Seed saving as resistance
Camilla Saunders reflects on why she saves seeds, and makes the connection with seed banks in Palestine and elsewhere
Poor Charles Darwin – he had many sleepless nights pondering The Abominable Mystery as he termed it. When and why did flowering plants evolve? Darwin didn’t have access to the advanced microscopes available today to palaeobiologists to examine ancient pollen records.
Flowering plants probably emerged just before or during the Cretaceous era, millions of years after ferns and conifers which propagate quite happily without flowers, using spores and wind pollinated cones.
An earth without flowering plants seems unimaginable. There would have been no pollinating insects either: wasps (fig wasps!) bees, flies, midges (cocoa midges! No chocolate!), there would have been no colourful and scented flowers, no delicious fruit, no seeds apart from those pollinated randomly by wind. Would humans have evolved? A world without fruit trees, grains, and flowers that we love simply for their scent and beauty, seems utterly bleak.
Which brings me to seed saving, and why it matters, and feels so good to do.
We are still able to find and grow food plants that we like, that can nourish us – and that we can continue to cultivate. But all this is at risk, from industrialised farming, war, climate change and chemical poisons that humans have been putting into the soil, the air, and the waters of the world. There’s a risk that we could ourselves create that bleak, dystopian world without colour and scent, forced by our own carelessness and hubris to live with chemical substitutes.
Seeds are cultural heritage: they evoke landscapes, habitats, food, art, whole ways of being. To destroy a seed bank deliberately is an act of cultural vandalism both local and global. In recent years armed forces in Sudan destroyed the National Seed Bank in Wadi Medani; the Israeli army have trashed seed banks in Gaza and Hebron; and the Russians in Ukraine. A major seed bank was looted in Afghanistan. This is not even stealing for profit but pure destruction.
Stealing for profit is of course the goal of corporations - the most notorious being Cargill - who steal seeds cultivated over millennia, then try to patent their genetically modified versions, and force local farmers to grow those instead of local seeds that have evolved over time to suit their particular habitat and climate. They meet resistance of course, both by people who destroy their GM crops, or simply because farmers and growers doggedly keep saving and planting their own seed varieties
A while ago, I started saving seeds for Garden Organic’s Heritage Seed Library. It just seemed a good thing to do, and something I could learn more about. Now I try to do more saving for our household as well. It’s small-scale, not always successful, and I haven’t yet tried biennials, like leeks, partly through lack of space, as they cross-pollinate easily and so need more isolation.
But beans, peas, lettuce and herbs are all fairly simple. It’s fiddly (de-fluffing lettuce seeds for example, and one lettuce plant yields so much seed!) and gives me back-ache. But it feels wonderful to do and at the end you have the future plants for next year’s crops.
Every seed saved is an expression of hope and resistance, however small the impact seems to be. In a changing climate this is ever more important, as scientists and growers work out the most resilient plants that can adapt, and share them and the knowledge that goes with them. For people in poorer or conflict areas it’s also a question of survival. And as weather becomes more extreme and unpredictable, that could include those of us who currently have some food security, albeit increasingly fragile.
Humans are good at co-operating, able to learn from each other. We can’t let war – whether waged by states or corporations or simple apathy – destroy everything we love. We could end up on an impoverished Earth, living off chemical, processed food, getting ready for life on Mars or the moon - who wants that? We can do better; we have the tools, imagination and wisdom to sustain the flowers, fruits and crops that form part of our own history and evolution – a culture of peace, not war.
Seed saving is strong in Palestine, which is a centre of crop diversity, especially for wheat and barley. This video describes the reconstruction of Gaza’s Al-Qarara Baladi Seed Bank, and the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature is preserving heritage seeds as an important aspect of food sovereignty. Meanwhile the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library describes itself as a “living archive of stories of people and plants”, seeing seed as “a dissident traveling across borders and checkpoints to defy violence and oppression while reclaiming life and presence.”
Inspired? Support the organisations above, try saving your own seed and join the Gaia Foundation’s Seed Sovereignty Programme in the UK.
Camilla has composed a song, Free the Seeds. Listen and sing along!