Seed Saver Exchange is a nonprofit organization in agriculture. They offer alternative models to agriculture, encouraging their members in order to participate in the preservation, and they also agree to sign the safe seed pledge. This organization knows just how important it is to help with the preservation of agriculture because they think that the future of the world will also depend on the food provided by the plants. Nowadays, their scope of work is still within the region of the United States of America.
These activities are among the things that they do daily:
1. Keep the varieties of plant types in their large (if not among the largest) seed bank in North America
2. Regenerate seeds in isolation gardens so that they can maintain if not add to the number of plant type varieties. Their isolation gardens will always copy the ideal condition required by the plants.
3. Keep the documentation as well as creating new documentation on the valuable information on the plant varieties and their historical background.
4. Distribute varieties of heirlooms to their members and also the public so that these people can help preserving those varieties. This action is done with the media of Seed Savers Exchange Catalog and also Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook.
Seed Savers Exchange started their activities almost 4 decades ago. They have always been consistent in doing the activities to promote the preservation as well as utilization of the different heirloom varieties. Although their goals remain the same, but their activities differ as the different era requires different actions.
Their members have been growing significantly all through the years but still mainly are gardeners and farmers. The members have been greatly benefited by the membership as they can have unique seeds that are not often available in the stores, and even when these seeds are in the stores, the price is frequently very high. On the other hand, the Seed Savers Exchange has also been benefited as these people will help with the participatory preservation.
The participatory preservation method has been viewed as successful method because it can help the process of open pollination and circulation of the heirloom varieties among those people who love the heirlooms. In the end, they hope that the unique seeds will not be unique anymore thus, can be easily obtained and available to everyone, even the beginner gardeners or farmers who have not learnt about the Seed Savers Exchange.
