Author: Common Wealth Seed Growers

This is a two-minute video about selecting and improving Purple Top White Globe Turnips – Recorded at Twin Oaks Seed Farm on 3/20/2025 and narrated by Edmund Frost.

Here is a pdf of our 2025 print catalog!

We have 18 new varieties this year, several returning varieties, several new research samples, and lots of great pictures! The catalog also includes a letter in three sections: about our farms, about land access and agriculture; and about the state of the organic seed movement. The letter is also pasted below.

Common Wealth Seed Growers 2025 Catalog Letter by Edmund Frost

This year’s letter starts with reports from the farms involved in CWSG. Then I’m going to look at some broader questions about land and agriculture, because they feel especially pressing at this time. I’ll end with what I intend as a constructive critique of the organic seed movement.

Our Farms in 2024

It was somewhat of a difficult year at Twin Oaks Seed Farm, but there were also many successes. In March we lost our main indoor workspace when a wildfire burned down Twin Oaks Community’s warehouse. (Twin Oaks is a longstanding intentional community, home to about 100 people; Twin Oaks Seed Farm is one of the community businesses). This was a major loss for Twin Oaks, destroying a lot of equipment and inventory, and effectively ending the community’s hammocks business. Fortunately for the seed operation, most of the seeds were in a different drying and storage location, out of the fire’s reach. We did lose all our sweet potato planting stock, some seed inventory, a small part of the seed collection, and various tools and supplies. We’ve had to be more creative about workspace and storage space this year, relying a good bit on our greenhouse and high tunnels. We did some seed processing outside the community dining hall, which had the positive effect of engaging more of the community in what we’re doing. People were especially fascinated with the vacuuming process for extracting seed from squash, and we got extra help with the 7000 or so pounds of South Anna Butternut we’ve processed for seed this year.

Part of the synergy of the seed growing operation at Twin Oaks is that we provide produce for the community kitchen – this year we brought in many months’ supply of peppers, squash and watermelon (among other things), and froze large quantities for off-season use. Another part of the synergy is that we’re often able to get extra help when we need it. In 2024 we harvested the biggest seed crops ever of South Anna Butternut, South Wind Slicer, and Common Wealth Pickler, three of Common Wealth Seed Growers’ most popular varieties, as well as 25+ other seed crops. We also did a lot of interesting trialing and breeding work, which you can read about in the research section near the end of the catalog.

Megan and Lalo of Care of the Earth Community Farm grew dozens of seed crops, including their original varieties Xiye Butternut, Margie’s Melon and Mira Red Stem Kale. They’ve realized that making ends meet through mostly seed work is not currently feasible and are planning to return to growing more vegetables for direct market sales next season. They will be continuing with several of their breeding and research projects and will still be growing some seed crops.

Jay and Nora of Laughing Springs Farm increased their seed production this year and continued maize, squash, and tomato breeding projects. They are excited to be making available via CWSG some of their favorite varieties that they have been seed saving for themselves over the years, including Datil pepper, Carnaval pepper and Lualualei green bean. Hurricane Helene did some damage to seed and breeding crops, but by and large Laughing Springs Farm was very lucky. They grew lots of dry pole beans this year as part of a larger North Carolina-wide collaborative trial among college and university farms, and even more as part of a bean trialing project led by the USDA and Seedlinked, which will be expanding into other crops in 2025.

Lyndsey Walker of Rock Cottage Farm, a seed grower since 2015, re-engaged with the project this year after taking a break to focus on farm infrastructure, hemp trials, and fermented hot sauce production. In the 2024 season, she grew seed crops of Super Shepherd Sweet Pepper, Maranka Gourd, and South Anna Butternut. The biggest hurdles for her this year were the drought in Central Virginia and subsequently the immense deer pressure. Going forward, she is working to transition the farm from vegetable growing and animal husbandry toward a more outward-facing role in the community. She aims to foster a mutual aid model promoting food security, perhaps in the form of hot meals. She is most excited about cultivating strong, regionally adapted seeds because they are a necessary building block of food sovereignty. This endeavor will continue to be a cornerstone of her farm.

Living Energy Farm did some sizeable seed crops (including Golden Bush Scallop Summer Squash, Doe Hill Sweet Pepper, and Cajun Jewel Okra), and a row of South Anna Butternut for seed and food. Chrissy Billeiter and David Rosenberg, both fairly new to LEF, are excited about the seed work and to help expand the seed growing operation next year. But LEF’s biggest agricultural story of the year was Alexis Zeigler’s new combine prototype. Alexis has designed a combine that can be pulled with a small tractor or riding lawnmower. We used it to harvest wheat crops at both LEF and Twin Oaks Seed Farm this year (we’re about 10 miles apart). Read more in the research section near the end of the catalog and at livingenergyfarm.org.

And this year we are happy to welcome Brenda Callen as a CWSG grower. Her seed garden is located at All-Farm Organics (owned by William Hale) in Louisa, Virginia. Brenda lived and worked at Living Energy Farm for a number of years, learning seed growing skills from Debbie Piesen. This year she produced successful certified organic crops of DMR 401 Cucumber, Jimmy Nardello’s Sweet Pepper, Roma VF Virginia Select Tomato, and Seminole Pumpkin.

Altogether we produced seed for over 50 varieties, including 18 new introductions. We identified a handful of new standout varieties that we’ll be growing for seed next year, and many new avenues to pursue in our research and breeding work. We want to thank everyone for growing our seeds! Please send us your feedback about our varieties!

Land, Farming, Culture, and Movements in 2024

To work in agriculture in the current economic and social context can look and feel foolish. The average cost of farmland in the U.S. has doubled since 2009. The cost of housing has increased 47% just since 2020. You’d be lucky to find a small house for half a million dollars in many parts of the country. Maybe we’ve been able to raise our prices a bit, but how can they match this?

The fact is agricultural land is under intense pressure not only from development, but from a speculation-fueled, finance-driven real estate market.

The fact is there is a relentless race-to-the-bottom push to move many kinds of agricultural production to places with the lowest possible labor costs.

The fact is that overall farm policy favors very large producers of a small number of commodity crops, leaving small farms and specialty crops behind.

The fact is most farmers in the U.S. rely on off-farm income – and it’s a requirement if you want a loan.

Despite this –

We know that farming is what we’re supposed to be doing. We know that getting our food from halfway around the world isn’t going to last. We know that people can’t eat or drink money, or data. We know the strength and depth of the connection we have with plants, animals, and soil. We know how important it is to keep alive what we can of the vast and brilliant agricultural knowledge that buzzes around our heads as we work in the sun. We know that the inventors of the microchip and the iPhone have nothing on the inventors of corn, squash, and cabbage.

We do what we can to make things work. We learn what the trendy crops are at market and we grow those. We get good at social media marketing and spreadsheets. We piece together land to rent and farm on when we don’t own any and aren’t on track to. We work more than we should, and then more than that because the irrigation stopped working or frost is coming early. We find other work. We find and revive ways of doing things that were almost lost. We seek, adapt, and invent new machines and methods and appropriate technologies. We grow beautiful and outstanding food that inspires the enthusiasm, engagement and support of many around us. We create movements together that help sustain us – sustainable agriculture, back to the land, organic, local, farmers markets, organic and regional seed movements, CSAs, Farm Aid, non-GMO, Via Campesina (the global peasants’ movement). Together we’ve done a lot to counter the narratives about farmers and farming being boring and stupid. And for a lot of farmers and farming families all that hasn’t been enough. For a lot of potential new farmers, all that won’t be enough.

In much of Latin America, the concept of Land Reform has been near the top of people’s thoughts and understandings for a long time – the idea that land ownership should not be concentrated in the hands of a few while the people working the land own nothing. In Brazil it’s written into the constitution. In practice there is a lot of foot dragging, but there is also a movement (the Landless Movement) of over a million people organizing to claim vacant land for small farmers, with many successes.

The Mexican revolution of 1918 was largely fought around the demand of peasant farmers for access to land (many of these farmers had been kicked off their land by previous government policies). The resulting Ejido system was a massive undertaking and was successful in awarding use rights for small farmers to about half of Mexico’s land area. Positive change is possible, and we would do well to ponder and learn from this history. 

Neoliberal trade policies, however, have undone many of those gains. NAFTA (enacted in 1994 and renamed USMCA in 2018) challenged the Ejido arrangement in two ways – by opening up collectively owned land to the real estate market, and by flooding the market with subsidized corn from the U.S. As a result up to two million Mexican farmers and farm workers have lost their livelihood, dramatically increasing rural poverty and causing a migration crisis, while actually increasing the cost of food for Mexican consumers. And just yesterday, in another instance of corporate greed construed as science and progress, a USMCA trade panel ruled that Mexico’s recent attempts to prohibit GMO corn in tortillas are not allowed. Nevermind that Mexico is the birthplace of corn, and that corn is the primary staple food there.  

Meanwhile, producers of many crops in the U.S. are under intense pressure from imports produced in countries that have cheaper labor markets, in much the same way that manufacturing jobs have been under pressure from outsourcing. This increasingly includes imported certified organic crops. It’s also true for seed production – more on that later. None of this is the fault of farmers or workers in other countries, who are also struggling to stay on the land – the problem is that we’re being played against each other.

In the U.S. since 1960 we’ve lost 1.8 million farms. Since 1982 we’ve lost 140 million acres of farmland. In the last 100 years, one million Black families have lost their farms. The situation has been grim for a long time. But part of what I want to emphasize here is that it’s getting worse even faster now. Just between 2017 and 2022 we lost 141,000 farms and 20 million acres of farmland. The cost of housing has risen 47% since 2020, and according to Fortune magazine, large-scale investors had a major role in driving up prices. It’s been even worse for farmland, where prices have on average more than doubled since 2009 (of course in some places it’s gone up much more than that). Pressure from development and the housing market is partly to blame. But starting around 2009, speculative investment in farmland (in its own right) by large investment funds has been a major driver of increasing land prices. These investments are monopolistic because the funds are so big that they can meet their goals of increasing prices just by entering the market. We’re left in a situation where the value of farmland is increasingly not tied to what can be produced on the land or even to its housing development potential – it’s tied to what large investors think it could be worth in the future.

What we’re dealing with in this country, at this time, is the unchecked ascendancy and dominance not just of corporations, but of finance and tech monopolies. The impacts are broad and immense, with the effects trickling into every area of economic activity. The mechanisms of finance are so complex that few people understand them. However, the current results are strikingly clear: the enrichment of an investor class and the impoverishment and dispossession of working people. Similarly, much of the tech industry is more about reorganizing social and economic interactions to benefit a few billionaires than it is about creating anything beneficial for the rest of us. Meanwhile they offer us surveillance, addiction, and distraction, and still have the gall to claim that they’re here to help.   

I don’t want this.

I’m pretty sure most of us don’t want this.

As a society and culture we must strive for relationship with land, and relationships with each other, whose purpose is not to make money and hold wealth for rich people. The land sustains us, and we are part of it. It is our job to assert this, to demand this, and to create this. We must respect and defend its natural and agricultural ecosystems, as well as its human cultural ecosystems.

So what are we going to do about it?

What I’m going to say here is that our strength is in the movements we’ve built and will continue to build; the connections, mutual support, and real economies we have with each other; and the clarity we dare to create together. In writing this letter I hope I can add a little to what we understand to be the scope of the tasks we are taking on.

The sustainable agriculture movement has unique potential in that it unites people in common passion for having real and right relationship with land ­­- across cultural, religious and political backgrounds. We have mutual respect across lines that divide the rest of society because we’re grounded in real work and real love of the land, the plants, the animals, and our communities.

We can also look elsewhere in the world for inspiration and ideas. Let’s study and learn from India’s huge and successful farmer protests, Brazil’s Landless Movement, the Zapatistas in Southern Mexico (who formed as a response to NAFTA), La Via Campesina globally, and many others.

These problems are long in the making and may not be corrected quickly. As we struggle for a better future, let’s also celebrate the successes we’ve had in creating ongoing movements, culture, and know-how that will continue to flourish and bear fruit for many years to come.

Seeds, Seed Work and Seed Culture

Many of the organic seed movement companies that I know and look up to started in the ‘70s and ‘80s out of a desire and need to provide better adapted seeds for regional conditions, to challenge the increase in monopolization of the seed industry, and to improve options for organic farms. Some of these companies have become indispensable resources for market farmers and organic farmers, and they offer many quality products.

But in the current economic environment there has also been stagnation. Many alternative seed companies source a lot of their seeds from countries with cheaper labor markets. Some are pretty good quality; many are not. But in any case this drives prices down for seed producers in the U.S. – to the point that it is very difficult to make a living growing seeds and to do the nuanced and detailed work that quality seed systems require. Our potential to persist as a movement and to bring in new growers is in question.

A few years ago I was talking with someone who works in a larger vegetable seed company, and he explained that the reason seed companies pay seed growers uniquely well for okra seeds compared to other vegetables is that there is a phytosanitary ban on importing untreated okra seeds (probably because okra is a close cousin of cotton). So okra seed, almost uniquely among vegetables, has little competition from overseas commodity markets.

Under this arrangement, farmers, gardeners, and eaters are not getting the benefits from regional seed work that are possible. Regional adaptation can’t happen with seeds grown in another part of the world. Feedback loops between end users of seeds and seed growers likewise aren’t often present. Unfortunately many seed users aren’t aware of this dynamic, assuming instead that the seeds they buy from a nearby company were also grown nearby. Sometimes the marketing can be misleading in ways that create this impression, but just as importantly, little is being done to inform customers of where the seeds are actually coming from. There usually are not even country of origin labels on seeds, including among alternative and organic-focused seed companies.

There is however a newer movement of seed companies (that we’re part of!) working to change these dynamics by clearly listing where and how seeds are grown, and by focusing on quality regional breeding, research, and seed production. Following is a list of some farm-based seed companies I’m familiar with in the U.S. that offer a medium to high level of seed source transparency. I am sure this list is incomplete – please let me know about projects and companies that should be added! My intention here is to build awareness of how seed source transparency relates to quality, to encourage more seed companies to promote this value by listing sources, and to encourage seed customers to ask for it.

Truelove Seeds (Pennsylvania)

Sistah Seeds (Pennsylvania)

Two Seeds in a Pod (West Virginia & Florida)

Seed the Stars (Florida)

Working Food (Florida)

Turtle Tree Seeds (New York)

Cultivating the Commons (Wisconsin)

Experimental Farm Network (New Jersey & Minnesota)

North Circle Seeds (Minnesota)

Meadowlark Hearth (Nebraska)

High Desert Seed and Gardens (Colorado)

Snake River Seed Cooperative (Idaho)

Triple Divide Seeds (Montana)

Adaptive Seeds (Oregon)

Siskiyou Seeds (Oregon)

Peace Seedlings (Oregon)

Wild Garden Seeds (Oregon)

Uprising Seeds (Washington)

Resilient Seeds (Washington)

Saltwater Seeds (Washington)

Hawaii Seed Growers Network (Hawaii)

Seedwise (a platform for farmers to sell seeds – over 30 farms currently)

Check them out!

Seed origin attribution is another important value. Where did the seed originate, and what people or communities can we credit for that? Has someone been stewarding the variety who may be different from who did this year’s seed production? Sometimes we don’t know much, but often we do – practicing attribution can support ongoing work and brings awareness to the depth of work and care that goes into seeds.

Seed Worker Organizing, started in 2022, is another way that seed workers (myself included) are bringing attention to difficulties faced by seed growers and to problems in the industry. We’ve created a set of recommendations around how the industry can better value and work with seed growers to improve the quality and suitability of seeds sold, and to improve terms and compensation for growers. Seed source transparency and seed origin attribution are among the areas we’ve identified as important for improving seed systems. See seedworkers.org for more information, and to read the Seed Production Contract Guidelines document.