The Plowboy Interview Kent Whealy

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I began to wonder just how many other gardeners were—like me—keeping rare or antique seeds . . . and I could see how important such a hobby could be in combating the situation Ehrlich described. So I wrote a few letters to various gardening and back-to-the-land magazines—one of my notes appeared in MOTHER NO. 34—to try to locate other seed-savers. During that first year, 1974, I heard from five or six people who had family heirloom seeds. One of my early correspondents—an elderly woman in Missouri named Lina Sisco—had an old-time legume she called the Bird Egg Bean, which was brought to the plains by her grandmother in the 1880's. Well, Lina died the next spring . . . but by then three of us were already growing her special vegetable. That made me recognize the great potential value of a "formal" exchange organization.

Once the "germ" of the Seed Savers Exchange had sprouted, more members joined our charter group. In 1975 we mailed out our first yearbook . . . which was actually a six-page photocopied listing of all the varieties our members had to offer or were searching for, along with excerpts from their letters to me. The exchange grew steadily over the next few years . . . by 1978 we had 238 members and our mimeographed publication was beginning to look like a book! New people constantly come in while others leave, so I'm not sure how many members there have been altogether . . . but this year the network has more than 300 seed-savers all across the United States and Canada, as well as in a dozen foreign countries.

many of the corporations that have bought out seed suppliers also manufacture pesticides and fertilizers ... and a company that's selling those products isn't likely to put very much effort or money into developing disease- or pestresistant crops!

You know, it's hard to believe the amount of impact that such a scattered group can have . . . but here are some figures that can give you an idea of what we've accomplished. During the past six years, our people have offered probably 2,000 heirloom or unusual vegetable varieties to 15,000 interested gardeners. Judging by those figures, I would guess—estimating conservatively—that some 150,000plantings have been made of vegetable varieties that aren't available through any seed catalog and that were, in many cases, on the edge of extinction. In fact, people have written me to express gratitude for helping them find rare varieties they'd been trying to locate for up to 40 years!

PLOWBOY: You mentioned concern over the loss of genetic diversity as one of your motivations for starting the Seed Savers Exchange. Let's talk about that. Botanists tell us that very few vegetable cultivars are actually native to the North American continent, so how did this part of the world build up the great variety of seeds that it is now in danger of losing?

WHEALY: As you know, we're largely a land of immigrants . . . and because of that unique history, we've been blessed with the biggest and most varied collection of food crops ever bestowed on any one region. Coming from literally every corner of the world, gardeners brought with them the best of their vegetable varieties, and then acclimated them to the growing conditions found in their new homes.

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