Native Seeds conserves and promotes crop diversity to strengthen community resilience and food security.We envision the Greater Southwest as a place where farms and gardens, kitchens and tables, stores and restaurants are brimming with the full diversity of aridlands-adapted heirloom crops; people are keeping the unique seeds and agricultural heritage alive; and the crops, in turn, are nourishing humankind.
Seeds from the NS/S Seed Bank Collection are landrace or heirloom varieties with a long historical connection to the Greater Southwest. Landraces are farmer-developed varieties of crops that are adapted to local environmental conditions. Heirlooms are similar in that they are grown and shared over generations. Native Seeds/SEARCH seeks to find, protect and preserve the seeds of the people of the Greater Southwest so that these arid adapted crops may benefit all peoples and nourish a changing world.