Join the IDEA Farm Network on March 5th at 12:00pm CST as we welcome Briana Smorstad from Seed Savers Exchange. Learn how to grow plants for seed, how to harvest and store seeds from plants in your field/garden. Join the conversation! Bring your questions and learn from a working Seed Bank Manager.

There are so many reasons to save seeds! Whether you’re a farmer looking to lower input costs, or a gardener hoping to preserve a farming heirloom, the act of saving seed changes the way you interact with your land/garden.

For the farmer, seed saving is about resilience. It’s a strategy to help insulate your operation from supply chain shocks, lower your annual budget, and over time, develop stock that is genetically adapted to the unique microclimate of your own fields.

For the gardener, seed saving may start out as a hobby but can quickly become legacy. It’s the magic of selecting your favorite tomato from the patch, saving that story, and replanting it next year. Not just as a plant, but as a piece of cultural and ecological stewardship.

Briana Smorstad grew up in the Driftless Region, where her mother instilled in her a love of the land and nature by tending flowers and vegetables in her garden every summer. As a child, Bri didn’t much care for all of the hard work gardening required, but as an adult, she is enamored with the power gardening has to connect us with our food and land. Bri earned a bachelor’s degree in conservation biology; during her studies, she noticed that almost every conservation issue came back to our broken food system. This realization inspired her to pursue work in food systems to address the array of symptoms caused by this disconnect, including nutrition, climate change, conservation, and sustainable communities. She is over the moon to be working as the seed bank manager at Seed Savers Exchange because she gets to live in her favorite place (Decorah!) and work on one of humanity’s most important issues, our food system, by helping to preserve the seeds of our diverse garden heritage so people today and tomorrow can continue to connect with their food.