Call for Nominations: An Assessment of Native Seed Needs and Capacities

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

An Assessment of Native Seed Needs and Capacities

Summary:

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources (BANR) and Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) is pleased to announce a new consensus study “An Assessment of Native Seed Needs and Capacities.”

The objective of this project is to plan and implement an assessment of federal, state, tribal, and private sector native seed needs and capacity to meet those needs. The assessment will help the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to: 

1. Identify steps to improve deficiencies in the number and diversity of native species commercially available; 
2. Identify and enable BLM to take steps that will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of federal native seed procurement practices; and 
3. Identify and enable BLM to take steps to improve private sector constraints that currently limit the availability of native seed.

Statement of Task:

An ad hoc study committee appointed by the National Academies of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering will assess federal, state, tribal and private sector needs and capacity for supplying native plant seeds for ecological restoration and other purposes. The assessment will focus on the western continental United States and incorporate information from assessments of other U.S. regions, as available, towards the goal of a nationwide perspective. The assessment will be carried out in two phases. In phase one, the committee will conduct fact-finding, develop a framework for information-gathering for the assessment, and prepare an interim report describing the framework and implementation strategy. In the second phase, the committee will oversee the data and information-gathering process, analyze the information obtained, and prepare a final report summarizing the committee’s findings and conclusions. The final report also will provide recommendations for improving the reliability, predictability, and performance of the native seed supply.

The assessment will include information on:

• how native seeds are being used by public (federal, state, municipal, tribal) and private (land trusts, companies, nongovernmental) organizations in ecological restoration and other activities;
• the frequency and stability of the demand and the characteristics of the seeds pursued by users, as well as the scale of applications for which they are sought;
• how users find seeds that are appropriate for their intended purpose, and how users communicate their needs for seeds to potential suppliers;
• the different kinds of entities and roles that comprise the seed supply chain (from professionals and organizations involved in the identification of site-specific needs, to the collection, propagation, cleaning, storage, and supply of seed) and their respective capacities; as well as the relationship of seed availability to other agricultural, land management, or conservation activities;
• procurement processes for native seeds and the cost, availability of funds, infrastructure, market, and other factors that influence decision-making on the part of users and suppliers of native seeds; and
• factors that affect the size and capacity of the native seed supply market (and number of suppliers).