Seed Savers Exchange: Saving Seeds and Protecting Land

By Achilles Seastrom, RJ McElroy ‘Buckmaster’ Communications Intern

 

There’s a lot to admire at Seed Saver’s Heritage Farm: unique crops, fascinating landforms, ancient cattle, a trout stream open to the public and hiking paths that let you see it all. However, the most interesting thing about Heritage Farm might be the close relationship between Iowa wilderness and sustainable agricultural practices that Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) has developed on the property’s diverse landscape.

Sitting just outside Decorah, IA, SSE’s Heritage Farm has a long history with INHF. In 2004, INHF was awarded funding for NRCS’s Farmland Protection Program, now called NRCS’s Agricultural Land Easement Program. The funding was used to protect a 716-acre portion of SSE’s land with a conservation easement.

SSE now stewards 890 acres, allowing them to pursue their nonprofit mission of protecting heirloom variety garden and food crop seeds for current and future generations. These plants represent a wealth of cultural diversity as well as genetic diversity — many are rare and in danger of being lost entirely. SSE collects heirloom seeds — and the seeds’ stories — and shares them with a wider network of gardeners.

The conservation easement on the 716-acre addition allows SSE to pursue conservation goals as well.  To blend SSE’s focus on agriculture with conservation, the easement terms include supporting native biodiversity and incorporating sensitive agricultural practices.

Like all conservation easements, SSE’s choice to place a conservation easement on their land was voluntary. There’s frequently a tendency to think of conservation and agriculture as different types of land relations but that might not be the best way to understand the complexity of nature. Jim Edrington, Facilities Manager, explained that loving the land can take multiple forms. For Kent Whealy and Diane Ott Whealy, SSE founders, that means both loving heirloom crops and loving the natural spaces around agricultural spaces.

 “SSE wanted a conservation easement because of the love of the land that Kent and Diane had,” says Edrington. “They wanted to maintain the land in its natural state as long as they could.”

At SSE, people can witness beneficial collaboration and synergy between nature and agriculture. SSE has supported conservation while instituting sensitive agricultural practices in a variety of ways. One method they use is rotational grazing, a grazing strategy that can support biodiversity and soil health. SSE achieves rotational grazing with its Ancient White Park cattle, a line of cattle from the British Isles.

SSE has also installed bat boxes and invested in native prairie seeding around their orchards. These choices are examples of integrated pest management — the bat boxes and native plants draw bats and predator insects which combat nuisance insect species and allow SSE to grow their crops organically, all while providing habitats for native species.

Additionally, habitat preservation and seeding native plant species has drawn important native pollinators to the site. The pollinators that proliferate in SSE’s wild spaces are incredibly important to the pollination of SSE’s heirloom seeds. SSE practices open pollination for each crop variety, though they prevent crossbreeding their seeds. Open pollination encourages genetic diversity because the flow of pollen isn’t restricted within a specific cultivar variety. This differs from controlled pollination practices which guarantee a specific, chosen plant pollinates the crop. These methods often rely on manual pollination. In comparison open pollination relies on natural mechanisms to pollinate plants, like the native pollinators drawn to SSE’s native habitats.

Across SSE’s property, nature and agriculture work together to ensure diversity and healthy habitats, both wild and cultivated.

Currently, an oak savanna restoration project is underway. Edrington expects the oak savanna will support the health of SSE’s varied habitats, though the land is already in good condition.

To assess habitat health and the downstream positive impacts projects like the oak savanna restoration have on the entire interwoven property, Edrington watches for three indicator species: brook trout, rusty-patched bumblebees and the Baltimore checkerspot. Edrington proudly reported that SSE has two genetically distinct rusty patched bumblebee populations — a very good sign.

Sometime soon, the restored oak savanna will support habitat health across all the landscapes at SSE. In turn, healthy habitats support those rusty-patched bumblebee populations, and the bumblebees support the proliferation, longevity and genetic diversity of SSE’s heirloom garden and food crop seeds.

Much like biodiversity benefits an ecosystem, the distinct but complementary missions of INHF and SSE have made the Seed Savers Exchange conservation easement site into a place of resiliency and regeneration.

As a testament to just how resilient they are, this year SSE is celebrating “50 years of dedication to preserving biodiversity and mission-driven work.” To ring in their golden jubilee, SSE is hosting a weekend celebration and in-person conference at Heritage Farm on August 8-9. The event will feature workshops, tours, demonstrations, speakers, and live music and dancing. Find registration here.

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A conservation easement is a voluntary legal agreement that allows landowners to permanently protect their property while allowing for certain permitted uses. Conservation easements place restrictions on how land can be used to conserve natural, cultural, agricultural, scenic or open-space attributes of the land. These easements are overseen by a qualified conservation organization called land trusts, like INHF. INHF monitors easement land, like SSE, on an annual basis to ensure the terms of the easement are upheld.