The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food

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The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food Page 23

by Ray, Janisse


  — 33 —

  stop walking around

  doing nothing

  “We have no place to start but where we are.”

  —Wendell Berry

  I WANT ONE MORE TIME to remind you of the most powerful thing in the world. It is a seed. In this era of transition, between the Age of Industrialization and the Ecozoic Era, a seed is life. Because we don’t know what is sealed in a seed, since the predetermined information is invisible, it can contain any number of surprises. Everything the seed has needed to know is encoded within it, and as the world changes, so it will discover everything it yet needs to know. That’s the nature of adaptation and evolution, the two most important jobs we have on this planet. So even with the climate crisis, even with peak oil and soil, even with financial collapse, there will be seeds that possess all the information they and we need, which is why I think seeds are the ultimate metaphor.

  Every morning I wake with fears and griefs; there are so many of them. I wake now into the news of storms. During the Cuban missile crisis, we built bunkers for fear of Soviet attack, where we would go to be safe. Now we build bunkers for seeds. When the storms have passed, what will we need to rebuild? We will need seeds. There is at least one in each of you. There is a bank of seeds within you. Let them grow.

  I excused myself from a phone conversation the other day when I looked out the window and saw my husband trying to chase calves back into the pasture where they were supposed to be. They’d been separated during the day so that Raven could milk in the evening, and they wanted to get back to their moms.

  “I gotta skedaddle,” I told my friend. “The calves are out.”

  “I read this quote once,” my friend replied, “that anyone who keeps animals will soon become slave to them.” He elongated the word slave.

  I’m not a quick thinker and I was outside, hollering like a banshee trying to cut a calf off and get her out of the young orchard, when I fabricated a witty retort: “Anyone who does not keep animals will soon become a slave to corporations.”

  The same with farming. Anyone who does not grow food will become a slave.

  Agriculture has created in us a story-based, community-reliant, land-loving people. It has given us a head start on what I call the Age of Bells, the time when bells—cowbells, dinnerbells, bells of flowers—will again be ringing across the hills and plains. We are coming to the new age of agriculture better prepared: knowledgeable about growing, able to do with less, happy in our communities, firm in gender and racial equality, healthier. I believe that the organic and local-food movement is leading the way to re-creating cultures that are vibrant and vital. What we are witnessing in agriculture is no less than a revolution.

  It also means we are on an edge—lots of edges, in fact. When I think of the edge, I think first of a literal one, the fencerow, which modern chemical agriculture has been destroying. This is the place where birds pooped out wild cherry seeds and wild cherry trees grew; and the place where, tired from the row, workers sat in the shade and told stories. It’s where a lone farmer watched a mockingbird sing.

  We occupy an edge between forest and field, the most exciting place in the world to me. We are on many edges: balancing the needs of the wild with the need to nourish people, balancing urban life with the need to eat, balancing concerns about human health with the need for productivity, weighing input against output, and making decisions based on both ecology and economy.

  There is also a psychological edge we’re all living on. We know that we’re living in a world that is being devastated but also one replete with the beauty and power of life. We live on the boundary of deciding to make positive contributions although we know we are implicit in the destruction. We skate between apathy, because the truth of what’s happening is painful to think about, versus action, any kind of action; and we skitter between the paralysis caused by grief and fear versus action. Every decision we have to make, whether it’s a life-sustaining or a life-destroying one, is an edge. Our very psyches are on the edge, between dropping out and dropping in, between selling out and fighting back. Every single one of us.

  The verge is a dangerous and frightening place. It’s important to know that one is not alone on it. The edge holds a tremendous amount of ecological and cultural as well as intellectual power. I believe that we have to get comfortable with it.

  How shall we live? As if we believe in the future. As if every one of us is a seed, which as you know is a sacred thing. In my wildest dreams the seeds of every species are speaking to me, calling out: in all the bare spots on earth plant us and let us grow. On all the edges, plant seeds.

  One weekend in a storytelling session during a writing workshop, I asked participants to tell stories of hope. One man told about stopping on busy Highway 441 near Franklin, North Carolina, to rescue a box turtle that was only a foot from the yellow line. By the time the man turned around and got to the turtle, a woman in an SUV smashed it before his eyes. The next day the man saw another turtle, again on Highway 441, this time in the turn lane. The road was so busy that the man drove four miles before he had a chance to do a 180, and when he got back to the turtle, a white van had stopped in the suicide lane and had successfully rescued the reptile. “I’m not the only one,” the man thought.

  Another story was about ten-year-old girls at a summer camp who chose to feed a dead guinea pig to their large exotic snake; what was hopeful to the storyteller was the matter-of-fact reaction of the girls, a realness. Another story was about a professor’s children who were visiting their dad on campus when they decided to make a sign: Students, Stop Walking Around Doing Nothing. They decorated the sign with pictures of the earth and peace signs.

  What I really want to say is that these stories seem small compared to the enormity of the problems. Gandhi, however, pointed out that big problems need small solutions. Big problems need one courageous and willing person. Big problems need you doing what you desire to do and doing it with great authority, great knowledge, and great love. Maybe, just maybe, once you have picked up a tool at hand and started to work, someone will say of you, using a wonderful African proverb implying that someone is attempting something far beyond what is comfortable or maybe even possible for them: “She has gone in search of the fabulous birds of the sea.”

  Let’s also get clear about hope. After talks I’ve been asked a hundred times—Am I hopeful? How do I find hope? Do I stay hopeful? How?

  The assumption is that hope is a prerequisite for action. Without hope one becomes depressed and then unable to act. For many years I tried to say that I find hope in nature. Not long ago somebody asked me the question again and suddenly I thought, Hope? Who needs hope?

  Do you feed your daughter because you have hope that she’ll turn out okay? Hope is important to me, but I want to stress that I do not act because I have hope. I act whether I have hope or not. It is useless to rely on hope as motivation to do what’s necessary and just and right. Why doesn’t anybody ever talk about love as motivation to act?

  Let me be even more truthful. It’s not hope or love that keep me going. It’s fight, which I will define as a life force surging in my heart.

  So the question How do I stay hopeful? becomes as ludicrous as How do I stay love-filled? I’ll tell you how. I wake every morning listening to the great-crested flycatcher call from the pear tree and I watch that fat old orange sun, always burning, rise flamboyantly over the pecan orchard. I watch Green Glaze collards go to seed. I watch hummingbirds in the red valentines of pigeon peas. Bottle-feeding the new calves after dark, I watch bats hunting insects. Before bed I walk outside and gaze up through the bare limbs of the swamp chestnut oak into the starry, starry sky above Red Earth Farm and I watch a meteor blaze a trail to earth.

  I may not have a lot of hope but I have plenty of love, which gives me fight.

  We are going to have to fall in love with place again and learn t
o stay put.

  We are going to have to fall in love with each other.

  We are going to have to learn courage and take action.

  We are going to have to ignore that good ideas have been marginalized and rush them back to the center of attention.

  One winter night I dreamed a marvelous dream. In it I watched a man jump from a plane. A colorful parachute opened against a tie-dyed, Technicolor sky. The air swirled with primary colors—in starbursts, vivid sundogs, spirals—like one of those six-inch-wide multicolored lollipops. Then I noticed a bicycle hanging from the parachute and I watched the man begin to pedal around through the universe. That was the totality of the dream but when I woke, I understood it to be a dream of possibility. We are leaping into the universe, and not only will we be given a parachute to save ourselves, we will be able to steer our course.

  I am reminded of the quote from William Rivers Pitt, “The final truth is self-evident. You are the one you’ve been waiting for.”

  I say, It’s the New Moon. Plant intentions. Don’t burn them in a fire. Get really, really clear. It’s going to be a powerful time. Sink into the place underground that seeds deserve.

  I say, Rev up your awesome. Look around, so many people have put their shoulders into the load. You. Find a place to push. Pick up a tool—a hoe or a shovel. Start turning the compost bin, to make the soil in which the seed will grow. You will begin at the center, the center of many concentric circles that expand further and further out from you. You soon will become a local hero and a local rock star, and from there your influence will wash outward, even across the globe, where so many people are rising up like germinating embryos to claim food sovereignty, to rescue local seeds, and to guard human civilization’s cornucopia. Come home. Have the courage to live the life you dream: There is nothing greater than this.

  Many of our seeds have been lost forever. But we can protect what’s left and in our revolutionary gardens we can develop the heirlooms of the future.

  Begin now.

  — 34 —

  last stand

  ARE YOU GOING to farmer up or just lie there and bleed?

  disclosure

  I DON’T OWN STOCK in any company mentioned in this book. This work is funded solely by Chelsea Green Publishing Company and the purchase of books by readers.

  in memory

  NOT LONG AFTER our visit to the farm of Jeff Bickart, his cancer returned in the form of brain tumors and treatment wasn’t possible. Jeff had only time to get his things in order. He wrote a funeral service and assigned parts to friends. He collected his poetry and self-published it with the help of his friend Sylvia Davatz, because this manner of publishing is quick. Jeff’s poems are brilliant and lovely. I heard that he sent a copy of the book to his mentor and hero, the poet Wendell Berry, and that Mr. Berry responded with a letter. Jeff used his last days to say goodbye to friends, to the farm, to the river, to his dreams, to a new variety of bean. With the finesse of someone expert at always finishing something, he completed his tenure on earth. He died October 17, 2008, at the age of forty-eight. As long as I am able, I will grow life-sustaining cowpeas in memory and honor of Jeff Bickart.

  acknowledgments

  BRIANNE GOODSPEED, my editor at Chelsea Green, breathed life into this book. Any writer should be so lucky as to have an editor such as she. I owe her untold gratitude for her incredibly careful read of the manuscript, her brilliant edits, and the friendship that developed along the way. Thank you, Brianne.

  I thank all the staff at Chelsea Green, especially Margo Baldwin, Joni Praded, Melissa Jacobson, and Patricia Stone. Thanks to Ben Watson for his guidance. Intern Alaina Smith created the resource pages and we are grateful for her work. Kelly Blair is the person responsible for the lovely cover. I thank Eric Raetz for copyedits, Shay Totten and the entire marketing team for their creativity, and Jenna Stewart for setting up author events.

  Thanks to Sam Stoloff, my agent at Frances Goldin Literary Agency.

  My friend Larry Kopczak read a late version of the manuscript and provided an incisive and transformative critique. Plant pathologist Albert Culbreath directed me to sources I needed. In addition, I am grateful to the following people for reviewing sections of the book in order to make sure I stayed on the right path: Dave Brown, Dave Cavagnaro, Albert Culbreath, Jack Daniel, Sylvia Davatz, Glenn Drowns, Doug Elliott, Yanna Fishman, Randolph Gardner, Jim Gerritsen, Steven Jones, Woody Malot, Julia Shipley, Tom Stearns, Douglas Tarver, and Raven Waters. I am deeply grateful to all of you.

  My one regret is that the writing of a volume such as this is never done. Always there are more seed savers, brimming with beautiful stories, that I want to interview and to write about. I could do another volume entirely. If you are not in this book, please believe me when I say that I wanted you to be, and please know that I would love to visit your garden and hold your seed collection in my hands. I thank all seed savers around the world for your work. I thank all who have given me seeds.

  A number of people inspired and encouraged me with their own books and actions, and those people include Suzanne Ashworth, Wendell Berry, Gary Nabhan, Vandana Shiva, and Jeffrey Smith. Through thick and thin Susan Cerulean has been my literary confidante, personal sage, and dear friend for over two decades. Although not listed here, my many and cherished friends give me strength and surround me with love. I thank you all.

  In addition, I am deeply grateful to Michael Cichon, M.D.; Susan Ganio, R.N.; Lee Arnold, P.A.; and all the people who devoted themselves to healing me from chronic Lyme disease. Their warmth and kindness sustained me through some rough days. I thank Elaine Cichon and the Clinic of Angels for financial support. I am very grateful to Stephen King, Margaret Morehouse, and all at the Haven Foundation; and Lisa Collier Cool and Trustees of the American Society of Journalists and Authors Charitable Trust for a grant from the Writers Emergency Assistance Fund. Without all of them, I would not be well and could not have written this.

  Without my ancestors, all the way back to the dawn of time, I would not have a chance to witness life on this beloved, breathtaking planet and I thank them. I especially thank my grandmother, Beulah Miller Branch, from whom I received the gift of my first seeds, as well as my parents, Franklin and Lee Ada Branch Ray.

  I thank my son, Silas, and my husband, Raven, for their love and their faith in me.

  For both the quiet resistance of gardeners and the vocal resistance of activists, I thank you. May it grow.

  what you can do

  EAT REAL FOOD.

  Learn to cook it. If you are eating processed food, you are electing for agribusiness to feed you, and you will not be supporting the preservation of heritage seeds. Besides, cooking food is healthier for you. “Cooking outweighs class as a predictor of a healthy diet,” said Michael Pollan.

  Buy organic food. Organic regulations currently prohibit the use of GM.

  Ask your local farmer or grocery store manager if the foods they are selling are GM.

  Grow a garden.

  Try to grow, between yourself and your friends, as much food as you consume. Make a trip to the supermarket a strange and intolerable experience.

  Become a farmer.

  Become a young farmer.

  Become an elder farmer.

  Become a girl farmer.

  Become a small farmer.

  Become an aspiring farmer.

  Grow open-source seeds.

  Buy seed from small, independent companies.

  Buy organic seed.

  Save your own seeds.

  Trade seeds within your community.

  Learn to hand-pollinate.

  Select plants for seed saving based on your locality and conditions.

  Learn to breed seed.

  Never grow GM seed.

  Nourish your pets and farm animals with non-GM feed.r />
  Promote your local farmers market and farmers markets in general.

  Become a seed activist.

  Work for local and national sovereignty over seeds.

  Work to make the United States a GM-free nation.

  Work to refocus agricultural experiment stations.

  Work to retrain extension agents in organic, seed-based, low-input systems.

  When the Farm Bill is next up for reauthorization, work to have it represent small and organic farmers, not Big Ag.

  Work for the rights of small farmers.

  Work for the intellectual property rights of indigenous farmers.

  Educate others about the importance of open-pollinated seeds.

  Help pass a food sovereignty ordinance in your village, city, county, or state.

  Succeed in passing laws requiring GM foods to be labeled in your state and country.

  Be joyful although you’ve considered all the facts.

  —Wendell Berry, “Manifesto:

  The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,”

  from The Country of Marriage

  farmer rights

  WE SUSTAINABLE FARMERS understand that we do not own life. We believe that farmers should have the right

  to good food

  to food sovereignty

  to grow and share seed year to year, generation to generation

  to the free exchange of genetic material among ourselves

  to define our own agricultural policies

  to choose diversity

  to grow what we choose in the manner we choose without being subjected to chemical overspray, pollution residue, coal ash, and genetic drift

  to sell what we grow, as long as it’s safe, in the manner we see fit

 

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