SeedBroadcast: July 2022

Reanimating the Culture that has been lost in Agriculture

“When you plant a seed in the soil, you're burying a time capsule filled with generations of wisdom and hope for the future. People everywhere have been saving and sharing seeds for generations in order to foster agricultural biodiversity, ensure food availability, and nurture cultural traditions. Today, nearly 98% of all these food crops have gone extinct and one major reason is because many people no longer save seeds. Yet, right now, there is a growing movement connecting community-based seed saving to climate resilience, food justice, and cultural vitality. In this, SeedBroadcast promotes seed saving through creative agri-Culture and Seed Stories.”

It was in December 2021 that, out of the blue, SeedBroadcast received an email from the Smithsonian asking if we might be interested in being part of their Earth Optimism event scheduled for June 2022. This event is an important component of the extremely popular Folk Life Festival which had been on a hiatus since the beginning of the Covid pandemic. This year’s return was to focus on “changing the conversation to spotlight the bright ideas, successful solutions, and passionate people working to protect our planet”. We were honored by this invite but it evoked many questions for us to ponder.

The event would take us away from our fields at a time when the seeds we planted last autumn, and this spring needed careful tending.

How could we make a difference during a huge event when there are many distractions?

How might we engage the public in a sincere way to animate a shift in consciousness?

Would we have enough of a positive impact to justify flying to Washington?

We seriously debated these critical questions before making the decision to take up the challenge. By accepting this challenge, we reckoned the questions might be answered.

Throughout the winter and spring, we collaborated with the curatorial team at the Smithsonian. Through endless emails and many zoom calls we began to imagine an accessible interactive installation, including text, images, seeds, the animation of seed stories and making sure there was pertinent information on seed saving and food sovereignty strategies.

This installation would be installed on the Mall outside the Natural History Museum and between the Capital and the Washington Monument, as part of the Community Solutions area of Earth Optimism. We designed, redesigned, planned and engaged with our seed savers network attempting to find local partners, and eventually we packed boxes full of SeedBroadcast Journals, seeds, baskets and various tools for the installation.

A few weeks before we were to head to Washington, New Mexico (the home of SeedBroadcast) burst into flames with the largest fire ever recorded, over 600,000 areas of ancestral homelands, ranches and farms went up in smoke. There were many evacuations, and hearts were broken to see the lands that have been part of the family for generations charred and blackened. Many left with few processions, but the essential bundle of seeds was not forgotten. The heat, the dry winds and ongoing drought hit us all hard, so it was difficult to muster up any kind of optimism with red tinged clouds of smoke overhead and diminishing water for the sprouting seeds in our fields.

CLIMATE CHANGE, CLIMATE, CLIMATE CHAOS.

How to hold the faith. Hold the seed.

Two days before leaving the rains came, the big monsoon rains and our hearts rejoiced.

Hope returns, the seeds will survive, the seeds sharing their resilience.

SeedBroadcast is a collective and we believe in collaboration, as in the world of seeds and plants, diversity and symbiotic partnerships make for a more resilient and nourishing crop. So, we foraged our way through the network of seed savers and landed on a call with Nate Kleinman of the Experimental Farm Network, who put us in touch with the mover and shaker Bonnetta Adeeb of Ujamma Cooperative Farming Alliance and Steam Onward. Our seeds bring the right people together.

Bonnetta Adeeb, Chrissie Orr and David Gallegos holding a seed story conversation on the Earth Optimism stage.

Bonnetta joined us for the first week of the event and brought her local wisdom and seeds into the mix. Not only is Bonnetta an activist for food sovereignty and an advocate for BIPOC youth, she is also an engaging storyteller.

During our time on the Mall we swopped seed stories with hundreds of visitors, we passionately discussed the importance of saving seeds and food sovereignty, we shared information, handed out free seeds, thanks to Steam Onward, and our SeedBroadcast agri-Culture Journal was quickly dispersed, under arms and into bags to be appreciated later.

In the midst of this huge event the beauty of the seeds, the sound of them spilling from hands evoked a momentary quiet, a slowing down to breathe, a rare intimacy. As children and adults plunged their hands deep into the baskets of seeds, stories emerged, and conversations began between strangers, relevant ideas were shared and discussed. Many of our visitors had never thought to save their seeds, this was anew idea, so we talked and shared information with the hope that a radical change would ripple outward from the heart of the seeds, the exchange of words and an intimate connection.

Being with the seeds and honoring them is an act of radical love. Can this spill out into how we humans engage with each other and the natural world? It’s time for hope and action and reconnection.