About the Local Seeds Coalition

The Local Seeds Coalition is fiscally sponsored by IFOAM North America, a duly recognized Regional Body of the International Federation of Agriculture Movements.

The Local Seeds Coalition has established a steering committee as a developing feature of pooling resources and common purposes among seed communities and nonprofits. This committee will enhance collaboration and ensure effective progress towards shared goals. The collective efforts of the committee will leverage its diversity of expertise in promoting sustainable.agriculture.

Get in touch: LocalSeeds@GoingToSeed.org

Read the Proposal:

This proposal synthesizes findings from 96 interviews conducted across 29 US states and 8 countries, plus 44 written responses, two coalition gatherings, and three advisory committee meetings with representatives from national seed organizations. Seven trained volunteer interviewers used standardized questions, and a team of six analysts reviewed the data using the Condens research platform.

Ideas were contributed by everyone involved in the process, with special thanks to:

Toby Cain, the coalition convener and strategist.
Miguel Olvera, our volunteer coordinator, who contributed design and facilitation for presentations, reports and proposals.
Melanie Levy spent countless hours on research analysis and training other volunteers
Anna Mieritz planned and facilitated several meetings.
Julia Dakin, project manager and administrative support.

Writing Acknowledgements:

The proposal was written with help from Chanda Robinson Banks, Julia Dakin, Michelle Dang, David Gould, Edmund Frost, and Mike Bollinger and others. It was edited by Masha Zager and Alan Lewis, with design and formatting by Miguel Olvera. Regional and cultural labeling was inspired by Seed Worker Organizing, Molly Travis, and Amy June of Local Contexts.

Thank you to our volunteers who interviewed 96 people:

Anna Mieritz

Gregg Mueller

Janna Mintz

Toby Cain

Julia Dakin

Katie Filar

Michelle Dang

Miguel Olvera

Coalition Members:

Thank you to the people we talked to who informed the work!

Local Food Begins with Local Seeds

We're connecting agricultural, cultural, educational, and community-based organizations to build public awareness about the importance of regionally adapted food crops.In the 2025, this Coalition facilitated:Conversations with seed and local food system leaders to understand their biggest barriers.

Our goal was to understand, what is the biggest gap for increasing the demand for regionally adapted seeds, and what activities and support would be most valuable to create change?

We hosted 96 interviews conducted across 29 US states and 8 countries, collected 44 written responses, two coalition gatherings, and three advisory committee meetings with representatives from national seed organizations.Seven trained volunteer interviewers used standardized questions, and a team of six analysts reviewed the data using the Condens research platform for interview tagging and affinity mapping.

The analyst team met regularly for collaborative synthesis, working through the qualitative data systematically.The advisory committee reviewed preliminary findings. Through this iterative process, we refined themes and co-created recommendations based on what we heard.