Commercial Growers 20 June 2018

Selection for Seed Production

At the dawn of agriculture, 11,000 years ago, the practice of seed saving was inseparable from the act of farming. If you didn’t save seed, you wouldn’t have any crops to grow next year – it was as simple as that. It wasn’t until very recently that farmers stopped producing seed in the UK, leaving […]

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Farming 22 November 2019

Where Have all the Grains Gone?

At the end of #seedweek – highlighting the importance of local, genetically diverse and ecologically grown seed – we hear from Katie Hastings about the work going in Wales to support grain seed sovereignty… Here in Wales, our Seed Sovereignty Programme has been working with growers and farmers on the ground who are literally sowing […]

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Commercial Growers 11 April 2022

‘So You Want to Start a Seed Coop?’ Week 2 – Records and Legalities

In this week’s instalment of ‘So You Want to Start a Seed Coop?’, our Wales Coordinator Katie Hastings talks us through the ins and outs of the Record-keeping and Legalities behind selling seed collectively…   Selling seed can seem like a minefield of legislation, but this is not impenetrable. The first thing we did at […]

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Commercial Growers 01 January 2018

South West Growers Get Connected

It’s cold, wet and muddy and the plants in the garden look as though they’ve all but gone to sleep. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this is a time of rest for growers in the UK. But while the garden lays dormant over winter, growers begin a different phase of their annual cycle – […]

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England 07 July 2020

Celebrating Seed for Another Three Years!

So much of life is very uncertain at the moment. The past few months have shaken much of what we once believed to be true, but certain things have shone through as vital, wholesome, and resilient; among these have been community and food. There is a shift back towards local food; to agroecological methods of […]

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Commercial Growers 26 April 2022

‘So You Want to Start a Seed Coop?’ Week 4 – Packets, Distribution, and Marketing

This week Wales Coordinator Katie Hastings walks us through the vital steps that come after all that lovely seed is grown, harvested, and processed. While actually selling the seed might seem like the easy bit, there’s a lot more than meets the eye…   Our members are responsible for physically packing their seeds into packets […]

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