The Food Sharing Revolution by Michael S. Carolan

Author:Michael S. Carolan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Island Press
Published: 2018-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

Brice, with his Vans shoes, fedora, purple hair, and bright green glasses, did not look like your typical seed saver. I met with him outside at a picnic table, under the shade of a large oak. The tree dripped with life, its branches days away from erupting with leaves that would mark another year, a new ring in its core a testament to a long life. Spring. In another month, the seed in Brice’s hand would begin its metamorphosis. Within a single lunar phase, it would be breaking through the soil.

I started the interview by asking Brice about what drew him to seed saving. “This is about the most precious resource of all.” He was not talking only about the seed packet clenched in his hand. He lifted both arms up, giving me flashbacks to watching The Price Is Right as a kid, when a contestant was being shown a prize for the first time. He was clearly talking about, well, everything—the seed, the property we were on, the people attached to this space, and the knowledge attached to those people. “It’s about setting knowledge free. With that you can do anything, which is precisely why Big Food has done everything it can to lock it up.”

When talk turns to the sharing economy, attention is often directed to the sharing of things—goods, food, equipment, even land and buildings. What tends to get missed is that peer-to-peer sharing works only when those peers know what they’re doing.

I was sitting with Brice on the grounds of the Seed Savers Exchange. SSE is tucked up in the northeastern corner of Iowa, a mere fifteen-minute drive to the Minnesota border. (It is also a twenty-five-minute drive, in the other direction, to my hometown, where my parents still live.) SSE consists of an 890-acre farm, known as Heritage Farm. A nonprofit organization, SSE maintains a collection of more than 20,000 heirloom and open-pollinated vegetable, herb, and plant varieties, plus over 1,000 varieties of heritage apple trees. It is one of the largest nongovernmental seed banks in the United States. It is a living seed bank: every year, SSE grows out selected varieties—hence the name, Heritage Farm—to refresh its supply.

With its barn, gardens, gravel drive, and wildlife, this is not your typical seed bank—a far cry from the Fort Knox—like facility near my office at Colorado State University, where the U.S. federal seed vault is located. This government operated facility—the building is nondescript, beige, and dotted with security cameras—looks about as welcoming as a federal prison, which is basically what it is, for a very specific class of nonhuman inmates. SSE, meanwhile, expects and even welcomes visitations and freely releases members from its general population. But more than that, it promotes cohabitation and collaborative learning. Its aim is not just to lock away the “assets” but also to share them, bringing people, seed, and experiences together.

Brice and I stood in front of the visitors’ center. With its red paint and white trim, the newish building looked like a barn.

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