Seed Saving and Line Breeding: Preparing for Climate Change

One of nature's key strategies to respond to environmental change is maintaining the genetic diversity of the ecosystem. Unfortunately, the trends are toward decreasing genetic diversity while the risk of climate change is increasing. Whether or not our industrial system is the cause of climate change we will have serious problems if our food system is unable to adapt to those changes.

Two things all of us can do to increase genetic diversity are 1) stop spreading poisons and 2) stop tilling.  Both of those choices will increase the amount of carbon tied up in the soils potentially reducing the rate of climate change and both choices will increase the number of species participating in our gardens. In addition, we can start saving seeds that are adapted to our conditions and begin breeding domestic animals adapted to our conditions. That way appropriate genetic variations will be available as the climate of other places begin to look more like our own. Hopefully, someone else will be doing the same for us.