SEED: The Untold Story.
Thoughts from watching a film that follows passionate seed keepers protecting our 12,000 year-old food legacy by battling chemical seed companies and the changing climate.
Watched during a community film screening, this film — SEED: The Untold Story — is enlightening and horrific, and perhaps somewhat hopeful. It follows various so-called “seedkeepers” who have initiated projects to grow plants, save their seed, and redistribute the varieties through seed libraries, in order to protect indigenous legacy and simultaneously fight chemical companies.
In this article, you’re taken through key themes personally picked up on, with points digested from the film. You’re also presented with a list of the folk running the seed libraries so you can look them up. As this was a community screening, we had a Q&A at the end, so discussion points from this are additionally included to round off the thoughts.
Images: 1. Community screening of SEED: The Untold Story hosted by Sustainable Hackney; 2. Graphic for the film SEED: The Untold Story. Background shows multiple varities of corn cobs in yellow, red, white, black, purple. [Credit: SEED: The Untold Story]
You can watch SEED: The Untold Story by hosting your own community screening, buying a DVD, or renting on such platforms as Amazon and Vimeo.
Seed diversity loss.
The film opens with the statistic that:
“In the last century, 94% of our seed varieties have disappeared.”
It seems that this information came about following a seed diversity study in 1983, though researchers in 2009 announced that this study wasn’t quite accurate. During the course of their research, Heald and Chapman discovered a math error in a widely accepted study on crop varieties. Carey Fowler and Pat Mooney reported that a 1983 study of seeds held in the National Seed Storage Laboratory conducted by the Plant Genetic Resources Project of the Rural Advancement Fund showed that 97% of the vegetable varieties listed on a 1903 USDA inventory of seeds were extinct, meaning there was only a 3% survival rate.
“The two UGA researchers report that in 1903, 7,262 varieties of 48 crop vegetables were available and, in 2004, only 2.2 percent fewer varieties were available, showing almost no loss of overall varietal diversity. However, they did find that 94 percent of the seed varieties listed in the 1903 USDA catalog were no longer available from the most common commercial sources, meaning a 6 percent survival rate from 1903.”
They say that due to multiple common names given to varieties, due to people saving the older varieties, and due to importers bringing in new varieties — plus this calculation error — that in fact they found a survival rate of 7.4% of crop varieties.
But it’s important to recognise what can cause varietal decline — regardless of whether or not the survival rate seems ok — and why decline is in need of monitoring.
Not saving seed — of course if growers are not actively seed saving, then there will be less availability of certain varieties. It doesn’t mean that there is less variety around or being preserved, but they’re unsaved (and unshared) or undocumented.
Common names — as mentioned, crops are given many common names and so studies may only know the commercial or most most common name. An indigenous group saving seed may not make their name known or they simply don’t put their seed on the market or in a library, so it can’t be documented and compared.
Climate change — certain crops are unable to adapt to the changing climate, or they’re grown in a region where it’s difficult for them to survive. So the plant dies off before it can go to seed, or it develops new characteristics through natural selection and becomes a new variety.
Hybridisation — similarly, selective breeding will take certain characteristics from a couple or multiple crops so that the next round of seeds are a hybrid of the two or more plants. While this creates a new variety, most plants will not grow “true” seed and will instead grow a new form of the hybrid from the seed of the original seed. It’s pointless to save seed from a hybrid crop, but a large amount of commercial seeds are hybrids.
Patenting — this does occur mostly with any hybrid crops, or those that have been genetically modified or genetically edited. You wouldn’t be able to patent seed from a natural crop because no one owns nature; yet chemical companies who conduct the genetic engineering do try, and that’s when they patent. This makes it illegal to save seed of any patented crop.
Trade agreements — as has been discovered with Brexit, those trade agreements affect what is available. In some respects this could lead to choosing more localised seed production over importation. However, the concentration of the seed market from big companies who have entire departments set up to deal with customs paperwork, compared to small businesses that don’t have that capacity or visibility, means that there is a disparity in what’s available to purchase i.e. commercial over native.
Through all of these avenues, crop varieties can fluctuate. As Genetically Modified Organisms continue on the market (and in some places dominate), this prevents farmers legally from growing their own chosen crop or producing seed from a patented variety that they can use again for free. It’s all about business and control — which is not what nature is about.
Seed savers.
I’ve written a statistic, but don’t know who said it or really in what context. But it’s that we have 3000 edible species, 120 regular (whatever that means) and 10 subsistence. I guess it’s that there are 10 main crops grown globally (of different species), with another 120 that are common, but 3000 overall species that we can eat. This number doesn’t make sense though, so I wonder if I mis-wrote and it’s in fact 300,000 (which a number of web search pages indicates).
A World Economic Forum article suggests why we have so many edible species but don’t eat them all, with one key factor being genetic diversity and pollination. The more rare a symbiosis between plant and pollinator is e.g. orchids, the harder it is to grow them on an agricultural scale. So the family of brassicas are all very similar, but provide a variety of crops. In my searches I came across a book that went straight on my wish list: The Nature of Crops: How we came to eat the plants we do by John Warren that apparently explains why globally we eat only 200 species and rely on maize, rice and wheat for half of our plant-sourced protein and calories. With even more confusion over statistics, Kew in their Food Forever programme states that there are 7,000 edible plants worldwide and we eat only 417.
All of this is to say that we don’t utilise the variety on offer, and it’s mostly likely due to scale, profit and commercialisation — along with reduced or unshared wisdom. All of the folk establishing and running seed libraries are doing so to encourage the growing and eating of wild plants, to preserve indigenous knowledge, to plan for the future.
I’ll come back to that list of seed libraries at the end.
Images: Seed savers from the film SEED: The Untold Story all holding various corn varieties suitable for their region.
Green Revolution.
The film highlights the story of the Green Revolution. How certain crops were introduced to the New World (the Americas), leading to a shift in agricultural practices i.e. from traditional to mechanised machinery. This led to the incorporation of new seed technologies that improved yield, but then required the inputs of nitrogen fertiliser and pesticides. A point I took from this was that it was known as “green” not because this related to nature, but because it wasn’t “red”, which indicated communism.
Farmers became scuppered in how they could operate and cultivate; they were essentially put against a fence and kept in a cycle of disintegration for the land, their livelihoods, and soil health. It took many deaths (from poisoning, from debt) before there was a realisation that human health was also at stake.
Seed warfare.
This is a heavy film, and it brought to light stories I wasn’t aware of. Though it was interspersed with hope and wit from the seed savers, the film makers and researchers did well to give background to leave you in more understanding of why the seed savers needed to be hopeful.
“The pesticide man”, as I’ve written, spoke of how he helped on research Syngenta was carrying out, until he realised the destruction it would cause. Though he received threats to his life, this academic spoke out against the chemical company.
Hawai’i is mostly under private land ownership, being historially dominated by a “plantation economy”. Missionaries opened a sugar cane mill, now owned by Syngenta and operates as a test lot, which features in the film because it is at the back of a school, though three other agribusiness companies — BASF Plant Science, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont Pioneers — also have plants on the island of Kauai. The land is cultivated with crops that are then doused with test chemicals, and according to Government pesticide databases is at an intensity that far surpasses the norm on mainland US farms. These chemicals unsurprisingly leach into groundwater or flow on the air, particularly visible through dust clouds. Poisonings were blamed on other things.
But these are biotechnology plants. It’s not just the pesticides and fertilisers they are testing, but their strength and viability against GMO’s. This led to citizen lobbying against Syngenta, and a big portion of the film follows the story of the Right To Know campaign that fought for disclosure about what these companies are up to. This article from Grist gives the background.
Images: 1. Red dust blows from a GMO/pesticide test field at a Syngenta plant in Hawai’i [Credit: Klayton Kubo via Grist]; 2. Anti-GMO activists on Kauai [Credit: flickr via Grist]
Along with the contamination of air and water from toxic chemicals, there’s also the risk (and quite obvious consequence) of pollination and seed scattering of GMO crops. These agribusinesses don’t cover their fields. The film highlights a wheat seed trial that farmers objected to, and they ended up with contaminated crops. This led to a supposed patent infringement because when a crop is tested, it shows the variety, and this showed up a patented variety that the farmer didn’t have a license for.
While certain farms are seemingly given a choice regarding what they sow (even when there’s unwanted contamination), there exists a seed dictatorship in India, particularly with cotton. But native seeds barely remain, so the worry is that there will be a famine caused indirectly by an inability from crops (and land) to resist climate change effects. An example was shown of a school set up to teach women about organic cultivation; something they knew instinctively though wisdom had been hindered. This gave power to fighting controlling companies. Similarly with Vandana Shiva’s Navdanya school; she says “the seed is the spinning wheel of our times” extolling, in my view, that the seed is an act of retaliation as much as it is a practical being or a symbol of wisdom.
Images: 1. Women in India threshing native varieties of wheat; 2. Women in India drilling seed by holding baskets above their head [Credit: SEED: The Untold Story]
One of the points about seed warfare was made early on in the film, and regarded the destruction of seed libraries, in particular country’s own seed vaults. I’m making this point last here because it leads onto the list of seed libraries below, but also because out of the whole film it was the one act that I was in disbelief around. It’s horrifying. But another quote from Vandana Shiva rings true here, that “in order to control the people, you control the seed”. I can’t find a specific news story in consensus, but I heard an attack was made on the Palestinian seed vault. At the very least, food production areas have been decimated regardless, and that in itself is a seed vault.
Images: 1. The Global Seed Vault on Svalbard [Credit: CropTrust.org]; 2. A community seed swap at Hackney Herbal garden in East London [Credit: Hackney Herbal]
Seed libraries.
These are projects mentioned in the film, and are all US based:
Also look at:
Navdanya. (India)
London Freedom Seed Bank. (UK)
The Seed Saving Network. (UK)
Glasgow Seed Library. (UK)
Palestine Heirloom Seed Library. (Palestine)
Svalbard Global Seed Vault. (Norway)
The majority of small, independent seed producing companies are also in a way a library. Even though they’re not storing indefinitely, they are preserving varieties and knowledge, and sharing this. They’ll also be retaining seeds for themselves.
Do make a comment if you have a local seed bank you want to share the details of.
My remaining thought at the end of the film came with another shot of the guy I dubbed “the bean hippy”. Joe Simcox is a botanical explorer who travels the world to discover bizarre edible crops, and there’s a scene of him having come across a “weird cucumber” in the Kalahari that the team taste and it’s horrific. And yet, folk are eating it. So he observes and realises that it’s only edible once cooked. However, it was this exploration and exportation from Europeans that ultimately led to the beginning of food injustices, via New World thinking. Wrapped up in colonialism in general of course, but specifically the theft and appropriation of nature’s goods as “artefect”.
Invasion, contamination, commercialisation, exploitation… Though the sharing of seeds allows for seed sovereignty, for understanding of cultures through food and recognition of landscape contexts, where is the line? If both parties are not in concensus, then it is still theft. I don’t think this guy and his team are knowingly nicking native seeds as there must be an exchange with locals where the plants are found (though I did wonder how they declare them at customs), and they’re doing this for interest and storytelling, not for commercial reasons.
Yet, I question that this isn’t simply another way where seed diversity could diminish, for such reasons as invasive species taking over, or selective breeding by humans without considering the consequences. It’s not the terrifying work of agribusiness, though it is still controlling nature by bringing something where it wasn’t intended to be. On the other hand, allowing this exploration can improve diversity in some ways, especially as crops need to build resilience in adaptation to a changing climate, economies and landscapes.
Panel discussion.
At the end of the film was a discussion between The Seed Saving Network, Growing Communities and Sustain. The organisers of this community screening were Sustainable Hackney.
On seed saving — tips regarding checking the viability of seeds by their saved date and usual species guidance. Mentions of seed companies you can learn from, such as DIY Seeds. No mention about saving seed from bought produce.
On GMO labelling — for the UK, all food legally needs to be labelled as coming from a GMO source (particularly for when imported from the US where there are no legalities), though this isn’t the case for any meat that comes from animals reared on GM soy etc.
On sabotage — this is in regards to sabotage against big agribusiness. Sustain mentioned joining memberships such as Friends of the Earth and writing to your MP, as well as cooking your own food/not eating processed. Growing Communities suggested buying from organic producers. Seed Saving suggested supporting open-pollinated seed companies and The Gaia Foundation, and choosing banks/pensions etc who are divesting from fossil fuels.
On the cost of living — particularly in regards to being able to purchase organic. The discussion suggested that this is a bigger conversation regarding the economic system, where it’s low wages rather than the cost of food. They highlighted Sustain’s Bridging the Gap project.
Time ran out, and frankly it was difficult to get a word in, but I was going to make a recommendation that everyone in the room recognises and remembers that the textile and fashion industries are also wrapped up in the story of seed, that clothing is an agricultural product.
The Global Food System Map as designed by ShiftN helps to question how it’s possible to make accessible sustainable food. [Credit: ShiftN, 2009 via Sustain]
Other films to watch regarding seed sovereignty are:
Seeding Tomorrow [The Gaia Foundation].
A Quiet Revolution: Seed Sovereignty in the City [Films for Action].
The Last Seed [Andréa Gema].
The Seeds of Freedom trilogy [The Gaia Foundation].
And other films about indigenous food systems [compiled by foodtank™].
Thank you for reading.
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You might also like to read these related articles:
→ The modern food system has entangled the planet in a web of complex journeys.
→ Supporting sustainable food systems through vegetable box schemes.
→ Regenerative Cotton Farming.