Our desire to preserve is strongly linked to a narrative of loss, both for biodiversity writ large and for rare heirloom seeds. But we recognize the need for biodiversity and destroy it in the same breath. What if we protected the Amazon instead of just the genetics within it? What if we supported small-scale diversified agriculture instead of industrialized monoculture?

Seed preservation has a place, but it’s not the thing that will save us. Heirloom seed keepers attempt to preserve the past, while plant breeders control genetic resources to commodify the seed. Neither camp is particularly focused on how to expand biodiversity into the future, as if biodiversity and seed varieties are fixed and finite things.

Compounding this problem is the climate crisis, which is dramatically affecting our ability to grow food. Diversity is a core component of resilience, so we need rapid, ongoing and diverse adaptation of our regional food systems – everywhere, all the time. If we’ve been preserving all these seeds for some imagined future need, then the need is now. Arguably, it’s already too late.

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