Why you should care about seed diversity during COVID. Yes, you!
Issue 187: Seed security is food security is national security.
Hello! Welcome to Nosh Box, a lunchtime-ish food newsletter. Before we start, a favor: if you enjoy Nosh Box (which I sincerely hope you do!) please share it. It would mean a ton to me if you forwarded this or posted about it or climbed up onto your roof (mask on, of course) and yelled about it to passersby.
Read yesterday’s dispatch: What the heck is going on with moldy jams, everything being cake, and Goya Foods?
First, some news: Food Tank president Dani Nierenberg won the Julia Child Award, a prestigious honor in food/foodways. So exciting! She has a really insightful interview in the Washington Post today, and also said some of the award money will go toward establishing a paid food justice fellowship at Food Tank, which is really valuable. (And again, as I say every time, I’m not just saying this because I work for them! I genuinely admire the work Dani does!)
OK. Today I want to talk about seed security and diversity during Covid-19 — and why it matters to you, even if you’ve never bought or planted a seed in your life. (Although I hope you will!)
Gary Paul Nabhan, the ethnobotanist and seed-saving pioneer and MacArthur “Genius Grant” Award winner, and I wrote an op-ed in Food Tank last week calling for stronger community-based seed diversity during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is an inspiring advocate and it was truly, truly one of the biggest honors of my journalism life to get to work on this with him.
I’ll share a couple paragraphs from the essay to explain the problems we find ourselves faced with, and then I’ll elaborate a little beyond what’s in the essay to talk specifically about how this affects us and what we can do about it.
So, in a nutshell, here’s what Covid has done to our seed system:
Since the beginning of March, seed sales from online catalogs have increased three- to five-fold, while nurseries and garden store outlets quickly ran out of stock. And paradoxically, COVID-19 has also made operations significantly more difficult for diverse seed-saving institutions, such as Seed Savers Exchange and Native Seeds/SEARCH, both of which closed temporarily to reconfigure in order to meet the increased demand. And while the pandemic’s danger for all agricultural and food workers is painfully evident, COVID-19 is particularly threatening to the many workers in the seed supply chain.
This restructuring of the seed supply chain in March and April—coupled with the spike in demand—generated a several-week delay for buyers to receive the seeds they ordered. It wreaked havoc on gardeners and farmers trying to get their seeds in the ground under optimal weather conditions. And this change will likely have an even greater effect on future growing seasons, should seed supply continue to lag far behind demand.
In response to these challenges, some companies have chosen to exclusively sell highly valued seeds in bulk quantities to commercial farmers. For a swamped seed house, processing one large order is quicker—and therefore, safer—than dozens of smaller ones. … However, fewer farmers save their own seed stock from year to year than they once did. On the other hand, gardeners have a higher probability of saving the progeny of the seeds they purchase for future plantings. A pivot toward bulk farm sales may ultimately affect the diversity and spatial heterogeneity of food crops being grown in any given locale.
Why? A region’s seed supply could be skewed further toward more economically powerful customers who lack the incentive or ability to save and regrow their seeds—people who use seeds more as a commodity in the food economy. Geographic consolidation also leaves seed diversity more vulnerable to catastrophes like climate disasters, pest plagues, or disease outbreaks. In terms of genetic resource conservation, it’s risky to have all your eggs in one basket.
Here’s the whole article if you’re interested in reading more. (I hope you are! But no hard feelings.)
photo by Gary Paul Nabhan @ Food Tank
So. How does this affect you?
Food prices could go up.
It’s true. Seed companies have had to dip into their foundation seed, or the stuff they keep as backup to make sure they can withstand catastrophes. It might take them until 2024 to regenerate, meaning seeds will be more expensive till then. Pricier seeds = farmers needing to sell their harvest for more money = food prices could go up. Just think about what happened during the 1979 oil crisis, Y2K, or even the 2008 recession.
Variety and abundance could go down.
Mhmm. Some farmers couldn’t get all their seeds in the ground in time due to shortages, and certain growers may not be able to get seeds at all. Depending on where you live and where your food comes from, you may be seeing less of it this year — and next year.
Plus, genetic diversity is hugely important to a varied food supply. If every farmer in California were to grow one kind of strawberry with seeds from one single company (which, given the current consolidation of the ag industry, not hard to fathom), and then gets hit with a strawberry blight — well, goodbye to 88% of our country’s strawberries. But if farmers across the whole country are growing crops with their own locally regenerated seeds, a strawberry blight in California would have a smaller impact. And we’d have heartier local fruit in stores. And conceivably, farmers would be more able to save and regrow seeds better adapted to their specific climate and pest conditions. That’s selective breeding, baybeeeee.
Our food system and national security could be more vulnerable.
This is less of a stretch than it might seem. We know not all our food is grown in the U.S.; some of the seeds you find at the store, including “heirloom” varieties, might not be either. Seed companies are increasingly outsourcing their growing to places where land or labor for farmwork or processing might be cheaper (or even weather might be better). Seeds are coming from China, from South Africa, from Baja California, from the Netherlands. We don’t know whether the seeds are carrying any seed-borne viruses until a problem breaks out, like the current tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV) affecting solanaceous crops around the world. Obviously, the U.S. is just as susceptible to blight as anywhere else, and a protectionist food trade policy is not the answer. The problem is the obfuscation on the part of seed companies, which puts the USDA in its current position of having to scramble to contain the fruit virus at points of entry, rather than agencies and farmers being able to mitigate it domestically if we had more robust local seed sovereignty. In short, seed security is food security is national security.
What should we do about it?
A couple things!
Grow your own food. Even if it’s a little basil plant or a windowsill vegetable garden, take control over a small part of your personal food supply. Then, after the growing season, save your seeds to replant or to donate to a friend, seed-saving institution, or seed library. Here’s what I mean:
Support the nonprofits that are building a middle ground between global corporate producers and individual seed-savers — that are regenerating and distributing locally adapted, genetically diverse seeds. Native Seeds/SEARCH (Southwest), Seed Savers Exchange (Midwest), Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance (Mountain west), Hawai'i Public Seed Initiative (…Hawaii), Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (mid-Atlantic and South), and more. Buy their seeds!!
Create or utilize free seed libraries. Sometimes these are run through traditional public libraries; other times, a food bank or community organization steps up to let people check out seeds for free, with the expectation that you’ll return some at the end of the growing season. Seed libraries democratize seed diversity at the hyper-local level without jeopardizing long-term seed banks. Just google your city + free seed library and hopefully you’ll find something — they’re all over. If not, this website has a guide to starting one for your community.
