How gardeners are reclaiming agriculture from industry, one seed at a time

21.08.2023 - 12:02 / theunconventionalgardener.com / guest

Helen Anne Curry, University of Cambridge

Agriculture has changed significantly in the past century. Bigger machines, bigger farms and bigger budgets allow fewer farmers to produce more food. Changes in science and policy have also resulted in an industry in which power over what we grow and eat is increasingly held by very few.

Consider one of agriculture’s most basic inputs: the seed. Although there have long been farmers and merchants who specialised in growing and selling seeds, it wasn’t until the 20th century that people started talking about seed production as an industrial process. Thanks to changes in farming, science and government regulations, most of the “elite” seed that is bought and sold around the world today is mass produced and mass marketed — by just four transnational corporations.

This transition has made many people uneasy. As a result, a new movement is growing, one that aims to wrest power back through the renewal of an age-old agricultural task: setting aside some seeds from each season’s harvest to plant in the next. Community gardeners, home growers and small-scale farmers increasingly insist that seeds should be something they produce themselves, or get from a friend or neighbour, rather than something they buy off the shelf.

For some, seed saving is a way of keeping history alive, for example by growing the vegetables their grandparents enjoyed. For others, it’s a way to save money, or to connect with their community. And today, it is increasingly a political statement – a choice that allows consumers to avoid fruits, vegetables and other foods produced at an industrial scale. Depending on the grower, it may even be all of these — and more.

Many seed savers are motivated by the idea that their