ABSTRACT
This chapter provides essential information about seeds— from the global history of how the industrialization of people's food system undermined people's vital seed diversity— to the time-honored practices of seed saving that can help people rebuild it. Modern agriculture has come to be defined by the “hybrid” seeds that emerged with the Green Revolution after World War II and the genetically modified organisms that are developed today. Seeds are simply saved and replanted based on their desirable characteristics. People saved seeds for a host of possible reasons. In a relatively short span of time, industrial models of crop production converged with breakthroughs in genetic science to bring about dramatic changes in agriculture and plant breeding. The Green Revolution dramatically reduced the diversity available to farmers and, thus, to the food system as a whole. The success of the Green Revolution has created a precarious situation for global food security.
