permaculture

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network <lakinroe@silcom.com>]

http://www.ancientcerealgrains.org/

Kusa Seeds Ancient Cereal Grains

Our Mission Statement


The purpose of The Kusa Seed Society is to 
increase humanity’s knowledge and understanding 
of a very ancient relationship  ­  the 
relationship connecting humanity with the edible seedcrops.

The precious edible seeds of the earth ­ the 
cereal grains, grain-legumes, oilseeds and other 
precious edible seeds  ­ have a history of 
small-scale cultivation and utilization which 
dates back more than 10,000 years.

The purpose of The Kusa Seed Society is to 
educate about this relationship connecting 
humanity and the seeds, with a modern voice.


Our Motto
Practical Work With Seedcrops   ­  Research Work on ‘Sacred Grasses’
“Work for the Future, Being Done Today”

The purpose of The Kusa Seed Research Foundation 
and The Kusa Seed Society (established 1980) is: 
to be a voice for the precious edible seeds of the earth.

The Kusa Seed Research Foundation is a 
not-for-profit scientific and educational 
organization chartered under United States tax 
laws as a 501(c)(3) public charity. The Kusa Seed 
Society, managed and operated by the Foundation, 
is the interactive, public face of the seedwork.

The task of The Kusa Seed Society is to make 
available for immediate distribution, benefits 
having to do with humanity’s ancient relationship with the seeds.

The task of The Kusa Seed Research Foundation is 
to carry-out the managerial and administrative 
aspects of the seedwork, and to be a “think 
tank,” developing educational services in the 
topical area of human nutrition and grains. The 
Foundation concerns itself with seedstock 
regeneration and conservation, publishing for 
public consumption, and long-range planning and 
development, working to insure the future of the 
seedwork, in order that a steady flow of 
distributed public benefits may be maintained.

The Kusa Seed organization has operated 
continuously since 1980, regenerating rare seed, 
carrying-on public education work in the form of 
public lectures and color-slide presentations, 
and distributing seed and literature in accord 
with its mission. Lectures and color-slide 
presentations have been delivered to audiences 
numbering in the hundreds, and thousands of 
packets of rare seeds have been distributed to the public.

To serve its assignment, The Kusa Seed 
organization has pursued research studies 
exploring ancient cultures, traditional farming 
practices, and the folklife, folkways, and rural 
cuisine of edible seedcrops worldwide. The Kusa 
Seed organization strives to be a resource of 
expertise on the role and function of cereal 
grains as culture and cuisine elements. In the 
view of the Kusa Seed organization, the seeds and 
grains of its mission are among the earth’s most 
valuable heirlooms and their preservation is of 
primal significance. The Kusa Seed organization’s 
research studies have employed scholarly 
investigatory techniques to explore the food-arts 
and nutritional merits associated with humanity’s 
ancient cereal-grains, grain-legumes, and other 
edible seedcrops. Study intensives have included 
the topics of modern nutritional values and 
traditional healing and medicinal principles 
associated with the edible seedcrops, and the 
ecological farming methods for producing the crops.



About The Word “Kusa”

The word “kusa” is a word from the ancient 
Sanskrit language.  In the fullness of time, the 
word came to be used in India as a name for a 
storied, ceremonial sacred grass:  the kusa 
grass.  Behind the legendary kusa grass lies one 
of humanity’s great myths.  The legend of a 
“sacred grass” rises out of the mists of time at 
the beginning of history in the ancient East.

Just as a human mother nourishes her offspring, 
humanity at the beginning of history perceived a 
“great vegetal mother” whose green plants made 
human life possible through nourishment.

Humanity’s ancient legend of a special “sacred 
grass” (the kusa grass), pays tribute at its root 
to this concept of a great vegetal mother whose 
botanic bounty sustains all life on earth.

The cereal grains are humanity’s most important, 
renewable, human food resource.  As such, they 
have rightly been called “culture elements” 
(pillars of civilization).  Because of their 
life-or-death importance, the cereal grasses have 
been from time immemorial respected as “sacred 
grasses” by many peoples around the world.

Because its purpose is to reawaken and foster a 
modern appreciation of the precious value of the 
ancient, biodiverse edible seedcrops, at the time 
of this organization’s founding, the ancient 
Sanskrit word kusa was employed to form the 
organization’s name.  This christening was made 
as a gesture of botanical respect focused on the 
grain-producing cereal grasses of the earth.



About Our Philosophy and Approach

The Kusa Seed organization’s concerns include the 
question of seed ownership.  As others have 
pointed out, for 10,000 years the owner has been 
the one who grew the seed.  Humanity’s industrial 
revolution has produced an agriculture which 
seeks a reversal of that ancient paradigm.

Industrial-strength agriculture minimizes the 
different kinds of seeds and the total number of 
farmers.  Local seeds disappear, replaced by 
highly-fixed, genetically uniform 
varieties.  Sterile hybrids, 
genetically-modified-organisms and private 
intellectual property rights controlling the 
ownership of seed are some of the products of 
industrialized agriculture  ­  a social movement 
to commodify nature and reshape landscapes, diets 
and lives according to criteria, standards and 
laws which ignore and abuse the commonality of humanity and the common good.

As a new millennium opens, the word “holistic” is 
well-established in the English 
lexicon.  Increasingly, members of the public 
worldwide, appreciate and ask for, access to the 
benefits which derive from approaching a given 
subject-matter in an all-inclusive manner.  Such 
an approach strives to consider the unity of all 
the dependent elements of a topic. The 
biodiversity of earth’s edible seedcrops is broad 
and wide.  The plants hold numerous specialized 
traits for agroecologic performance (climates, 
soils) and the grains hold a vast array of traits 
for culinary, medicinal, and nutritional 
utilization.  Over time, a vast corpus of 
folk-knowledge and folk-wisdom has been 
established by humanity as the lore of these 
crops.  It is that corpus as well as the seeds 
themselves, which are the chosen focus of the Kusa Seed organization.

In the view of the Kusa Seed organization, great 
practical treasures reside in the depths of the 
folk-philosophy and folk-wisdom inextricably 
linked with the edible seedcrops.  There are 
compelling modern reasons to study closely and to 
value the cerealian mini-farming and food 
traditions dating from the ancient past.  There 
are practical reasons to explore the ancestry of 
these human food nutritional substances.  The 
cereal crops produce grain which has deep 
harmonic resonance with humanity’s cellular 
biochemical nutritional structure.  For nearly 30 
years the Kusa Seed organization has maintained 
its operating policy to study and consider the 
edible-seedcrops from a “whole-crop” 
approach.  In keeping with its mission, the 
organization has disseminated findings useful to 
utilizing the edible seedcrops as nutritious 
staple foods.  In the view of the Kusa Seed 
organization, the techniques and arts of 
small-scale production of the edible seeds and 
grains  ­  including their post-production 
storage and safekeeping  ­  comprise a valuable 
body of human knowledge.  In summary, the focus 
of the Kusa Seed organization is on edible 
seedcrops as human food nutritional substances in 
the context of small-scale processes. The Kusa 
Seed organization has intentionally specialized 
in seedcrops of folk-origin (non-hybridized 
folk-cereals) whose grain can be used as staple 
food and whose fruits can also be saved as 
seed.  In the view of the Kusa Seed organization, 
these grains are the seeds for a healthy, sustainable, human future.

Our Seed and Literature Catalog

Join a collaborative network of people working to 
advance the knowledge and understanding of 
ancient cereal grains and other edible seedcrops for modern nutrition.

We offer you the “real thing”; planting-seeds for 
edible seedcrops. In the view of the Kusa Seed 
organization, the plants themselves are teachers. 
Enroll yourself in a “study course” at your own 
home! Simply invite one of our esteemed faculty 
members to come and grow at your place; you plant 
the seed and the “study course” will unfold 
before your eyes. Our faculty hail from the far 
corners of the earth’s storied mountains, 
valleys, and plains ­ from Afghanistan; India; 
Iraq; Italy; Japan; Korea; Poland; Russia; Tibet and other places.

Join us!

To find out more about our faculty members and 
our course-literature, take a look at our 
<http://www.ancientcerealgrains.org/seedandliteraturecatalog1.html>Seed 
& Literature Catalog.

To download a .pdf document which you can print 
from Adobe Acrobat Reader, click on the following 
links: 
<http://www.ancientcerealgrains.org/pdf/SeedCatalog-9-12s.pdf>Seed 
and Literature Catalog | 
<http://www.ancientcerealgrains.org/pdf/orderform1.pdf>Order Form


Our Publication Project Needs Support

Reading materials providing information about 
seeds are probably the next most valuable thing 
after the seeds themselves.  Print materials have 
the ability to travel far and wide with a certain amount of durability.

The Kusa Seed organization has at hand an 
opportunity to publish a one-of-a-kind handbook 
on the “lost art” of appreciating and utilizing 
the spirituality and beauty of grain.  The 
manuscript is completed and ready for publication.



What grain amounts to spiritually, was deeply 
understood in the past.  Today however, we have 
lost that understanding.  The link between human 
spirituality and grain’s inner-beauty has become 
blocked from view in modern 
times.   Consequently, the knowledge and 
understanding of the inner-beauty of grain has 
become something which is properly categorized today as a “lost art.”

So today, to understand  ­ to comprehend grain in 
a deep way ­ to recover this beauty knowledge, 
it’s beneficial for us to visit the past to seek 
and consult teachings stored there.  Visiting the 
past is not an onerous requirement, it’s simply a choice.

The Kusa Seed organization stands at the 
threshold of a grand opportunity to take a large 
step forward in fulfilling its public-benefit 
educational mission.  The organization has 
at-hand a completed, three-volume Handbook 
detailing the “lost art” of appreciating and 
utilizing grain.  The handbook is complete in 
manuscript form at the present time.

This literary-work, footnoted to the world 
literature-base, is the product of 35 years of 
painstaking scholarly research, discovery, and 
assembly.  Written in everyday language for the 
general public, the three individual volumes are 
richly illustrated with photographs and line-drawings.

The first volume of the Handbook is a history of 
grains and humanity’s relationship 
thereto.  Included is the history of porridge and 
also a crop-biography; the life-story of one of 
the cerealian founder-crops of 
agriculture.  Volume One includes an explanation 
of the ancient myth of the sacred kusa grass, 
including material never brought to print 
before.  Volume Two of the Handbook is a complete 
and detailed agronomic manual covering the 
small-scale production of edible seedcrops.  Each 
step and every practical detail is explained and 
illustrated, from sowing to post-harvest 
storage.  The manual features a complete 
ecological approach, completely free of the use 
of any synthetic input chemicals.  Volume Three 
of the Handbook is an atlas mapping out the lost 
arts of delicious grain cuisine, a treasure trove 
of culinary recipes; cerealian cuisine completely 
free of meat, dairy, and sugar.

This publishing project requires financial sponsorship.

To take advantage of this one-of-a-kind 
Publication Sponsorship opportunity, contact the 
Kusa Seed organization’s executive director, Mr. Lorenz K. Schaller.



Contact Us


By Mail:

The Kusa Seed Research Foundation
Post Office Box  761
Ojai, California  93024  USA


By E-Mail:
<mailto:info@ancientcerealgrains.org>info@ancientcerealgrains.org



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