For The Wild - SEFRA ALEXANDRA on Seed Remembrance ⧸142

00:00:00.440 This podcast is brought to you in part by the Calliopeia Foundation, reconnecting ecology,

00:00:06.980 culture, and spirituality through grantmaking, education, media, and leadership initiatives.

00:00:14.180 Welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.

00:00:18.500 Seeds are the great lineage between all of our ancestors and their stewardship of place

00:00:24.880 and terroir and scent and what they were selecting for, for all of our future generations.

00:00:32.720 Today we are speaking with Sephra Alexandra.

00:00:36.260 Sephra, the seed huntress, is on a perennial ethnobotanical expedition to conserve the

00:00:41.680 biodiversity of our farms and forests by safeguarding the world's seeds.

00:00:46.680 As a Gene Bank Impact's fellow for the Crop Trust, she has gathered stories of the importance

00:00:52.560 of utilization and sharing of plant genetic resource to adapt to changing climate conditions.

00:00:58.680 She has established community seed banks on island nations after natural disasters

00:01:02.880 to fortify a regenerative model of resiliency which supports food and nutritional diversity

00:01:08.760 through seed sovereignty. In her home state of Connecticut, she is reviving a once prolific

00:01:17.200 alien heirloom to promote stewardship of the historic agrarian landscape.

00:01:22.480 She holds her master's in agro-ecological education from Cornell University,

00:01:27.360 is a wilderness skills instructor, member of the Explorers Club,

00:01:31.240 and is designing a treehouse near Hot Spring as a budding oologist.

00:01:35.900 Well, hello, Sephra, and thank you so much for joining me in conversation today.

00:01:41.420 And in preparing for this interview, I was so overwhelmed by all the different threads

00:01:45.700 that weave together seed diversity and sovereignty and so I look forward to delving into as much as

00:01:52.540 possible with you. It's a pleasure to be here and amongst a fellow ecological steward and in the

00:02:01.420 most positive sense warrior for goodness for the earth so it's a pleasure. Oh thank you. When we

00:02:07.960 think about extinction seeds are not typically what comes to mind however the loss of seed diversity

00:02:13.960 is absolutely staggering. For example, the last time the United States government studied seed

00:02:20.360 diversity in 1983, it found 28 varieties of cabbage down from 544. Cauliflower had dwindled

00:02:29.480 from 158 varieties to 9 and beats from 288 to 17. And it's not just the U.S. that's experiencing

00:02:37.560 this silent seed extinction. China has lost over 90% of their native wheat varieties and Mexico

00:02:44.400 has lost 80% of their varieties of maize. So to begin, I'm hoping you can share a little bit more

00:02:52.700 about how this global phenomenon gives context to you and to your title as the seed huntress.

00:03:00.060 Well, I call myself the seed huntress and I say I'm on the hunt to preserve the biodiversity of

00:03:06.580 our earth. And I think where that stems from is exactly what you just said. A lot of people focus

00:03:13.220 on the fauna extinction. But if we look from a floral perspective, as with our cultivated

00:03:19.220 vegetables and heirlooms, like you just mentioned, a statistic of over 97% of these varieties have

00:03:25.580 been lost because people are no longer stewarding these varieties in their homes and in their

00:03:32.480 gardens. My personal lineage, I come from many, many generations of seed stewards. I just read

00:03:39.400 a biography recently of my ancestors and my great, great, great grandfather in Salak, Russia

00:03:45.680 was a seed seller to the peasant farmers there. And then when we came over to America after a few

00:03:50.940 generations in Connecticut now, my grandfather had a grain company in Norwich, Connecticut as well.

00:03:57.760 So I find in my epigenetics, my family has been doing this work of saving seeds and sharing seeds.

00:04:07.100 So my great mentor says that we're the people of the pinch in a pinch of time in our genetic biodiversity when we're watching this massive genetic erosion.

00:04:16.520 And we can either stand by and watch it happen or step in as stewards and caretakers.

00:04:22.520 So I've leaned in and kind of like the Forrest Gump of seeds have gotten involved with seed banks and seed vaults and seed libraries and seed bank fortification after natural disasters, just going into every tributary I can find to help safeguard these ancient embryos.

00:04:43.040 You know, seeds are the great lineage between all of our ancestors and their stewardship of place and terroir and scent and what they were selecting for, for all of our future generations.

00:04:57.320 So it's been a pleasure to work with seeds and I continue to learn from them with each project I do.

00:05:03.600 In 1903, seed catalogs offered American farmers a choice of 370 varieties of sweet corn.

00:05:10.420 And today, just 12 of those varieties are still commercially available.

00:05:14.540 These numbers are so shocking.

00:05:17.260 So I feel like your work is incredibly important.

00:05:21.480 And I was also recently reading a passage from Chilean agronomist Miguel Altieri.

00:05:30.780 And he said, quote,

00:05:32.080 in a handful of wild seeds taken from any one natural community, there is hidden the distillation

00:05:39.080 of millions of years of co-evolution of plants and animals, the living reverberations of how

00:05:44.380 past cultures selected plant characters that reflected their human sense of taste, color,

00:05:50.180 proportion, and fitness in a particular environment, end quote. And this passage

00:05:55.100 really alludes to the powerful ritual that is seed saving. So can you share more about the

00:06:00.860 implication of buying seeds versus collecting or hunting seeds? And what culture are we

00:06:06.960 reinvigorating and maintaining through sustained seed saving?

00:06:11.020 So let's look back at our seed catalogs, right? I think for me, understanding that heirlooms are

00:06:17.960 no longer being safeguarded, really where they're from in a lot of instances, that's what inspired

00:06:24.360 me to revive what was once a prolific allium heirloom of where I'm from Southport Connecticut

00:06:31.800 it was called the Southport Globe Onion and back in the 1800s every hill valley nook where I'm from

00:06:40.560 was all in onion cultivation we were called the onion capital of the world and almost 200,000

00:06:47.460 barrels of onions were sent each year on sloops which are sailboats along the beautiful Long

00:06:52.380 Island Sound to the New York City markets. They were pickled and used to prevent scurvy with the

00:06:58.100 with the Union Army. And I looked back at that agrarian history and I looked now to what in

00:07:04.560 Connecticut is often a very lawns, not food culture. And I said, what can I do to inspire

00:07:11.120 people to reembrace the ancient art of seed saving? And what I found was this beautiful

00:07:18.460 lineage of the onions was such a great tie to our agrarian past that a wonderful seed company

00:07:25.400 baker creek heirloom seeds was still maintaining the southport globe onion variety but no one had

00:07:32.960 planted it back where it was from in its local terroir in 130 years so i started the southport

00:07:38.600 globe onion initiative and this year because alliums are biennial so it takes two years for

00:07:44.060 for them to produce seed. We were able to harvest the seed and I've just been freely distributing

00:07:50.880 them. I never charge anyone for seed. My entire purpose of growing these seeds is for education

00:07:58.260 and for community building. And so what it's really done is it's brought the kids from the

00:08:03.200 local schools, the wonderful ladies from the garden clubs. I mean, ladies and gentlemen,

00:08:08.700 I mean, all of these wonderful people have come out in the community who really didn't have

00:08:13.840 any sort of a connection to any sort of gardening or even ecology or seed stewardship. And because

00:08:21.440 I was able to connect it back to the history of our place, there was a blight that actually wiped

00:08:26.680 out the onions. And all of the onion warehouses then became speakeasy prohibition bars, the likes

00:08:33.080 of which Fitzgerald, when he was writing The Great Gatsby, would go and spend time in. So there's a 0.50

00:08:38.400 wonderful history before and after that. But what we were able to do is then reshare these seeds

00:08:43.660 And now these onions are back and everyone's talking about them.

00:08:46.780 And we have an annual festival and kids are excited about it.

00:08:50.660 And so I say this just merely as a way that oftentimes when we're talking about a lot

00:08:57.260 of the pessimism that surrounds what's going on with agriculture and climate, all these

00:09:01.620 different things, I like to say that it's too late to be pessimistic.

00:09:04.560 And there's the ROI of seeds.

00:09:06.640 You know, you take one seed and you get thousands.

00:09:08.800 And so I think it's really positive and a really great ritual in the most agrarian and non-denominational sense to re-participate and re-inspire those around you.

00:09:21.680 So it would be negligent to have this conversation without bringing up the ecological and climactic changes we're facing.

00:09:28.980 So why is it imperative that we maintain seed diversity as a means of resistance against changing plant diseases and weather patterns?

00:09:37.260 more so than focusing on genetically engineered seeds so shouldn't we be focusing on diversity

00:09:44.000 when it comes to protecting a global food supply so this year i've had the honor and privilege of

00:09:51.060 being a gene bank impact fellow for the crop trust and the crop trust is a small organization

00:09:57.300 based in germany that basically oversees the standards and operating procedures of our global

00:10:03.060 seed banking system. A seed bank is what is known as an ex-situ. So when seeds are growing in place

00:10:12.340 where they're from, that's in-situ. When they're stored and conserved away from that, that's ex-situ

00:10:18.080 conservation. So there are namely 12 large CGIAR gene banks around the world. And if you know who

00:10:26.740 Nikolai Vavilov is, he was one of the pioneers of this seed banking concept, realizing that the

00:10:32.600 diversity around the world, these plant genetic resources, as they're known in the scientific

00:10:36.760 community, really are the arcs of diversity and hold the great genetic material that inherently

00:10:43.240 are our greatest tools of resilience because they have the ability to adapt. If you're saving seeds

00:10:50.060 from hot and dry or wet and cold or all these different variations of climate, when you save

00:10:56.900 that genetic resource, then whichever way is our climate shifter go into succession, you'll have

00:11:02.820 that resource to be able to rebreed varieties that are adaptable to those areas. So Nikolai

00:11:08.580 Vavilov went around and gathered all this plant genetic resource and mapped out what he called

00:11:13.060 centers of origin. Centers of origin speak to where crops first emerge in the globe is where

00:11:18.900 they express greatest amounts of diversity. So if we look at wheat and maize in Mexico, you know,

00:11:25.460 150,000 varieties, potatoes in Peru, pulses and grains in India, we can start to look at our

00:11:31.160 global map as where these crops first emerged. So that's where these large seed banks sit.

00:11:38.700 As a GeneBank Impacts Fellow, we were sent out to go gather an impact story that really showed

00:11:46.080 what the importance of what these seed banks or gene banks are doing. So I was sent to CPACT,

00:11:53.560 which is the Center for Pacific Crops and Trees, which is part of the Pacific community,

00:11:59.460 based in Fiji. It's also the world center of taro. So taro is an aeroid, which is basically

00:12:06.180 like a root crop, and it has that large elephant ear leaf, considered an ancestor to the Hawaiian

00:12:13.640 people. It's part of their creation myth. They call it kalo there, or a prestige cultural totem.

00:12:20.000 A prestige crop is called as such when it's so vital to a culture.

00:12:26.160 It's used in gift giving for births, marriages, deaths, king's coronation.

00:12:31.740 It's such an intrinsic and vital part of the community that its loss would basically not

00:12:38.520 only be a cultural loss, would not only be undermining their food systems, but also a

00:12:44.900 loss of a huge part of their culture.

00:12:46.200 so unfortunately in 1993 the taro leaf blight came ashore on the island nation of samoa

00:12:54.320 and within a six-month period all of their taro was completely decimated even though morphologically

00:13:01.980 or visually the taro that they had maybe looked differently because those types of plants in

00:13:08.120 those areas are clonally propagated their actual genetic diversity was it was rather narrow and so

00:13:13.940 they were all susceptible to this blight. What happened after that was these ethnobotanical

00:13:20.480 explorers went back out to the different centers of diversity around the world and regathered

00:13:26.520 plant material that showed natural resistance to this blight. For example, taro leaf blight is

00:13:31.860 always present in Bangkok. And so they were able to gather taro from Bangkok and all of this

00:13:38.660 genetic material was then sent to the seed bank or this actually formed the seed bank in Fiji

00:13:44.800 so that the material could then be virus indexed, characterized, and then distributed to breeders

00:13:50.540 in Samoa. Now, why this is important is if you gather the diversity, it needs to be maintained,

00:13:56.840 right? So that you can continually, when you maintain it in vitro, it means in those little 0.99

00:14:02.860 vials, it means that you're able to keep on multiplying and duplicating it. When we think

00:14:07.300 of seeds we think of orthodox seeds we think of you know tomato seeds pepper seeds those dried

00:14:12.240 hard beautiful embryos but oftentimes in the tropics they're recalcitrant seeds so

00:14:17.180 they need to be kept as living plantlets so the moral of this story is these plants were then

00:14:23.200 virus indexed so that what they were sending out to the breeders they ensured it didn't have any

00:14:27.480 other blights or any other diseases that they were spreading and the breeders then after 10 years

00:14:32.900 were able to breed blight-resistant lines of taro and able to re-propagate all the fields of Samoa.

00:14:39.100 They were breeding for yield and for palatability. And then after they had bred those blight-resistant

00:14:45.260 lines, they were then sent back to the gene bank in Fiji so that Nigeria in 2011, when they faced

00:14:51.460 that same blight, could access those varieties and be able to re-propagate their fields without that

00:14:57.780 10 year breeding time. The reason why this is important is because you're preventing basically

00:15:05.260 possible starvation and famine when taro is the 14th most eaten vegetable in the world,

00:15:11.620 especially in many subsistence farming nations. And when you lose that, you lose your ability,

00:15:18.840 your ability to have food security. So why preserving global seed diversity is so important

00:15:25.040 is we never know what pest will arrive on what shore

00:15:28.420 or which climactic variation,

00:15:31.320 what your land, which way it'll swing.

00:15:33.680 So when we maintain all of these arcs of diversity

00:15:36.540 that have that inherent genetic material

00:15:39.360 that's been selected and stewarded in its place

00:15:42.440 for all of those different variations,

00:15:44.920 the breeders are able to have basically their painter's palette

00:15:48.200 to be able to breed new lines to adapt to whatever happens.

00:15:51.880 and when it comes to seed saving there is much to be said in relation to the effectiveness of

00:15:59.320 exit 2 versus in-situ conservation and like you were just explaining exit 2 means seeds that are

00:16:06.660 stored long-term in cold storage conservation facilities like the millennium seed bank which

00:16:11.160 houses nearly two billion seeds currently and in-situ referring to the stewards who plant

00:16:17.320 crops and save the seeds for the next season. And I think about Martine Prechtel, who once wrote,

00:16:23.160 it's not enough to save heritage seeds. The culture of those people to whom each seed belongs

00:16:28.580 must be kept alive along with seeds and their cultivation, not in freezers or museums,

00:16:34.440 but in their own soil and our daily lives, end quote. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on

00:16:41.700 these methods and if there is a necessary balance to be found given the precarious times we are in.

00:16:47.320 And you were mentioning that with the tarot, but even if you could expand that into other

00:16:51.680 species and kind of even the ethics behind it.

00:16:56.060 Absolutely.

00:16:56.520 And Martin Prechtel, I'm so glad that you quoted him.

00:17:01.540 Ultimately, in seed conservation, in situ, in the soil, is the preferable method.

00:17:08.340 sometimes people say a seed bank is like a dusty old library you know um which i can understand

00:17:17.460 where they're coming from but in the face of man-made and natural disasters it's imperative

00:17:21.840 that we do have that backup of course in situ in the soil the seeds are able to continually be

00:17:30.180 adapting to the new climate to their new soil structures to pests they stay vibrant and relevant

00:17:37.400 and their vigor and their yield and their steward and care taken in place by those that are growing

00:17:43.360 them. That is the ultimate goal. But for example, if we go back to the crop trust, which also maybe

00:17:50.560 you've heard of Svalbard, which is the global seed vault, it's a backup for all of those seed banks

00:17:56.820 to store their seeds in cases of manmade or natural disaster. If we look at Syria in 2015,

00:18:03.020 when they had the civil war they were unable to get back to their gene bank in aleppo now

00:18:08.720 what they have stored there is ancient wheats that have been stewarded for thousands of years

00:18:13.300 so what they were able to do is they were able to take those seeds out of the vault

00:18:18.000 and re-multiply them they moved their gene bank which is the international center for

00:18:22.660 agriculture research in dry areas to beirut so having that backup was imperative so that they

00:18:30.440 could take those seeds out, re-multiply them, keep them relevant, and then be able to re-safeguard

00:18:36.580 them back in the vault. So the combination of those two types of conservation is so important

00:18:44.280 in the kind of the challenges that we're facing in the modern day. So ex-situ conservation is

00:18:51.760 actually an amazing global resource. There's an international treaty called the International

00:18:57.140 Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which was championed by the FAO in

00:19:03.260 2004. And what this treaty basically allows is for any country underneath this treaty, any

00:19:10.600 seeds that are stored in their seed banks can be freely accessed by farmers and breeders and

00:19:19.380 scientists so that they're able to adapt to these different changing climates. When we look at the

00:19:25.960 access and the benefits of being able to share these seeds on a global scale, then we can really

00:19:31.240 start to see the behoovement of preserving this biodiversity and basically a global resilience

00:19:38.200 that can be formed around shared access to this. But again, as in my other work, of course,

00:19:45.880 having these seeds be in the soil where they're from is preferable, as long as that soil and that

00:19:52.760 can be safeguarded and protected.

00:19:55.960 Come on with your hand, let me take you to the land

00:20:05.320 Where we all can down, start a beautiful romance

00:20:11.740 The rhythm of the waves will guide you on your way back home

00:20:20.440 Back to mother world, back to where we all belong

00:20:24.660 Quench upon a star

00:20:31.200 I pray for the loudest heart

00:20:39.240 Let it go, let it go, let it flow

00:20:44.880 Free your soul

00:20:48.500 There is no tomorrow

00:20:51.740 Let it go, let it go, let it flow

00:20:57.540 Free your soul, there's no tomorrow

00:21:04.560 Now I read that you traveled to Haiti in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

00:21:14.220 So I'd like to transition to a conversation around disaster response, seed relief,

00:21:18.520 and the impact these programs can have on local agro-economic systems.

00:21:24.760 Can you share with us what are the problems with exported seed relief as a form of disaster response,

00:21:30.620 as well as the importance of seed banks and seed sovereignty in the aftermath of emergency?

00:21:36.800 So my twin brother has a company called Tactivate,

00:21:40.160 and he works with special operations veterans and entrepreneurs

00:21:43.220 to find boots-on-the-ground solutions in the aftermaths of natural disasters.

00:21:47.620 and i've helped him on several deployments and after the 2016 hurricane in haiti i stayed on

00:21:55.780 to meet with a lot of the agroecological pioneers and leaders of haiti and they are just the most

00:22:03.600 elegant lovely and wonderful people i met this elder grandmother who's literally laid in front

00:22:08.620 of bulldozers to protect her family's land and these revolutionaries and who've led the burning

00:22:15.040 of GMO seeds when they were donated to the island and finally found this lovely agronomist,

00:22:20.320 Elie St. Magloire, the Organization for the Rehabilitation of the Environment,

00:22:24.840 who has really a lot of the infrastructure needed to have a community seed bank,

00:22:30.280 but didn't quite have the funding. Now, the importance of having a local community

00:22:37.500 seed bank in these areas is that after these storms went through, which happens unfortunately

00:22:43.240 quite frequently down there and in other island nations, what happens is there's no backup because

00:22:49.380 most of the extra seed is either kept in local houses or in times of scarcity is eaten and isn't

00:22:57.360 saved as a backup seed crop. So what a lot of foreign aid does is they like to send down seed

00:23:05.540 as not only foodstuffs, but to replant fields. And what that actually does that I've seen is

00:23:12.360 not only not beneficial, but actually detrimental to the agro-economic systems there. For example,

00:23:19.840 what Haitians often call Miami rice is when rice is donated down to the island. Now,

00:23:26.920 growers in the north still have viable seed, have viable rice that could be sold. But when

00:23:33.400 free rice is flown in, no one buys rice from the north. So you're undercutting the local

00:23:38.920 agronomic system which actually does more harm than good for their economy and their own recovery

00:23:44.680 because you are relying on external relief it also introduces pests and it's often not viable

00:23:51.100 seed that isn't adapted to the local climate and the local pests so what a much more closed-loop

00:24:00.120 regenerative solution to that is is you have a community seed bank that backs up these land

00:24:07.040 race varieties that have been selected and stewarded in these soils for many, many generations,

00:24:12.200 so that when the fields are wiped out, they're able to go to a local resource that has a backup

00:24:18.860 so that they can replant their fields immediately. I think the most important thing in disaster

00:24:23.620 response is being able to have self-facilitated resilience and not relying on external aid.

00:24:31.320 oftentimes when you rely on external aid they'll be sending down non-viable seed that oftentimes

00:24:38.400 be introducing new pests and it's also undercutting let's say the rice farmers up north in Haiti

00:24:44.400 that now no one's paying for their seed because everyone's relying and waiting on free donated

00:24:49.380 seed which undercuts their agro-economic system and so it's really an unsustainable cycle and a

00:24:56.760 paradigm that needs to be shifted. So the fortification of the seed bank allows for food

00:25:02.400 security and the availability of nutritional diversity through seed sovereignty. So it's

00:25:08.620 really been lovely to work with the Haitian people and protect these vital embryos so that

00:25:16.000 they can have food regardless of what's going on with civil unrest or natural disasters.

00:25:22.920 mm-hmm seed oligarchies and industrial scale companies have emerged as a fairly recent threat

00:25:30.760 for example 50 years ago about a thousand small seed companies were operating in the united states

00:25:35.980 but by 2009 there were less than a hundred in terms of global proprietary seed sales

00:25:43.600 four companies control over 60 of the global seed supply so how can we democratize our seed

00:25:50.700 system? And why is it important that in the face of these corporate seed giants like Bayer

00:25:55.700 and Cortiva, that we all become seed stewards regardless of our familiarity with farming or

00:26:02.740 gardening? I think a common misconception is that just because these seeds conglomerations have

00:26:11.300 all of this control, what they don't have is bioregionally adapted seed. And I can go on to

00:26:17.420 explain what that means further. But if you have access to seed, right, even when we think about

00:26:23.640 our local farmers, and they do such an amazing job, but when you're still buying seed from a

00:26:29.480 seed catalog that's in Ohio, what happens when you lose access to be able to buy seed from them?

00:26:36.480 You're not able to replant your fields. So a really important part about seed stewardship

00:26:41.060 is closing the loop. And as we look at watersheds, we need to start thinking about seed sheds. So

00:26:48.840 the greatest way in a very respectful sense to undermine these massive seed companies is to start

00:26:56.600 saving seeds in your local areas. So if we look at our planet, right, we have ecozones and there's

00:27:03.440 eight major ecozones. And this is the broadest biogeographic distinctions that we have. And it's

00:27:08.740 the distribution patterns of terrestrial organisms. And then we have our bioregions and there's about

00:27:14.240 867. And bioregions are when we can look at our global map, looking at it ecologically and

00:27:21.260 geographically defined areas by natural areas versus man-made divisions. So when you're looking

00:27:26.880 at countries and states, those are kind of arbitrarily drawn lines. But when we look at

00:27:31.060 our bioregions, it's based on ecologically delineated areas. And even between bioregions,

00:27:38.720 you have these biotones and transition zones. And even smaller than that, we look at our

00:27:43.260 ecoregions. Now here in Connecticut, in my part of Connecticut, that extends up to New York,

00:27:48.360 we're in ecoregion 59. So ecoregions then are these distinct assemblages of natural communities,

00:27:55.480 right? And within those natural communities, we have these biomes, which are the distinct

00:28:01.280 biological communities within those natural communities. And then we can get even smaller

00:28:05.980 down to ecotones, right? And these are these transition areas when we look at the different

00:28:11.880 soil compositions that happen within these different habitats. So when we kind of look

00:28:16.920 ecologically down through that lens, we can start to see that that is the level where we want to be

00:28:24.240 saving seeds. This summer when I was in Idaho, I was working doing native wild seed collection

00:28:29.960 and we were doing ecotype specific seed collection because for these endangered species that if these

00:28:36.560 very specific habitats got wiped out, these plants would no longer exist. And also for agroecological

00:28:41.920 restoration, because after wildfires, you can't just plant any sage back there. You have to plant

00:28:47.620 of the 33 varieties or so, the one that's specific to that area. Because just as humans steward

00:28:54.440 heirlooms, so do our entomological, you know, the insects and the birds, they've been stewarding

00:28:59.560 these heirlooms forever as well. They're also the seed stewards, right? There's all the different

00:29:05.900 ocaries, which are these great words of zoo-ockery, which is the travel of seed by animal or mermockery

00:29:12.360 by ant or anthropocry, which is by humans. So what this huge conversation is saying is

00:29:19.180 the power is really in our hands as seed stewards. The greatest tools of resilience that we have

00:29:25.100 is all saving seeds. And if we do that on an eco-regional and bio-regional scale,

00:29:31.440 then we don't have to rely on these monolithic monocultures because ultimately the seeds that

00:29:37.620 they have when you plant in these massive monocultures, as often happens, is they're

00:29:42.680 extremely susceptible to any pests or anything that comes into those systems, right? When we look,

00:29:49.860 as I know you've talked about on different podcasts, we look to perennial systems,

00:29:55.380 edible forest gardens, and we look to the mycelial network that helps share the nutrients amongst

00:30:01.500 these diverse guilds, we can see that strength and resilience in an ecology comes from diversity.

00:30:08.640 And even more so, so an ecotype, right, would be the specific plants found in those ecotones that

00:30:15.660 I mentioned. So the greatest things that we can be doing for, let's say, our pollinators

00:30:21.100 is that we save ecotype-specific seeds from our local ecoregions. And those are the seeds that

00:30:29.140 we're saving and regenerating for native plant materials development. And that's when we can

00:30:33.700 proliferate these pollinator pathways that are really doing the great work that we want to do.

00:30:38.860 So these big questions about seed corporations, I say joyfully and gratefully, the power is in our

00:30:44.980 hands. And when we can look around and we can see that these seeds are everywhere, these ancient

00:30:50.560 embryos that have been regenerating themselves from time immemorial, we say we need to all be

00:30:58.380 saving the seeds from where we are because instead of repatriation, we talk about rematriation

00:31:03.220 because often the seeds are kept in the female lineage, like, like with the human form. That's

00:31:08.500 how all the seeds that I carry were in my mom and my grandmother. And you can look down that line.

00:31:13.480 And if we look to how we have a regenerative ecological system, a closed loop system,

00:31:19.200 then we all need to be re-embracing this art of seed saving. Yeah. We need to get away from this

00:31:28.040 age of eradication to an age of regeneration and one that celebrates biodiversity so instead of

00:31:35.560 doom and gloom my friend just look around and start saving the beautiful seeds that are right

00:31:41.180 where you are right in your local terroir so we can all be tear warriors thank you for that

00:31:48.920 what i love about seed saving is we are engaging with so much beauty and intelligence and connection

00:31:57.920 when we're working with plants and seeds and I know that my journey with working with plants has

00:32:03.860 brought me into such deeper connection to the work and to the bigger issues of the world in a way that

00:32:08.740 feels yeah just connective and so I really love hearing that thank you I'm also thinking about

00:32:15.980 the more than human world the insect kin and wild winds that serve as seed stewards and I'm curious

00:32:23.400 how these relations play a role in your restoration work. How does the preservation

00:32:27.700 of wild landscapes and entire ecosystems play a role in maintaining seed dispersal?

00:32:34.020 So when we're caretaking these wild lands and these ecotypes for the heirlooms that our insect

00:32:40.740 friends have been stewarding and that the wind has been stewarding and a mockery is another one

00:32:44.980 of the ocaries. And we think of the pappus, which are those floating whirling dervish seeds of the

00:32:50.540 dandelion, we start to see that that's how these wild landscapes get propagated. And then people

00:32:58.600 get into the conversations of invasive species and there's a million tributaries we could paddle

00:33:02.420 our canoe down here. But I think what's really important is to look at the wild lands that,

00:33:09.760 let's say, traditional ecological knowledge used to harvest from, you know, these indigenous

00:33:15.020 culture is if we look out to the prairies, there is something called timsula, the prairie turnip,

00:33:22.380 pediomellum esquelentum, right? And this is a staple food crop of the Plains Indians that

00:33:29.920 grows without any input and was this prolific, prolific foodstuff. I think when we look to our

00:33:38.380 wild lands, instead of looking at destructive agriculture, because as we know, it's the single

00:33:44.060 most destructive thing that we do to our landscape, we need to be tenders of the wild. I studied with

00:33:49.740 Tom Brown Jr., who has the tracker school, and comes from a lineage of studying with stocking

00:33:56.060 wolf, who was an Apache scout that he called grandfather from the time he was seven years old.

00:34:00.980 And that entire lineage speaks to how we work with nature rather than against it, that everything we

00:34:07.040 could ever need to thrive in this world is grown in the wild lands and when we look for what's

00:34:14.280 needed for food fiber and medicine for habitat and the spirit that moves through all these things

00:34:19.540 we look not just for ourselves but for all of our allies for the insects and the four-legged

00:34:25.080 and the odonata the dragonflies and everyone we start to look that we as humans right the wind

00:34:32.860 can prune trees, but if we can help steward a forest or a prairie to become more productive,

00:34:39.200 not only for our animal friends, but for ourselves, then we can work back to this

00:34:44.100 harmonious interaction with the landscape. My great mentor, Bill McDormand, the Rocky

00:34:49.120 Mountain Sea Lions, was talking to me about the bison and how the only reason that there

00:34:53.780 was an ability to have a million bison, as it were, was because not only were the forest

00:34:59.860 being caretaken and stewarded to be prolific and super productive, but so were the animal

00:35:05.660 habitats. What I'm trying to say is that the stewardship and caretakings of these wild lands

00:35:11.080 can make this an abundant bounty. And when we put our lands back into that bountiful paradigm,

00:35:18.560 then we can stop relying on all of this domesticated, cultivated, destructive form

00:35:26.700 of agriculture that we've been relying on. Of course, I love the idea of citizen science and

00:35:32.580 people collecting seeds. But I found in the herbal world and the mushroom hunting world that

00:35:40.820 it's really easy for us humans to get really excited about something and overharvest,

00:35:47.880 whether it's out of good intentions or whether it's out of capitalistic

00:35:51.840 consumer intentions. And I wonder how that relates to seed collection. What is an ethical way to

00:36:00.940 harvest seeds? Because the last thing I'd want is for people to feel like they can help by

00:36:06.500 collecting seeds, but actually be harming an ecosystem or harming the population of certain

00:36:12.480 species. For example, with the conservation work that I was doing in Idaho, we would have to hike

00:36:19.180 deep into the wilderness to find populations that were large enough that gathering 20% would yield

00:36:26.520 10,000 seeds, which is what the collection called for. Now that is done with extreme respect and

00:36:33.680 also the forager's credo, not only of right time, right place, right plant, but you never harvest

00:36:38.460 all seed off of one plant or an entire population, especially when it's coming to these really

00:36:45.540 endangered varieties, right? I mean, this is where like deep reverence and deep respect for these

00:36:51.980 plants and these ecosystems come into play because it's a hard line. You're saying we're collecting

00:36:58.060 this to preserve you in case your habitat's destroyed, but you are also taking seeds out

00:37:03.420 of the natural environment, which means that you are taking on the responsibility of really

00:37:10.700 safeguarding those or repropagating or multiplying them because each one of those embryos, as we've

00:37:16.960 said, has thousands of generations of seeds that it can be produced going forward to future

00:37:23.500 generations and also comes from however many thousands of generations of seed that's come

00:37:29.760 before it. So seed saving, as much as I, in a very positive, enthusiastic way, promote it,

00:37:37.040 it also needs to be matched and married with a deep respect and a deep reverence for what

00:37:43.240 you're actually dealing with. It's the same thing we were talking about taking seeds out of the

00:37:47.460 seed bank. Sometimes when you are requesting those seeds, those might be the last ones of that

00:37:54.340 variety that exists because the underfunding of those seed banks is making it difficult to keep

00:37:59.860 on doing those multiplications. So there is so much caretaking, so much stewardship and so much

00:38:06.440 respect so if you're going out to the wild lands you should really have a very respectful intention

00:38:13.840 also the proper permission and also a really strong plan of what the utilization of those

00:38:22.560 seeds will be and it really doesn't go without saying that there are laws and restrictions

00:38:28.840 that go along with seed cultivation, especially on wild or public lands. So

00:38:35.300 make sure you do your homework and make sure when you do collect that you have a very strong,

00:38:42.060 clear pathway of what you intend to use those seeds for.

00:38:58.840 That there was a place where all the beautiful people go to

00:39:06.460 One by one they have their childish ways

00:39:10.800 And that's the most purest form of being

00:39:16.020 I'm falling in love with everyone I meet

00:39:27.840 I'm close to myself

00:39:32.440 Feel so at ease

00:39:34.740 Why can't the whole world be like this

00:39:42.820 Sitting together round the fire

00:39:46.020 No need for war

00:39:49.300 It's the time for love

00:39:51.620 Singing together round the fire

00:39:54.680 I thought she was the most purest soul I would ever meet

00:40:11.300 But then I found out there is more than one here

00:40:14.780 Close to Mother Earth, people hugging with the trees

00:40:19.720 Sticking care of one another, one for all and all for one

00:40:25.060 Keep shining on the light rail, guide us home

00:40:34.800 This is the place where we belong

00:40:40.160 Why can the whole world be like this

00:40:48.120 sitting to get around the fire no need for war it's the time for love singing to get around the fire

00:40:59.580 now you've been working on the reintroduction of the south port globe onion to its native soil in

00:41:19.100 your hometown of connecticut and you were mentioning this at the beginning of our

00:41:24.220 conversation but if you could share more about the importance of native seeds being reintroduced

00:41:28.940 to their origins, as well as the importance of reorienting places in terms of their agricultural

00:41:34.220 and food histories? Sure. Yeah. So again, the South Park Globe Onion. So in terms of native,

00:41:41.980 well, that seed originally came from England and then it went through the Connecticut River Valley 0.95

00:41:47.360 and then was taken up by the Sherwoods and the Jennings and all of these intrepid onion farmers

00:41:51.740 in Connecticut that actually pioneered a lot of the technologies and a lot of the tools

00:41:55.640 that completely shifted how onion cultivation was done in our country. So what more than that being

00:42:03.320 a native seed, it became a locally stewarded heirloom. And what that does is those are

00:42:08.460 bioregionally adapted heirlooms that really are really productive in the lands where you live.

00:42:16.780 So there's so much importance of understanding how to safeguard the crops that do well where you are for the future.

00:42:30.700 I mean, if you think about stewarding varieties in our local landscape and we talk about what that connection and what that dedication really looks like.

00:42:41.600 I think of my friend Harriet, who lives on First Mesa up at Hopi, and Hopi blue corn is a corn that is able to have an amazing yield in soils that look like they are completely dry and drought ridden.

00:43:03.840 And you think to yourself, how are these seeds able, without irrigation, without fertilization, able to produce this much in this landscape?

00:43:13.960 And after being in conversation, you realize that this seed has been selected and stewarded for those characteristics for a thousand years.

00:43:24.320 So they plant their Hopi blue corn a foot into the soil. And then that corn now has the strength

00:43:31.500 because most corns, our modern day corns, cannot grow through a foot of soil. And they wait in

00:43:36.800 that soil for the monsoon rains. So when you think about connection and rebuilding that relationship,

00:43:44.140 we think about the power and the ability, if we have time and attention to caretake these seeds

00:43:51.940 locally that they can adapt and thrive wherever we live you know there are people who now have

00:43:57.740 watermelons growing in colder environments because after so many years of selection you can you can

00:44:03.800 select for that one little one that does well and then you keep selecting and that's the brilliance

00:44:09.160 of seeds again my mentor bill mcdormand he takes his iphone he takes in one hand in a seat another

00:44:14.600 hand he says which has greater technology and you say well the seed because for hundreds if not

00:44:21.360 thousands of years, it has the inherent technology to adapt to wherever it's planted and wherever it

00:44:27.800 goes. And that's really quite an exquisite and extraordinary thing and something to really be

00:44:34.220 revered. I completely agree. And I love that question, that existential question that he

00:44:41.540 puts out. So thank you for sharing that. Yeah. So I've heard that somewhere around 12 crops

00:44:47.620 make up 90% of our diet. So I'm curious to ask you about the role of diversifying our diet in

00:44:54.520 context to seed and food sovereignty. How can we understand both diversifying our diet while

00:45:00.160 keeping our bioregion in mind as part of the agreement between us and seed?

00:45:05.920 Yeah, that's a wonderful question. So there are over 30,000 edible plant species. And then we

00:45:12.860 can even talk about ones that have medicinal values and food fiber and all of these different

00:45:18.300 facets. But of those 30,000 edible plant species, we eat about 150 of them. And 12 of those crops

00:45:26.280 make up 80% of our caloric intake. So basically, we're relying on less than 1% of the available

00:45:34.000 food crops for our sustenance. And if you look at wheat, maize, and rice and potatoes,

00:45:38.680 that comprises about 60% of our calories. So the real thing about that is like, folks,

00:45:45.620 there are so many exquisite tastes out there, you know, and I think it's a really important point to

00:45:51.960 say, well, what's growing in our bio region. And if you look back to what the indigenous cultures

00:46:01.040 of your lands were eating, there are amazing. We look back to like pawpaws and all these forgotten

00:46:07.760 delicious fruits, the largest fruit of native North America, you look back and you say,

00:46:12.540 there's such sustenance. There's such goodness. There's such yumminess to be had. If we can

00:46:17.400 re-embrace and re-remember the little bit of a taste of bitterness, you know, we kind of,

00:46:23.540 we have to adapt. We have to, just like we need to rewild ourselves, you have to rewild your

00:46:28.560 palate a little bit and kind of open yourself up to what's possible and what's palatable and

00:46:34.140 what's delicious. And I think there are so many great options of, I mean, acorns, so quercophiles,

00:46:40.880 right? Quercophiles, I mean, that eats acorns. And if you look again, and this is harvesting

00:46:46.460 with a real caretaker mentality, but acorn pancakes are delicious. These, and you know,

00:46:52.280 there's a certain knowledge that goes along with figuring out how to process them and

00:46:56.280 release the tannins and soak them in the rivers and such. But if we're actually trying to find

00:47:02.500 regenerative solutions, it's going to take some relearning and some re-skill sharing and working

00:47:11.280 with nature rather than against it and re-embracing how we were in relationship with the lands around

00:47:16.820 us. Because I can tell you from my work with the Tracker School or Primitive Pursuits up in

00:47:22.320 Ithaca and all these other places, when you're living with the earth that way, it is an absolute

00:47:28.380 delightful and super respectful to the earth party and and i can't tell you what those what

00:47:34.940 those arts and those crafts and those tastes do for your gut flora and do for your mind and your

00:47:41.520 energy and your heart and your spirit and it's um it's a really beautiful thing i couldn't agree

00:47:47.640 more now as we near our time i'd love to ask you what you've learned from seeds in terms of patience

00:47:56.360 reverence for diversity and the art of living? I haven't met a seed that I don't just absolutely

00:48:04.160 fall in love with. You know, a seed, right? It has its seed coat on that, that that's protecting it

00:48:09.520 from the elements. And it has its little lunch packed inside of it. It has its first meal

00:48:14.500 already packed inside of its, of its little seed coat. And those little cotyledons, those seed

00:48:19.660 leaves are all packed in there. If you can take a moment and you can hold seeds in your hand

00:48:25.140 and really understand that they're these living, breathing embryos, right? That an acorn can grow

00:48:30.860 to a mighty oak, that, that tiny amaranth seed, which is some of the highest protein can grow

00:48:36.280 into a staple food crop. And you just look and the intrinsic, exquisite majesty that is held

00:48:44.600 within these seeds. And they just so patiently wait. Whole cultures have traveled with, you know,

00:48:49.340 buckskin satchels of these seeds to go wherever their nomadic ways took them. And they were able

00:48:55.120 to bring their taste of place with them a grandfather tom brown's great mentor would

00:49:01.240 always bring a satchel seeds wherever he went and when he found himself in a riparian area he would

00:49:06.560 look through and plant the right seeds for there and when he found himself in the drier the drier

00:49:12.440 pine areas he would plant the right seeds for there so if we can always just carry seeds with

00:49:17.120 us and when that right time that right place that right eco region or eco tone avails itself

00:49:22.560 can help steward that land to regeneration, then I think we look at the earth and realize the

00:49:29.360 patience that it has with us. I mean, there's seeds that sleep in the soils for tens or hundreds

00:49:36.840 of years until fire comes through because they need fire to germinate. Or, you know, the Methuselah,

00:49:42.260 the date palm that was on the top of Masada, after 2000 years, it germinated. So if you want

00:49:49.680 to talk about patience. You talk about really having that divine wisdom and that amazing

00:49:57.400 kind of that inhale and that reverence for waiting for, I mean, if this is like an analogy

00:50:04.860 to your own purpose and your own passion to really germinating and breaking through your

00:50:11.280 seed shell when the time is right. And when the conditions are going to allow you to flourish,

00:50:15.660 we talk as community that we prepare our soil right we want to prepare our soil to plant these

00:50:21.880 edible forest gardens of thought of community of of stewardship and um i'm just forever enamored

00:50:30.980 and continue on the path of the seed because everywhere i go and everyone i interact with

00:50:36.620 who has deep relationship with seeds have such majesty and wisdom and that's really what it takes

00:50:43.020 as caretakers of the earth, because I truly believe that all of these seed lebrides,

00:50:47.680 as I call them, that are running around the world are really holding the keys to resilience

00:50:52.700 and to a regenerative future. So with that, I just say, save seeds because seeds save.

00:51:00.940 I love that. Well, perhaps in closing us out, you'd be willing to share

00:51:06.080 one of the most cherished stories in your time spent as the seed huntress.

00:51:10.680 When I was in the Cook Islands, I was in Rorotonga, and I was with this beautiful woman who invited us onto her ancestral taro fields up in this gorgeous plateau of the mountains.

00:51:28.160 And it's a culture where getting invited onto someone's land like that is really a massive honor.

00:51:35.280 and I was sitting up in this area and she was there with her granddaughter and met you know

00:51:41.760 just like everywhere else a lot of the younger generation may not be so into working with the

00:51:46.520 land or cultivating or eating those those local wild plants and such and she was so curious and

00:51:53.400 she was in such wonder and just listening to everything that her grandmother said and taught

00:51:59.240 her as the bubbling brooks of these taro fields and the dragonflies are flying around with

00:52:04.460 mountains that looked like the cartoon Moana. I mean, earlier that day, we had witnessed

00:52:11.100 a true coronation of a king where the entire island had brought their taro as an offering

00:52:17.780 and all cooked together. And it's really beautiful in these moments to see what the great paradigm

00:52:24.660 of respecting our elders and having the younger generations be in conversation and in mentorship

00:52:32.660 with them really looks like. And for me, it's always like I'm forever learning. I'm forever

00:52:39.560 listening and forever just joyful and grateful to be able to do this work because it's all just

00:52:48.060 about sharing it for the future generations, because we are the people of the pinch in this

00:52:53.080 pinch of time where it is my exquisite duty and responsibility to safeguard all these seeds for

00:53:00.260 all future generations. And so hopefully that's in the soils around the world and everyone can

00:53:07.300 come partake in this wonderful celebration that is seed saving. Wow. Thank you so much,

00:53:15.080 Sephra. This has been a beautiful conversation and I really do just pray that we get to collaborate

00:53:21.040 on seed saving together for temperate rainforest ecosystems. So yeah, you've given me a lot

00:53:27.780 to dream on. That would be so wonderful. I hope so much to do that.

00:53:33.040 thanks for listening to for the wild podcast i'm audio producer andrew stores

00:54:00.500 The music you heard today was by Lot Valda

00:54:04.240 And our theme music is by Kate Wolf

00:54:06.740 I'd like to thank our host and founder Ayanna Young

00:54:10.860 As well as our entire podcast team

00:54:14.000 Who bring this show to you each and every week

00:54:16.840 On outreach and research

00:54:19.240 Francesca Glaspell, Aidan McCray, and Hannah Wilton

00:54:23.300 Podcast music, Carter Lou McElroy

00:54:27.000 Digital community organizing

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00:54:32.460 Graphic and web design

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00:54:35.560 And Melanie Younger with Partnerships and Media

00:54:38.780 Thanks for listening

00:54:40.620 And we'll see you next week

00:54:59.320 Tall western cedar

00:55:03.100 Drifting on the wind

00:55:06.740 Through the mountains like a river

For The Wild - October 23, 2019

SEFRA ALEXANDRA on Seed Remembrance ⧸142

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