Seed libraries increasing in popularity, use

By the Boston Globe

A growing number of "seed libraries" are cropping up across the nation.

The Boston Globe reports that, "The facilities have been lending packets of seeds, allowing people to plant them, and checking them back in if---and only if---the borrower manages to grow thriving plants in the meantime.

"The mission of cataloging and saving seeds has fallen mainly to big seed banks and academic researchers. There are 7.4 million seed samples conserved in professionally managed seed vaults worldwide; the biggest—the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, on an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean—holds seeds for more than 770,000 distinct plants.

But those seeds are locked away, not reproducing, waiting for plant scientists or a planetary food emergency to call them into action. This is why, to their proponents, seed libraries occupy an important (if still small) role in that bigger story: They actually bring plants into circulation, town by town, encouraging local variety and even potentially developing new strains."

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