Seed Co-operative
Short description of your place and practices
Our mission is to sow the seeds of a healthy and resilient organic food system that promotes diversity, democracy and a closer relationship with our food, and those who grow it.
Our vision
The Seed Co-operative exists to shine a spotlight on the vital, but all-too-often forgotten, role of the humble seed in building a resilient food system.
The future of food has to be rooted in democracy, diversity and health. That means diversity of ownership and shared knowledge, with diversity of genetics and wildlife. Working with diversity is adopting nature’s way of nurturing the health of our planet and people.
Varieties that are open pollinated and adapted to organic growing systems are the essential ingredients in making this happen. That’s where the Seed Co-operative comes in.
We grow, process and sell organic, open-pollinated seed for the UK and beyond, and develop new varieties through organic plant breeding, to support the collective work of those striving towards making agro-ecological farming and food sovereignty a reality. We want you to know where your seed comes from; who grew it and where, and even who bred each variety.
We’re not interested in tricksy seed biotechnology, or dominating the world’s seed supply. Instead, we believe passionately in breeding open pollinated seeds that everyone can grow, everyone can save for the next year, and everyone can afford. All our sustainable futures depend on it.
Our Journey So Far
The Seed Co-operative came into being in 2014 as an initiative of the Biodynamic Association, supported by Garden Organic and the Organic Research Centre, working with the Open Pollinated Seeds initiative and experienced seedsman Hans Steenbergen.
We established ourselves as a Community Benefit Society to provide a co-operative membership organisation open to everyone: farmers, growers, home gardeners, chefs, professionals and amateurs alike. Similar projects are establishing themselves across the globe from Columbia to Canada, India to Ethiopia, and throughout continental Europe, in response to the threats of industrial food production over the last century.
In 2016 we bought Gosberton Bank Nursery in Lincolnshire, which had been largely abandoned for four years. Our 24-acre home, now nursed back to health thanks to the hard work of staff and a host of volunteers, includes 2.5 acres of glasshouses with a rainwater-fed reservoir for irrigation, buildings for seed processing and storage, and housing for staff. In 2017 we were a finalist in the BBC Food and Farming Awards. We achieved organic certification in April 2018.
David Price and Kate Ayre worked at Gosberton Bank Nursery from 2016 to 2021, where they managed the merging of an existing seed business (Stormy Hall Seeds) with an abandoned farm at Gosberton.
With a lot of hard work and assistance from the BDA, with our shareholders and supporters, over the past two years we have put in place a skilled Board to set strategy and direction, along with a dedicated staff (and volunteer!) team on site, led by Sharn Jones. We are always growing and welcome new ideas and additions to the team.