Ep. 59 Climate Resilience and Seed Stewardship - Sarah Kleeger, Adaptive Seeds

The Seed Farmer Podcast · Mar 25, 2026 · 1h 13m

Sarah Kleeger runs Adaptive Seeds alongside Andrew Still in Sweet Home, Oregon. Their journey began twenty years ago with the Seed Ambassadors Project, a massive seed-finding expedition through Europe that saw them return to the U.S. with over a thousand rare varieties that had almost no commercial presence in North America.

In this episode, Sarah shares what it's like growing over 380 crops in a year while balancing trials, stewardship and producing seeds for the catalog. We discuss OSSI (the Open Source Seed Initiative) as a way to keep seeds in the public domain. And we get into contract…