Grains for a Common Purpose
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Locally Adaptive Seed Networks (LASNs) represent a diverse range of independent seed and grain supply chains spread throughout the UK.
Interest in small-scale, farmer-led seed breeding has developed significantly in recent years, with a particular focus upon how they can benefit low-input, Regenerative and Organic farming systems.
The recent success in this sector owes much to the market opportunities that are developing in response to botht he quantity and quality of the harvested grain that is now being produced by UK growers .
Resilience through Adaptive solutions
The dominance of commodity markets has tended to stifle innovation within the independent seed breeding sector: The cost of bringing new seeds onto the national listings can simply be prohibitive for those that don't have an existing portfolio of established seed lines.
LASN is helping to promote an alternative model for supporting the work of independent plant breeders through the sort of seed cooperative model represented by Landsorten in Denmark.
Through this work, we are able to bring bringing innovations within plant breeding to UK growers, and in particular a range of Population crops that are designed specifically for Organic and Low-input farming systems.
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"A proper community ...is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members - among them the need to need one another."
- Wendell Berry
Supporting growers
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Coordination of Seed Availability
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Agronomy - knowledge sharing
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Supporting new market development
Population wheat and other crops
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Promoting in-field diversity
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Building Climatic and Environmental Resilience
Plant breeding and crop trials
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Support for independent plant breeders
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On-farm trials
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Collaboration with millers and bakers
Legislation and policy
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Enabling legislative change
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Helping shape future policy
Designed to work in conjunction with Population crops, including wheat and oats, HeteroGen is an important tool that enables full traceability of seed, through it's complete family tree.
For millers, bakers and customers, it also provides provenance about where a crop is grown (down to the specific field) as well as information about the grower and the values they represent. It also supports our live field performance work, collecting valuable data about how each crop performs in terms of yield and quality.
