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An Outstanding Seed Library History by St Frequency
An Outstanding Seed Library History by St Frequency
Date: 8/8/2014 9:36:47 AM ( 10 y ) ... viewed 899 times
An Outstanding Seed Library History by St Frequency
http://realitysandwich.com/137428/sowing_revolution/
The seed revolution began one sunny afternoon on a neatly
mowed lawn at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds. For an historic moment, it wasn't
much to gawk at: a circle of about a dozen seedsmen and seedswomen sitting
cross-legged in the grass, laying out the blueprint for an agricultural
uprising.
The gathering took place in the midst of the National
Heirloom Exposition, a three-day trade show for heirloom foods held last
September in Santa Rosa, California. Weeks earlier a call had gone out on
Facebook for an informal meeting among a coterie of folks in various stages of
visioning, building, and running seed libraries. Following the model of lending
libraries for books, a seed library works pretty much as you'd imagine. Seeds
are "checked out" with the intention to plant them in a garden, enjoy the fresh
food, and keep a couple of plants in the ground to go to seed. The saved seed
is then "returned" to the library—ideally, in more abundance than what was
borrowed. Though not altogether new, the concept had recently sprouted legs and
was spreading like bindweed across the country.
Seated in the circle were some of the key figures in the
emerging seed library movement, with representatives from both U.S. coasts: Ken
Greene, co-founder of the Hudson Valley Seed Library in upstate New York; David
King, founder and chairman of the Seed Library of Los Angeles; and Rebecca
Newburn, creator of the Richmond Grows Seed Lending Library in California's
East Bay. It was clear to all assembled that they were onto something big. The New York Times had run a feature on
seed libraries months earlier, and the buzz was continuing to build. The time
had come to solidify the ranks. In a unanimous vote, the group moved to form a
national association of seed libraries—a unifying body to advance the growing
movement.
The backdrop for this radical convergence was fitting.
Billed as "the World's Pure Food Fair," the National Heirloom Expo was at its
essence a show of solidarity for heritage foods against the
corporate-agricultural machine. The gala event played host to over 10,000
people browsing the crop-laden exhibit halls: a diverse mix of CSA farmers and
hobby gardeners, die-hard foodies and organic chefs, green activists and
apocalyptic "preppers." On the surface the event was a celebration of
biodiversity, but the political undercurrent was clear with prominent GMO
critic Jeffrey Smith and anti-globalization activist Vandana Shiva among the
weekend's keynote speakers. Between the garden-chic displays of fairytale
pumpkins and tiger-striped tomatoes, something far more subversive was
spreading its roots.
In other words, it was the ideal gathering grounds to rally
awareness around that vital, but often overlooked, keystone of the
sustainability discussion—the seeds. The time is ripe for this awakening.
Biodiversity among our food crops has plummeted over the past fifty years
following the meteoric rise of industrial agriculture. Only 4% of the
commercial vegetable varieties being grown in 1903 are still in cultivation
today. In their place, vast fields of genetically modified corn, canola, cotton
and soy now blanket the world's farmlands. Multinational agribusiness corporations
like Monsanto and DuPont realized early on that control over the seeds was the
key to global domination of food supplies. Over the past two decades these
industrial giants have aggressively swallowed up dozens of smaller seed
companies in a cutthroat race for market supremacy. According to the latest
figures from the ETC Group, a sustainable agriculture think tank, Monsanto sits
at the top of the pile raking in 27 percent of total seed sales worldwide.
READ MORE HERE
http://realitysandwich.com/137428/sowing_revolution/
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ST Frequency is the alias most associated with writer and musician Stephen C. Thomas. He holds a BA in English from Georgia State University and studied British and American History at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK. As part of the artist collective Kids w/ Codenames, ST has organized electronic music events and released several eclectic EPs. Originally from Atlanta, ST lives in Tucson, Arizona where he is a grant writer at Native Seeds/SEARCH, a seed conservation nonprofit. ST Frequency is a Regular Contributor at Reality Sandwich and is co-founder of Evolver Atlanta, the first Evolver Spore chapter.
posted here
August 8, 2014
7:33 am
THIS ARTICLE ABOVE REFERS TO A NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE
Mr. Greene’s library is still small; by comparison, the Seed Savers Exchange in Iowa boasts 25,000 varieties of heirloom seeds. But Sascha DuBrul, who founded the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library in California in 2000, said that, like his group, Mr. Greene’s has sociological importance because of its links to a major city. (About 40 percent of Hudson Valley members live in New York City.)
“An urban seed library is about the relationship between biological and cultural diversity, and people having a direct connection to the seeds that are growing their foods.” -- Sascha DuBrul, Founder, Bay Area Seed Interchange Library.
New York Times Article, By JOY Y. WANG
Published: October 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/garden/07seed.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
NOTE
I ran into an upstanding Youtube on Maize propagation and fertilization by this author.
I hope I can find it again. It was wonderful.
THIS IS FROM NATIVE SEED/SEARCH
http://www.nativeseeds.org/pdf/Newsletters/SeedheadNews109-2011.pdf
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