Local Seeds To Grow Food Sovereignty
Seed stewardship is the process of saving seeds with the intention of improving and maintaining the health and resilience of plants. It is a relationship with seeds - seeing the potential in a tiny pod to evolve into sustenance, or a pollination destination, or the beauty that colors a community garden. Seed stewardship asks the question, “What happens when my community can depend on itself for food production?” In a world where seed, and therefore, food production is in the hands of a few massive corporations, how can communities achieve food sovereignty? It begins with seed sovereignty.
Food sovereignty is the ability to access healthy and culturally-appropriate food, utilizing local food systems. It is a lack of dependance on global supply chains to keep a community fed. According to the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance, “It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations.” Whether a community has an abundance of community gardens, or methods to affordably access food from local farms, or the education to preserve food for the non-producing months -- acts that enable food sovereignty empower self-sustaining people. Not to mention, acts towards sovereignty promote local economies, healthier eating, and ultimately, stronger communities.
Seed saving is one method by which a community can help to close the gap on food sovereignty. By producing seeds from local plants, year after year, we reduce dependence on global corporations. In a time where it feels nearly impossible to eliminate dependency on global supply chains, we come closer to independence through seed stewardship. In Gainesville, Florida, our local seed bank has developed a nearly full seed catalog of local vegetables and flowers in just ten years. Central North Florida’s seed hub, Working Food, understands that local food requires local seeds. On a mission to cultivate and sustain a resilient local food community, their team of seed stewards has provided farmers, nonprofits, and a range of food initiatives with a variety of seeds to enable local growing.
The Gainesville Giving Garden is proud to partner with Working Food in our upcoming season. We are honored to receive seed donations that account for nearly our entire fall and winter planting. The Giving Garden grows a variety of crops as a working farm - from kale, to collards, to okra, to tomatoes, to radishes, to peppers, and much more. Working Food stewards such a wide range of vegetable and flower seeds that they were able to supply our farm with all but four vegetables we planned to grow. We’ve used Working Food seeds in our past season, and could consistently rely on these seeds for growing strong, happy, and resilient plants. Comparably, when purchasing seeds from large producers, growing was a gamble. This is the benefit of using local seeds - they are adapted to grow well in the region from which they were stewarded. We are thrilled to enter into our Fall Season with seeds we can trust; seeds that feel like a neighbor who has lived just down the road for some time and knows this community well.
Working Food additionally operates Youth Garden Programs and a community kitchen. To learn more about their organization and its programs, please visit www.workingfood.org. Interested in learning more about seed stewardship beyond their website? We encourage you to look into www.sierraseeds.org, a space weaving stories of seeds, food, culture and sacred Earth stewardship. For a good listen about seeds and their people, consider checking out Truelove Seed’s podcast at https://trueloveseeds.com/blogs/satpradio.
