Radical Agriculture  |   Vol. 2, No. 1

Urban Seeds
What a Cornfield in Kansas and Blvd. Renee Levesque Have in Common

By Andrea del Moral

long the coasts of North America, cities are dots dropped on maps of huge open space. They gather in clusters blurring into megalopolises that house hundreds of millions of people. In the middle of the country the dots drop between fields of soy and corn.

Between these cities, vast expanses of open space push the horizon. In the prairies and plains, wheat and corn, soybeans and canola, potatoes and sugar beets fill thousands of acres of space. This is the heartland, "feeding people everywhere." However, most of the crops grown on these immense tracts of land, are not food for people. They are monoculture fields of animal feed, or raw products which are refined into processed foods. An astonishing amount of this land is sown with seed crops. Inbred parent lines of commercial seeds are meticulously de-sexed and hand pollinated every year to grow hybrid seed. The seeds from these plants will be sold to gardeners and farmers, from hardware store packets to several pound bags, then grown for one season. The grower will return to the company for seed the next year. Millions of acres of land are devoted to maintaining parent lines and creating hybrid crops. This is not idyllic rural countryside. This is an outdoor commodity factory. Seeds are products, vehicles for profit.

On the surface, city landscapes look very different from the expanses of grain and beans that stretch through the middle of the continent. However, just as the monoculture of plants is not grown to feed people, neither is the space in cities dedicated to meeting the daily needs of the people who live there. Road space accounts for more than 50% of urban land. There are tall buildings, banks, restaurants, insurance companies, investment corporations, a myriad assortment of offices that "house people making money," while other people hunger for space in which to live — not simply shelter at night — but space in which to interact, grow, and discover.

In ecology there is a phenomenon known as edge. Edge is the space where two different ecosystems meet. This could be forest and prairie, or river and desert. At the place where differences meet, life thrives. New species and relationships develop. The dynamics of cities work on this same principle of edge, but here it is not only biological but also a cultural edge; plants and animals find relationships with each other that never happen in their indigenous environments, and humans find ways of mixing language, habits, food, music, games, and religion.

While cities and rural places look different to the eye, what is actually going on in both places is similar. There are endless possibilities for dynamic, thriving habitats for life. Unfortunately, what is also similar about these environments is that much of rural and urban space is used to serve commerce alone. It is the same theme in a different form. One central connection between urban and rural people, land, and economies together, is agriculture. And the foundation of agriculture is — the seed.

Seed-savers and food democracy

I spent the last two and a half months visiting seed savers and plant breeders in Quebec, Maine, Vermont, New York, Virginia, Massachussetts, and Wisconsin. At that time, my friend Sascha was doing the same thing on the west coast, in California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. We have gathered the stories of an amazing group of people who have the knowledge we need to build a new agriculture, and the wisdom to communicate a politics that accompanies it.

We believe the movement for food democracy in North America will be led by the seed savers. Since time immemorial seed savers have been preserving and encouraging genetic diversity to flourish in their farms and gardens. Today the small-scale seed-growing community is composed of wise and intelligent people who value seeds grown in healthy, diverse environments. We believe that they have great potential to help us develop the rural-urban exchange to create another edge, where people with different roles in agriculture (as creators, growers, eaters) and communities (rural, urban, suburban) meet to create a new biological and cultural habitat that will enable us all to thrive.

Seeds are themselves transformers, bringing food, beauty, and habitat to places where there was once only sunlight, carbon dioxide, water, and soil. Out of all these disparate factors, the seed is the key to creating life. Their small, simple form is the cumulation of people's history and ecological history, they are a treasure chest of genetic diversity, equipped to deal with myriad challenges and surprises. This history comes into our hands unmediated by mass monoculture, we know it only by sticking it in some soil and watching what it does.

Arming the people with seeds

I want to see my neighbourhood, and the neighbourhoods of my friends across the continent full of miners lettuce and cilantro and kale and brassicas. I want to see beans from Zaire and Central America and corn where several colours twist through every single kernel. I want to see squash that got invented in back yard mishaps. I want to make friends through the sharing of seeds.

The sharing of seeds is about preserving and expanding the genetic diversity on this planet that so much of our cultural history has disrespected and destroyed. But it is more than that. The endeavor to bring agricultural knowledge into the city has a lot more to do with restoring our common humanity than with the plants themselves.

If we do not understand that culture is diversity, and that we need it to survive and thrive, then saving diversity will only end up being a museum, an arboretum; textbooks and slideshows of all the life that once was. We have to start understanding the role and importance of diversity: in the meeting of individuals with distinct and contrasting histories lies the potential for new futures.

In the city, this is more about the ecology of people than that of plants. This means beginning to talk to our neighbors, it means learning the histories of people who share our yards and streets, and it also means learning our own history. It means listening. And sharing. And paying attention to what each of us bring to the edge.

I want to make heartlands in cities, that feed our hearts and stomachs at the same time. I want the dots on this continent's edge to blur into the empty spaces through cultural contact, for us to know each other; at the very least to know each other and to understand how we are interdependent. I want this land to be used for feeding and housing and healing, for creating and meeting and learning. I want seeds of plants and ideas and love to flourish, and to multiply through the seasons. I want these seeds to spread freely, to spread their histories to the people and to make the people free.

Published by the Institute for Social Ecology