Ep. 59 Climate Resilience and Seed Stewardship - Sarah Kleeger, Adaptive Seeds
From The Seed Farmer Podcast by Dan Brisebois
March 25, 2026 · 1h 13m
About this episode
Sarah Kleeger discusses climate resilience and seed stewardship while sharing insights from her work at Adaptive Seeds.
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 seed growing and how Adaptive Seeds tries to incentivize quality and share the risk with their grower network. We also touch on the impacts of wildfires and smoke seasons on both farmers and the seeds themselves. In the deep dive, Sarah and I get into her favorite crop: Amaranth. We cover why amaranth is such a climate-adaptable grain, how to determine the perfect moment to harvest the seed, and Sarah's threshing machine of choice. And of course we talk about the cats of Adaptive Seeds. Enjoy the conversation! Support the Seed Farmer Podcast http://spreadsheet.farm/supportpodcast Episode links…
People in this episode
Host: Dan Brisebois
Guest: Sarah Kleeger
Topics covered
- climate resilience
- seed stewardship
- agriculture
- seed diversity
- contract growing
- crop management
Keywords
- climate resilience
- seed stewardship
- Adaptive Seeds
- OSSI
- Amaranth
- contract growing
- agriculture
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Adaptive Seeds, OSSI
Books & works: Saved by Seeds: Embracing Diversity, Adaptation, and Diversity
Places: Sweet Home, Oregon
More episodes of The Seed Farmer Podcast
- Ep. 64 Cheating isolation Distances · April 29, 2026 · 20 min
- Ep. 63 Rewilding One Backyard at a Time – Mélanie Ouellette, Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library · April 22, 2026 · 43 min
- Ep. 62 Planning Your Photo Harvest · April 15, 2026 · 19 min
- Ep. 61 A Suitcase Full of Seeds - Charlie Watt, Homecoming Seeds · April 8, 2026 · 1h 0m
- Ep. 60 ASMR for Seed Fermers · April 1, 2026 · 17 min
- Ep. 58 My favorite seed books · March 18, 2026 · 18 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Seed Farmer Podcast podcast page.