Right now we grow more than half of our produce from our own seeds and we hope to be completely independent from foreign seeds within the next two to three years. The reason for doing so is simple: Nowadays more than 80 percent of all seeds are produced by chemical companies and they are designed to be grown in conjunction with chemical fertilizers and other agricultural toxins. We’re completely against using any chemicals and prefer traditional slow-grown varieties that need natural healthy soil and fertilizers to do well. When we first started, we realized that industrial seeds designed for moderate climates just don’t work very well in the UAE desert. So we looked for traditional heirloom seeds that came from countries with similar climates, and we’ve had such great success with some of them that we’ve never looked back. Every year our seeds adapt more to the UAE climate. They become increasingly desert-hardy and consume less water.  Currently our seed-bank includes over 250 varieties and we stock over 100,000 seeds.  Industrial seeds are sterile so the seeds produced by hybrid fruit and vegetables would if you collected them not produce food that you can eat. They would either not germinate or if they did germinate they would not produce edible fruit & veg. So you have to keep going back to the source to buy your seeds.  True Heirloom seeds on the other hand can be grown ‘true to variety’ over and over again. The more you collect them the more they adapt to the space that they are grown in. Prior to 1952 most food world-wide was grown from Heirloom Seeds and most farmers had their own seed bank.  Large industrial seed companies want to control the world’s seed production and eliminate Heirloom Seeds for good. So the more people are educated about the importance of heirloom seeds the better we can defend independent seeds production and chemical free, clean farming with lots and lots of biodiversity