permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Steven McFadden <chiron@chiron-communications.com>
Date: Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 9:18 AM
Subject: [SANET-MG] Notes from the Mountain West Seed Summit
To: sanet-mg@googlegroups.com


*SANET Compatriots ~*

A couple of quick notes from the impressive Mountain West Seed Summit,
underway this weekend in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It’s a gathering of a couple
of hundred seed savers, and people representing seed hubs and seed
companies.


*Belle Star*, co-founder of the hosting organization, the Rocky Mountain
Seed Alliance, an organization started just three years ago: “We are
working to build strong food hubs around the country. The local food
movement is huge and growing. But how many are saving seeds? That part is
missing.

“What is our duty? Diversity. I hope the thing we carry out of this summit
is passion to empower and inspire. That’s how we are going to get
diversity. This has to be a grassroots movement. The more people who save
seeds, the more resilient the system we create...We hope this will go on
for generations.

-------

*Emigdio Ballon*, a Quechua native from Bolivia, Agricultural Director for
the Pueblo of Tesuque, NM: “The seeds are calling us. They are asking us to
help them continue their evolution as they help ours.

“It’s very difficult for the seeds now. In 2011 we talked about seed
security and its relation to food security. That’s when we started our seed
bank to protect the seeds handed down to us from time immemorial. Now we
are talking also about climate change, and how that is impacting us. How
can the seeds sustain us, and our unborn? They need to be protected because
of the corporations polluting the earth, and claiming patents over nature.
Indigenous people care. Indigenous peoples are protectors.

-------

*Clayton Brascoupe*, a Mohawk/Anishnabeg farmer, founder of the Traditional
Native America Farmers Association: “What is a seed?  Seed is life, mother,
embryo, treasure, potential, possibility, relative, our child. All of those
things. There is a fundamental, essential relationship that we have.

“We’ve been going along side by side with each other for thousands of
years, and now we are in this present generation. We have a treaty, a
covenant with the seeds. The seeds are a part of who we are. We have to
take care of our relatives, the seeds, and they in turn will take care of
us.

“Seeds are the first link in the food chain, and this link is now under
threat. Our responsibility is to preserve them for forthcoming generations.”

------

More to come in the day ahead…

*Link to the Summit webpage:* https://rockymountainseeds.
org/attend/mountain-west-seed-summit







Steven McFadden

*Chiron Communications*
<http://s.wisestamp.com/links?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chiron-communications.com>

402-304-6580 <(402)%20304-6580>





-- 
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared