I don’t want to die with a freezer full of seeds. It’s time to rethink biodiversity and preservation | Chris Smith

Hurricane Helene proved a hard truth: a freezer of seeds is the literal version of putting all your eggs in one basket

About a month after Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina last fall, Rodger Winn and I met in an Asheville, North Carolina, supermarket parking lot. He'd driven two hours from Little Mountain, South Carolina, where the passing storm had also left its destructive mark.

When the power finally came back on," Winn said, two of my freezers didn't work." Winn was worried not about spoiled food inside, but his seed collection. On that autumn day, in an act of forced downsizing and seed philanthropy, Winn handed over two boxes filled with seeds. He wanted me, as founder of the non-profit Utopian Seed Project, to share the seeds with farmers across the region. The boxes contained a trove of Appalachian varieties: speckled field peas, white mountain half-runner beans, purple-podded bush beans and lots of butterbeans.