From Wilderness to Farm
Look around the grocery store, the farmers market, farms, and gardens. Every plant you see, and the many thousands of other food plants, were once wild plants. Each variety arrived on your plate through a millennial-spanning collaboration between plant, soil, climate, and the botany of desires across species of pollinators, animals, and our human need for sustenance, pleasure, and profit. For our human efforts, the following is a guide to the steps we take in the journey from wild plant to domesticated seed.
Seed Hunter
Before the science of botany was formalized, seed hunters were the observers of nature who gathered the seeds to cultivate, transitioning our species from hunter-gatherer to agrarian. Today, “seed hunters” are the botanists, researchers, and knowledgeable few that identify and collect seeds and plant material. For food plants, the collections include the remaining wild ancestors of crops, heirlooms, and landrace varieties, unique open-pollinated varieties that are adapted over generations to a specific region and culture.
The variety of these wild plants is stunning. There are over 4,000 known potato varieties in the world. But in most supermarkets, you’ll only find 3–5. Those thousands of “lost” potatoes grow in the Andes, each adapted to specific soil, altitude, or weather. The varieties come in all hues of the rainbow, from delicate pink to deed indigo, and in all sizes and shapes, knobby like a balled fist, or tiny as a coin. Each variety carries different genetic traits, all crucial for food resilience, but many are at risk of disappearing. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that 75 percent of crop diversity has been lost between 1900 and 2000.
Gene banks
Once collected, seed and plant material must be screened for pests and diseases when it crosses borders. The material must also be carefully preserved as a genetic resource. Wild plants are a source for diverse genetic traits including nutrition, resilience, flavor, plant size, and yield. Wild plant genetics also offer a measure of safety and adaptability as our climate changes.
The scientists that work in the world’s network of gene banks are masters at preservation and propagation. They are the keepers of biodiversity, often housing more different species from a region than what is left in the original ecosystem. Sadly, more than 40 percent of all surveyed taxa, related groups of species, can no longer be found in at least one of the areas where they were previously cultivated or occurred naturally.
Gene banks “lend” seed and plant material to researchers and breeders and receive in return the new varieties developed. These institutions are often part of universities and government agencies. Gene banks cooperate across the globe to share genetic resources and information. In addition to gene banks, there is one seed vault, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located in the Arctic. Also known as the Doomsday Vault, this facility stores seeds deep in permafrost, in case of global catastrophe. A kind of botanical time capsule, it's designed to outlive nations and even power outages.
Seed Breeders
Seed breeders can be either public or private companies, including seed and biotechnology companies, universities, or government agencies. These entities work to develop new varieties using seed and plant material from gene banks and seed sources. Seed breeders work to develop or “improve” traits such as yield, pest and disease resistance, drought-and climate-resilience, regional adaptation, or even flavor and nutrition traits . Before Gregor Mendel’s 1866 work with pea plants led to the science of genetics, plant breeding was trial and error. Recent seed development requires meticulous selection and crossbreeding, with many growing seasons before a variety is officially registered. Some tomatoes, for instance, took 12–15 years from first cross to supermarket shelf. And most don't make the cut.
Today, seed breeding uses a range of expanding technology, from traditional breeding to breeding informed by gene mapping and AI, to gene editing and transgenic modification. Seed breeding can also involve patents for developed varieties, preventing farmers from saving seeds. The varieties breeders choose to develop are based on policy, market and customer demand, changing growing conditions, and profit.
Seed Companies
Once a variety is developed, seed companies, including growers and contracted growers, propagate the seed for retail sale to farmers and gardeners. Once seeds are produced, they are cleaned and controlled for pests and disease, tested for germination rate, and packaged.
This step of the journey has the most complexity in the types of companies involved. The seed market is dominated by a few international seed companies and controlled by government policies, presenting risks to biodiversity and availability of seeds including organic, and non-GMO for some crops. Global seed companies have vertical integration with control of breeding, propagation and growing, including contracted growers, and relationships with distributors.
Seeds can travel thousands of miles before being planted. A tomato variety might be bred in Italy, grown in bulk in India, packaged in the Netherlands, and planted in a backyard in Kenya. Seeds are a global commodity — with surprisingly long passports.
Seed supply chains are also entwined, with contracted growers who may produce seed for several different seed companies. Seed companies may source all their seed from different growers and may not conduct any breeding or production themselves. Or seed companies may grow some of the seed they sell and use contract growers for the rest. This step in the journey also includes a few independent, farmer-led, and seed sharing organizations that work to preserve biodiversity and heirloom seed varieties.
Seed Retailers
The retail seed market includes distributors, stores, and online and print seed catalogs. For farms with commodity crop production, seed sources are often combined with input sales and crop advisors. Retailers and seed brands also may not grow any of the seed they market. These entities may purchase wholesale seed from seed companies to market. Other entities, including smaller seed companies may control the supply chain from breeding to retailing direct to consumers by catalog and mail.
Farmers and Gardeners
Farmers and gardeners are the final step in the path from seed to soil. Their choice of what to grow is multi-layered, based on what crops will grow in their soil and climate, expected seasonal conditions, customer and market demand, cost, availability, and farmer preferences. If the operation is certified organic, seed options are further limited.
Learn how the farmers at Domaine de Graux source seeds.
From Farm to Plate
The rest of the journey, seed to plant and plant to plate, can take as few steps as a walk to the backyard garden, or involve significant processing, transport, and packaging. Like the path from seed to soil, policies and market forces, including affordability, shape much of our food choices. Yet, our choices matter. Every healthy choice plants a seed to grow a healthier food system.
References
FAO. (2025). The Third Report on The State of the World's Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture Assessments, 2025. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd4711en