Indigenous Seed Savers Gather in the Andes, Agree to Fight Climate Change with Biodiversity
Indigenous Seed Savers Gather in the Andes, Agree to Fight Climate Change with Biodiversity
Erin Sagen 04 Aug 2014
: Yes Magazine
As climate change makes it more difficult to practice agriculture in their ancestral homelands, indigenous communities are exchanging seeds in hopes of finding the hardiest varieties.
On top of a rugged Andean mountain situated high in Peru’s Cusco region, on 30,000 acres of conserved land known as Parque de la Papa (Spanish for “Potato Park”), indigenous farmers met in late April to discuss conditions they feared were threatening their ancestral lands.
They came from as far as Bhutan and China, and from as near as the mountain itself. They discovered that their cultures were more similar than they had expected, and that one concern had been troubling all of them: Climate change was making it harder to grow food on the mountains that had sustained them for centuries. They were meeting to do something about it.
During a series of talks held between April 26 and May 2, the farmers forged a unique partnership entailing the exchange of indigenous crop varieties and farming methods, which they hope will protect agricultural biodiversity in the face of climate change. The exchange will begin with potatoes—a sturdy crop that thrives in the mountains of China, Bhutan, and Peru—and will enable the farmers to experiment together from a distance, so they can find the hardiest, most resilient varieties.
More:
http://www.towardfreedom.com/32-archives/environment/3623-indigenous-seed-savers-gather-in-the-andes-agree-to-fight-climate-change-with-biodiversity
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Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture tells Mechanicsburg library its seed library is a violation
'Agri-Terrorism'? Town's Seed Library Shut Down
Monday, August 04, 2014
Andrea Germanos
A public library in small Pennsylvania town offered a new public resource for its patrons: a seed library. That is, until the state Department of Agriculture pulled the rug out from under the plan.
Launched on April 26, the seed library at Mechanicsburg's Joseph T. Simpson Public Library would have held all heirloom, and preferable organic, seed. Its first seed trove, with help from the Cumberland County Commission for Women, came from Seed Savers Exchange, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving heirloom seeds.
Library patrons could "check out" the seeds to plant, and, if all went well, at the end of the plant's growing season, they'd save its seeds and return them to the library to replenish the stock. If the crop failed or the borrowers were just unable to save seeds, they were allowed to bring back store-bought heirloom seeds instead.
In the process of this seed library circulation, patrons would be bringing a new use to the library space, exchanging seeds with their community members and practicing the art of saving seeds — something farmers have done for years but which stands at odds with proprietary seeds.
