Reduce hunger.

Improve nutrition by having people grow vegetables rich in vitamins and minerals that are missing in many poor people’s diets.

Reduce poverty by having people spend less on purchasing food and possibly even having some food to sell.

Improve self esteem and character by having people help themselves reducing their dependency on donated food.

Provide skills that can be useful for a lifetime. This is especially true when children are taught to grow food.

Seed programs provide poor people two things many of them do not have to grow some of their own food - good seed and the necessary skills. Those in need often do not have money to buy good seed and in many remote areas of the world seed distribution systems simply do not exist. Often seed available to the very poor is of marginal or poor quality.

Seed programs are a cost effective way to help maximizing use of limited funds available to help the poor - costly shipment of bulk food is reduced and those receiving seed perform the work necessary to produce food.

Seed programs are much more difficult to implement than simply distributing donated food, so skill and persistence are needed for programs to be successful.

Seed programs can be successful. Through ages past people young and old alike around the world have successfully grown their own food, and people can continue to do so in the future. Seed programs are widely adapted and can help people of all ages in communities large and small in tropical, temperate as well as cool climates.

Seed programs can be implemented much more quickly than longer term projects that help reduce hunger such as plant breeding programs or building dams for irrigation projects.