Seed saving might seem like a simple, old-fashioned custom, but seeds offer a radical pathway to resilient relationships between people, plant, and place.

Symbols of renewal, seeds hold the promise of a greener future. But despite the powerful potential of seeds to adapt, modern seed saving often attempts to maintain varieties as they have always been. In the face of ecological devastation and severe climate change, genetically static crops do not offer the resiliency our food systems need. Saved by Seeds presents a passionate argument for seed diversity while presenting practical advice for readers to grow, harvest, dry, and store a wide variety of seeds.

In 2018, Chris Smith, a James Beard Award–winning author, founded the Utopian Seed Project, a nonprofit dedicated to cultivating, researching, and celebrating resiliency in food and farming via agrobiodiversity. Saved by Seeds encourages everyone, from new gardeners to experienced farmers, to harness the bounty of their seeds by using creative and low-tech approaches to selecting and breeding diverse, adaptive, and resilient crops.

“The seeds we save require us to plant them, tend them, and save them again. In return there is the annual hope for another season, another harvest, and always another opportunity to be a little better.” —Chris Smith

About The Author

Chris Smith is executive director of The Utopian Seed Project, a crop-trialing nonprofit working to celebrate food and farming. Within this work, Chris collaborates on the Heirloom Collard Project, hosts a seasonal Trial to Table event series, and publishes Crop Stories, a crop-specific multimedia project. His first book with Chelsea Green, The Whole Okra, won a James Beard Foundation Award in 2020, and he is the co-host of The Okra Pod Cast. In 2023 Chris received the Organic Educator Award from The Organic Growers School and was named a Champion of Conservation by Garden & Gun.