From Trial to Table

Utopian Seed Project persuades people to eat their vegetables

- KAY WEST

Is there a commonly known vegetable more in need of some love and understanding than okra? Maligned as slimy and stringy, it has long been deemed edible only when hidden in a bowl of gumbo or cut into nuggets, encased in cornmeal and deep fried.

Writer, author, and sustainable agriculture activist Chris Smith was determined to give the plant a makeover, and in 2018—while working for Sow True Seed in Asheville, North Carolina—he grew 76 varieties of okra on two rural properties.

“I was incredibly excited about the diversity in the field, the things you could do with okra,” he says. “I shared my okra with friends and chefs and cooked it myself. It was very celebratory.”

The experience became the foundation of his book, The Whole Okra: A Seed to Stem Celebration (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2019), recipient of a 2020 James Beard Award.

His dive down the okra rabbit hole was the genesis for creating Utopian Seed Project. “I felt like something was missing in the local seed system. We needed an organization doing hyper-regional varietal exploration and crop trialing.”

Smith’s success with okra pushed the start button. “I felt that if people can get really excited about okra just because I’m showing pictures of 70 different varieties and saying, ‘Hey, look at this cool okra!’ then we could do that with other equally diverse crops that aren't generally represented in the food and farming system.”