millions of individual #seeds. We are more than ready to start.
Public (Seed) Libraries?
We are fortunate here in Eugene, Oregon to have our main Eugene Public Library with a Seed Library within their operations. It is located on the 2nd floor next to the stairs and is pictured below.
In Washington State alone there are 350 public libraries and what we have observed is that the process of breaking bulk into smaller packets is something that most libraries do not have the personnel nor time to do, ongoing. Over the years, we have evolved fairly efficient ways to do this, however, this is still quite labor-intensive. More importantly, we see it as a vital task in order to spread seeds and food growing as widely as possible. Here we are taking in donated seeds and breaking bulk to spread them around
Certainly we see libraries as a vital link in bringing food growing back to our localities and #seeds are the key asset in this regard.
This beautiful map shows the watersheds of the Cascadia Bioregion and this can be obtained from this website. These watersheds form the basis and organization of the Ecosystems which are shown below. The map below shows the 75 Ecoregions which are our basis for the creation of permanent Seed Exchanges in the Cascadia Bioregion.
Once more, these are our long-term goals.
Create 4 Bioregional Seed Propagation Centres in the Cascadia Bioregion.
Create 1 Permanent Seed Bank-Exchange in each Ecoregion of the Cascadia Bioregion. (That would be 75 in total).
Expand this nationally and globally.
Once more, thank you for reading this latest evolution of our #seeds-based goals.