Collaborations
Collaboration and Connection
Our Value: We are committed to fostering relationships that connect communities, ideas, and practices. Understanding that agrobiodiversity includes human and non-human life.
This value shows up in our work through a broad range of dynamic and flexible collaborations that emerge naturally from the community we build.
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Heirloom Collard Project
The Heirloom Collard Project is working for the recognition and respect of collards as a key component of American food culture, so their seeds and stories will never be forgotten.
We are a collaboration of collard-loving people and organizations – a crock pot of sorts, where the ingredients are each respected, but the true magic is in the potlikker.
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Southeast Video Seed Series
In 2021, Utopian Seed Project and Communal Studios received a grant from Southern SARE to create a Southeast Seed video series. The project traveled across 12 states and interviewed over 50 farmers, community gardeners, seed savers, seed growers, and seed advocates. The footage was woven together to tell the story of seed saving for six southern crops: corn, okra, southern peas, collards, sweet potatoes, and squash.
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Okra Seed Oil Breeding Project
Since 2021, we have been working on a breeding project to increase the quantity of oil in okra seeds. In 2023, we started collaborating with The Seed Farm at Princeton to continue the work of growing and selecting high oil seed lines from our initial crosses.
We are also collecting genomic data to support future marker assisted selection.