Ancestral Seeds
The USF Seed Library seeks to support and promote BIPOC seed growers and companies that nurture ancestral food traditions. Consider ordering seeds from these companies next time you are planning your garden.
- Truelove Seeds - Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. Seeds are grown by more than 50 small-scale urban and rural farmers committed to community food sovereignty, cultural preservation, and sustainable agriculture.
- Sistah Seeds - Sistah Seeds grows heirloom vegetable, herb and grain seeds from across the African Diaspora, with a focus on African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and West African cultural crops.
- Renaissance Farms - Independent farm focused on preserving the diversity of tomato seeds for future generations. Also sells a variety of vegetable, herb and flower seeds.
- Kitazawa Seed Company - Gijiu Kitazawa started Kitazawa Seed Company in 1917. Kitazawa Seeds offers over 500 seed varieties that produce dento yasai or traditional heirloom vegetables of Japan.
- Second Generation Seeds - a collective of Asian American growers devoted to helping communities of the Asian diaspora discover and deepen their cultural heritage through seeds.
- Alliance of Native Seed Keepers - Native American led seed company and the first seed company to become a Benefit Corporation. Seed purchases help fund the work of indigenous people, tribes, and native seed keepers.
- Native Seeds/SEARCH - Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S) is a nonprofit seed conservation organization that seeks to conserve and promote the arid-adapted crop diversity of the Southwest in support of sustainable farming and food security.
- Eloheh Farm and Seeds - Eloheh Farm, where Eloheh Seeds are grown, is a charitable non-profit, teaching-farm and organization. "Eloheh" is a Cherokee Indian word representing harmony, wholeness, abundance, and peace.
- Seeds of India - sells vegetable, herb and flower seeds popular in the Indian subcontinent.
Video Corner
Reading Corner
Five Black Farmers and Researchers Making the Food System More Inclusive (Joungn, Peril and Promise: The Challenge of Climate Change, WNET/PBS, March 1, 2019)
The Great Land Robbery (Vann R. Newkirk II, Atlantic Monthly, September 2019)
Farming While Black (Leah Penniman, White River Junction, Vermont : Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018)
The Color of Food: Stories of Race, Resilience and Farming (Natasha Bowens, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada : New Society Publishers, 2015)
Decolonize Your Diet : Plant-based Mexican-American Recipes for Health and Healing (Luz Calvo & Catriona Rueda Esquibel, Vancouver : Arsenal Pulp Press, 2015)
Seeds of Resistance, Seeds of Hope: Place and Agency in the Conservation of Biodiversity (edited by Virginia D. Nazarea, Robert E. Rhoades, and Jenna E. Andrews-Swann, Tucson : University of Arizona Press, 2013)