What is Tane

Tane (種) means “seed” in Japanese; the full name, tanemaki (種まき), means “to sow / scatter seeds”.

In one sentence

A simple, free app to keep your seeds and share them with whoever you like. It works without internet and with no company in the middle.

Why it’s needed

Today a handful of companies control much of the world’s seed. Many seeds are made so they won’t serve again: they give one harvest, but their seeds don’t germinate well, so you have to buy them again every year. Meanwhile the traditional varieties — grown and improved over thousands of years — are being lost, and with them the knowledge of how to grow them.

Sharing seeds is one of the oldest and most natural things there is, yet in some places it has become complicated or even fined (in France an association was penalised for handing out varieties that weren’t on the official approved list). And the people who care for seeds still do it with notebooks and spreadsheets.

What it does, made easy

• Keep — your seed inventory: what you have, from which year, how much, where it came from, under the name you use (no Latin required). The same whether you have four packets in a drawer or a group with hundreds of varieties.
• Share — you say what you offer; someone nearby sees it and writes to you, to give away, swap or sell if you want. You close the deal yourself, directly. No company steps in or takes a commission.

Why it’s different

• It’s free and belongs to everyone. It isn’t owned by any company: anyone can use, copy, translate or improve it, free and forever. It’s more a recipe that gets shared than a closed product — this is called free software. And whoever improves it is bound to share those improvements just as freely, so no one can “close” it later (that’s copyleft).
• It works offline. The basics run even out in the field with no signal.
• Your data is yours. Your information is kept on your own phone, protected with a key, not on some company’s computers. We don’t sell it or upload it anywhere. No ads.
• No one can shut it down or control it. There’s no central computer that everything passes through: people communicate directly with each other, like passing seeds from hand to hand. So no one can censor it or charge you to use it (that’s what being decentralized means).
• You trust by word of mouth. You deal with people you know and with those vouched for by people you trust — the way it’s always worked in a village or at a fair — without having to give your real name or phone number unless you want to.
• In many languages. For anywhere in the world, not for a single country. Volunteers translate it.

Who it’s for

Seed groups and networks, gardens and collectives, growers… and anyone with a few packets put away. For all ages, from 10 to 80.

A Japanese name

Tane means “seed” (種); tanemaki (種まき) means “to sow seeds”. And it’s no accident that the name is Japanese. Centuries ago in Japan, printed slips of paper that promised rice passed from hand to hand: they were issued by temples, merchants and rice warehouses — not by a bank or a central authority — and people accepted them on trust in that promise. An exchange network with no centre, held together by trust, where a scrap of paper was enough to set rice in motion. Centuries later, that same idea inspired modern networks such as Japan’s WAT system (2000): a note anyone can print and pass on, with no bank or centre.

Tane inherits that spirit. When you share seeds you can attach a Plantare. The name plays on the Spanish pagaré — an IOU, literally “I will pay” — with pay swapped for plant: not “I will pay” but “I will plant”. It’s a promise to return, when you can, a similar amount of free seed. It isn’t a purchase or an obligation — it’s a commitment to keep the seed alive and moving. And because returning it means growing it, and growing multiplies it, every gesture makes the commons grow instead of shrinking it.

Where it stands and how to help

In its early days. You can help by trying it out in a real seed group, translating it, sharing what you know about the varieties, or coding. It has no price and never will: it’s sustained by volunteers, by the communities themselves, and by public funding for projects of common interest.

The idea underneath: traditional seeds are a heritage of humankind — everyone’s and no one’s. Against those who would privatise them, Tane aims to make it easy for you to keep them, multiply them and keep them moving.