Building a regional seed network in the Southeast.
Helene Schulze is one of the co-directors of the London Freedom Seed Bank. Since July 2020, she is also Regional Coordinator for the Southeast England for the Seed Sovereignty Programme of the UK and Ireland. Here she unpacks what her hopes are for the new role, how it intersects with her work at LFSB and how you can get involved.
The ongoing pandemic has shaken up the UK seed system. Demand for seed from seed companies as well as community seed banks and networks spiked dramatically. Temporarily empty supermarket shelves coupled with a long summer lockdown pushed people into their gardens and balconies to grow their own food. Seed companies struggled to meet this drastic increase in demand, with one reporting in early Spring a 600% increase when compared week-on-week to the same time last year.
It is an exciting and vital time to be involved with seed. We need to mobilise this fresh energy and attention to seed, to embed seed sovereignty in the dominant food system and insist on more resilient and just ways of growing and accessing food.
Since July of this year, I have worked as Regional Coordinator for Southeast England for the Gaia Foundation’s Seed Sovereignty Programme. My hopes in applying and accepting the job were to deepen my understanding of the seed sector (both commercial and community-oriented), to support and increase the number of commercial seed producers in the Southeast, to keep tabs on the emerging legislative changes in light of Brexit and to bolster and connect community seed initiatives across the UK and Ireland.
There is so much exiting work happening in this field but it is easy for grassroots initiatives like the London Freedom Seed Bank to work in quite a siloed manner; we rely on the dedication and hard work of volunteers and invest our energies in building up a necessarily geographically-bound network of London growers and seed savers. This is the same for local community seed banks and networks across the country. There is simply not that much space left over to link up with other projects. I wonder how we can sustainably connect, collaborate and skill-up together on a more regional and national level.
What support do these community initiatives need to work most effectively, to minimise risk of burn-out (sadly high in grassroots projects) and to build a resilient community seed sector? Which models of organisation and information sharing are similar projects using? How can we share experiences and work together across distances?
These questions inform my work and planning as I step into this new role and design the next 3 years of my work.
I have admired the work of the Seed Sovereignty Programme for some time. The overarching aim is to build a biodiverse, agroecological seed system across the UK and Ireland and to increase the amount of agroecological, open-pollinated seed produced here. It does so by working closely with farmers, seed producers and community groups to train people up in seed production and assist on routes to market (to increase the amount of commercial seed available) as well as bolstering non-commercial seed networks. It is about skilling up together, to get more local, agroecoloical and open-pollinated seed on the market and circulating in informal networks across the country. This is organised through 6 regional coordinators, spread across the UK and Ireland.
What are the plans for the coming months?
- I will be running a year-long training programme for experienced growers interested in commercial seed production. Beginning next spring, this will consist of likely 8 workshops covering the history and politics of seed, the fundamentals of seed production, crop selection, harvesting and processing.
- I will host introductory, one-day workshops on seed saving and production.
- I will be gearing up for a national Community Seed Festival next year.
The exact nature and timings of these events are of course dependent on how the pandemic continues to unfold.
I welcome input! Do you have ideas for events or trainings which would be useful to get more people producing seed locally? Have you been producing seed but struggle with routes to market? Are you confused by the legislation around saving and selling seed? Do you want to host any trainings either in commercial seed production or seed saving for personal/ community use? Do you produce seed and think you could train others to do the same? Do you want to host a seed swap? What do you think would be the most useful support a national network such as the Seed Sovereignty Programme could provide the seed sector in the Southeast?
These are early days and it is important to me to involve all interested parties in the formulation of the plans for the next 3 years. I would like to build trainings and events which are catered to the specific needs of our region, so please do get in touch if you would like to contribute or collaborate or just voice an idea.