by Masha Zager
Most of us in the Going to Seed community are gardeners and homesteaders who grow
food for ourselves and our families. When we work on adapting a crop, the first few
years can be challenging – pests may wipe out half the plants, or the first round of
crosses may yield strange, inedible results – but it’s all part of the fun. For market
farmers, however, the adaptation period directly affects their bottom line and their ability
to make a living. They also face the additional challenge of educating customers to
accept diverse and unusual-looking products.
Because most farmers operate on such narrow margins to begin with, they are
understandably reluctant to add new sources of risk to their businesses. But if
adaptation agriculture is to have the impact we want it to have, it has to spread beyond
gardeners to the farmers who feed larger numbers of people.
In 2024, Going to Seed launched its Farmer Support Program to help market farmers
transition to adaptation agriculture. Through the program, which is funded primarily by
the Clif Family Foundation, farmers receive financial assistance, seeds, and technical
assistance for up to three years while they adapt one or more crops to their
environments. In return, they document their experiences. Their photos, videos, and
reports will eventually allow us to create a guide for other farmers to use. They also
spread the word about adaptation agriculture in their local communities.
The third season of the program began this spring. Seven third-year participants and six
second-year participants in the United States, Canada, and Scotland are continuing the
projects they started in 2024 and 2025, adapting not just the ever-popular corn and
squash but many other crops, including amaranth, sorghum, onions, watermelon,
sprouting broccoli, cucumber, barley, and okra. (Two other farmers who have
“graduated” from the program also remain associated with it.)
New this year is a project in Kenya, undertaken in collaboration with the Permagardens
Foundation and funded by the Tarbell Family Foundation. East Africa has suffered from
a years-long drought that has made food scarce and expensive, and the Permagardens
Foundation has been teaching people to raise staple crops using water-conserving
methods. This year, their program is expanding to include adaptation agriculture.
Participants are planting diverse varieties of corn, sorghum, cowpeas, and pigeon peas
with the goal of developing more drought-resistant varieties.
Behind the scenes, there’s a lot of cross-pollination between the Going to Seed
gardening community and the farmers in the Farmer Support Program. Many of the farmers started their projects with diverse seed mixes from our Seed Share program,
and those who end their seasons with more seed than they need for the following year
return 10 percent to Seed Share. So if you’re a Seed Share participant, you may have
been contributing to – and benefiting from – these farmers’ adaptation projects.