With RSpec, how to seed the database on load?

In spec_helper.rb or rails_helper.rb:

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.before(:suite) do
    Rails.application.load_seed # loading seeds
  end
end

However Scott's solution surely works for you, I believe the better way to solve your problem was to put the code responsible for seeding your test database within RSpec's configure block:

I use SeedFu and in my spec_helper I have:

RSpec.configure do |config|

  # some other configuration code ...

  config.before(:suite) do
    # ...
    SeedFu.seed
    # ...
  end

  # some other configuration code ...

end

Try, something like this

rake db:seed RAILS_ENV=test

You can get a list of all rake commands doing

rake -T

If this is test data, you may want to look at putting it into fixtures which will be loaded on the start of the tests.