Uploaded June 2023 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
The James Beard Foundation’s Leadership Awards recognize individuals and/or organizations whose work is helping to create a safer, more healthful, equitable, and sustainable food world. The Awards are given for achievement in developing a global food system that is just, sustainable, and economically viable for both producers and consumers.
Ira Wallace
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
Ira Wallace is a writer, gardener, an educator, and worker/owner of the cooperatively managed Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in central Virginia, which provides more than 700 varieties of high-quality, heirloom, and open-pollinated seeds. She currently serves on the board of the Virginia Association for Biological Farming. After 10 years of service, she stepped down from the Organic Seed Alliance in February. Wallace is the author of The Timber Press Guide to Vegetable Gardening in the Southeast and the state-specific series Grow Great Vegetables. She also spends a lot of her time in Acorn, the Virginia community she helped found in the 1990s, which farms more than 50 acres of certified organic land. Wallace also supports and serves as "godmother" to the new Black and Indigenous–led Ujamaa Seeds.
Learn more at jamesbeard.org/awards
The James Beard Foundation’s Leadership Awards recognize individuals and/or organizations whose work is helping to create a safer, more healthful, equitable, and sustainable food world. The Awards are given for achievement in developing a global food system that is just, sustainable, and economically viable for both producers and consumers.
Ira Wallace
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
Ira Wallace is a writer, gardener, an educator, and worker/owner of the cooperatively managed Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in central Virginia, which provides more than 700 varieties of high-quality, heirloom, and open-pollinated seeds. She currently serves on the board of the Virginia Association for Biological Farming. After 10 years of service, she stepped down from the Organic Seed Alliance in February. Wallace is the author of The Timber Press Guide to Vegetable Gardening in the Southeast and the state-specific series Grow Great Vegetables. She also spends a lot of her time in Acorn, the Virginia community she helped found in the 1990s, which farms more than 50 acres of certified organic land. Wallace also supports and serves as "godmother" to the new Black and Indigenous–led Ujamaa Seeds.
Learn more at jamesbeard.org/awards
