The seeds of food security.

• Author: Wyels, Joyce Gregory
• Position: Southwest Endangered Arid Lands Resources Clearinghouse

Diners perusing the menu at the elegant Kai Restaurant encounter a perplexing item: "Pecan-crusted Lamb Rack with Native Seeds SEARCH Mole." But given the restaurant's setting in the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort, on the Gila River Indian Reservation in southern Arizona, the description makes perfect sense.

Native Seeds/SEARCH (Southwest Endangered Arid Lands Resources Clearinghouse) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving the traditional crops grown in northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States. Beyond its agricultural focus, Native Seeds nurtures the cultural bonds that connect people with their crops. "Think of the importance of cornmeal in the Hopi naming ceremony," says Julie Kornmeyer, manager of the retail store operated by Native Seeds. "As seeds are lost, there's a loss of culture."

Today, more that twenty years after its founding, Native Seeds maintains two thousand varieties of seeds that are adapted to growing in arid lands--about half from northern Mexico, half front Arizona and New Mexico. Some 350 varieties are offered to the public for a modest cost and distributed free to Native Americans. Most are indigenous crops that developed over centuries, like varieties of the "three sisters"--corn, beans, and squash traditionally grown by local tribes. But others, says director of conservation Suzanne Nelson, came later with Spanish explorers, missionaries, and Mormon settlers. "Most of them brought their favorite crops," she says, some of which were adopted by native groups.

At the Seed Bank itself, volunteers carefully sort and cleat seeds. "This is where all the seeds come in from the fields," says Nelson. "We process them here and assign an accession number. It's like a library card system," she explains, displaying sealed plastic bags filed by unique accession numbers. The seeds are stored in freezers-preferably for no longer than ten years. "Seeds are really dependent on some body growing them," says Nelson. Since 1997 Native Seeds has "grown out" the seeds on its own...