Interviews find separate commercial and tribal native seed systems on the Northern Great Plains

"Native seed systems often have ecological, production or technological challenges," said Jennifer Zavaleta Cheek, an assistant professor in South Dakota State University's Department of Natural Resource Management ^[4]. Her team at the university's Native Plant Initiative wanted to know how the regional seed system worked and how to support the networks already in it ^[3]. "We used social science and resilience and systems thinking to understand the people and relationships that make restoration possible," she said ^[5].

An interview study is a good instrument for one job: checking whether your picture of a system has the right parts. This one found it did not. "We went into the research thinking there was a singular system, but instead we found distinct seed systems operating in the same region, with different people, relationships and goals," Zavaleta Cheek said ^[8]. The paper appears in People and Nature ^[6].

The result bears on how support gets designed. According to the university's account of the work, earlier research without a close look at each group's goals and practices might have concluded that integrating the commercial and tribal systems would benefit both by increasing production ^[1]. That conclusion scores both networks on one measure. Seed volume is the commercial network's main output, and only one goal among several in the tribal network ^[9][10].

The interviews make a case for investing in the people and relationships inside these networks. They do not show that relationships limit restoration more than growing capacity does, and Zavaleta Cheek's own wording keeps both in play. "Building resilience isn't only about having enough seed or the right infrastructure. It is also about strengthening the relationships, knowledge, values and institutions that allow people and native landscapes to thrive together over time," she said ^[2]. The thing this doesn't tell you is how much seed either network produces or lacks. The university's account does not include seed volumes.

The team's own plans treat seed quantity as a live gap. With Native Plant Initiative support, the researchers hope to work with specialty crop farmers to produce native seed and raise production capacity and supply for restoration projects ^[12]. They will also study wild foods and the role they play in resilient food systems ^[11].

The group says it wants the findings to reach people anywhere in the seed system, including those outside it entirely ^[13]. "One takeaway I hope people have from our work is that plants and landscapes are cultural," Zavaleta Cheek said ^[14].