New Partner Development Is Underway

Nov 15, 2017 | Activities

Last week I traveled six hours north of Baguio City to the beautiful town of Sagada in Mt. Province like I have many times before. Sagada is a peaceful mountain community that I have been fortunate to spend a lot of time in and have dear friends there. While the influx of domestic tourism from Manila has filled the town with Inn after Inn, the quiet beauty of this town surrounded by rice terraces and mountain views as far as the eye can see are always a joy to return too. My dear friend and host Siegrid, is a talented local potter and it was wonderful to spend time at the pottery studio helping direct droves of Manila tourists. Siegrid is also working on making seed storage jars for our seed library in Tublay. Clay jars create the perfect conditions for seed storage: Cool, Dark, and Dry!

A number of months ago Layog Country Farm located in Tadian, Mt. Province (about two hours from Sagada) reached out to us and expressed their interest in collaborating to bring Seed Saving Technical Training to their farm and the surrounding community. On Friday last week, I traveled to their beautiful 28-hectare family farm. The property is immaculately managed with an office, seminar venue, and lodging for trainings. The majority of the farm is protected forestland and they are cultivating about 1 hectare of the land with vegetables and a number of hectares are dedicated to dragon fruit production. The third generation to manage the farm is continuing their Grand Fathers legacy and vision for the space. They are a registered Organic Farming Field School under the Agriculture Training Institute- ATI, they have a vibrant volunteer program at the farm through various work-away programs, and they share our vision of helping farmers return to the historical practice of saving seeds and ending their dependence on purchasing chemically treated seeds from the farm supply stores and working to restore diversity and food security. We discussed the logistics of hosting a Seed School Training at the Farm sometime early in Quarter 2 next year and we are looking forward to finalizing these details and expanding our work to Mt. Province in the coming months.

I also had a great meeting with a representative from the Provincial Agriculture Office of Mt. Province (who also happens to be Siegrid’s Aunt). Auntie Hazel is very excited to bring our technical training programs to farmers throughout Mt. Province and would love to see a Seed Library put up at the Province (similar to our first Seed Library located in Tublay). We are thankful to have identified a supportive Provincial Government Officer and the combination of a great venue at Layog Farm and our expertise in Seed Saving should make for a wonderful team to expand our critically important work to Mt. Province next year!!

Yesterday, I had a final meeting with the Benguet Association of Seed Savers (BASS) before I head to Manila on Friday and fly out on Monday. It was wonderful to see these farmers smiling faces again! We started the gathering with another round of seed distribution. It is always so wonderful to witness their excitement about seeds and eagerness to learn about new crop varieties. This round Artichoke made quite the sensation, I was showing the farmers pictures of artichoke on the web and we pulled out our educational materials at the seed library so they could learn more about how to propagate artichoke for seeds. The BASS members enthusiasm for learning is contagious and I feel so very honored to work with this dedicated group of farmers and seed savers that truly are our hope!!

The farmers organized our meeting yesterday so they could generously present me with a beautiful Tapis, locally woven traditional outfit complete with all the jewelry!! It was so sweet of them to give me this generous gift and was a reminder that we truly are a partnership in this work and they are incredibly thankful for the support we have generated and confidence we help instill. Farming is not an easy job but little by little all of us at Global Seed Savers are helping the farmers gain not only the technical skills they need to be successful but also restore the value of this hopeful profession for generations to come. I am thankful to know and call our dedicated BASS members friends and family!!

Farm Visits and Successful Planning Session with BASS Members

Nov 4, 2017 | BASS

Image above: BASS Members pose for a photo after visiting the Boaz Family Farm in Atok!

On Monday we woke early and headed to Tublay to meet the BASS Members and conduct field visits to some of the new members farms. The farmers’ commitment, energy, and excitement about their collective work is truly infectious and it was wonderful to be greeted with big smiles and hugs by all when we arrived! We visited four farms in total and each has their own unique story and beauty. Many of the new farms are quite isolated from neighbors, which makes for wonderful growing conditions for both seeds and vegetables. I was particularly impressed with Ma’am Anita and Sir Jornald’s 1,000 sq meter farm located in Daclan, Tublay. They have a rich diversity of crops ranging from beans, turmeric, legumes, and various fruit trees. Anita shared that in 2008 she and her husband attended a seminar about organic farming held at the Municipal Hall and after attending this program they were inspired to go organic and began farming their land. Anita is a new member of BASS but is already proving to be a leader of the group and will be co-teaching one of our up-coming Seed Schools in a new region of the country next year!

Field visits have become a core component of our programming and it is always so inspiring to return and see these famers hard work in action. The field visits also foster a strong sense of group unity and identity amongst the BASS members. They often trade seeds and plants and are constantly sharing ideas about how to improve their organic farming and seed saving practices. We always share a meal together during our meetings, which is another way we are fostering a sense of family amongst the BASS Members. This shows because our conversations move easily between laughter and jokes and seed saving and organic farming realities in the country. These farmers know how to work hard and play hard!!

On Tuesday we all met again for a full day of planning and reflections with the BASS Members about the successes and challenges (opportunities) from this year and their plans and goals for 2018. It was amazing to make a list all of the things we accomplished this year including the following highlights:

  • More than doubled membership of BASS.
  • Registered BASS as official Association.
  • Held Training of Trainers Program for 30 Farmers. Preparing BASS Members to teach Seed Schools.
  • Held 2 Seed Schools with new partner communities in the Philippines. Co-facilitated by BASS Farmers.
  • Opened 1st of its kind collaborative Seed Library in Tublay. Currently the Seed Library has over 20 different varieties of seeds all produced by BASS Members.
  • 11 BASS Members completed a 3-Day Computer Training Course.

Wow, what an honor is has been to help make each of these successes a reality!

The BASS Members developed some fantastic goals for 2018 as well including:

  • By the end of 2018, BASS Members will have at least doubled the diversity of varieties available in the Seed Library.
  • By the end of 2018, BASS Membership will have increased by at least 50%.
  • By May, FY 2018: BASS will host a Provincial Wide Seed Forum and 1st Annual Seed Swap.

We are so excited to help these goals become a reality in the coming year!

We ended the meeting with a seed exchange where farmers got to select seeds they want to trial for viability here in the Philippines. Special shout out to our friends and partners at Seeds Trust for donating so many seed packets to our efforts! We look forward to sharing our second seed saving trial results with you in the coming months!

We are also thrilled to share the news, that as of October 25th, Global Seed Savers-Philippines is an officially registered Philippine NGO!! I am so excited to see where this continues to take us and looking forward to investing in building our continued local capacity as we mature and grow as local NGO. Many thanks to the connections of our local Philippine Board of Directors I will be having some meetings in Manila before I leave with potential funding and programmatic partners locally. We are thrilled to see our focus on seeds resonate with so many and excited to continue to see our organization germinate and grow!

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Karen and I with the official SEC NGO Registration Certificate.

 

 

Visiting Kai Farms and Connecting with our Growing Seed Family

Oct 31, 2017 | Other Partners

The thick humidity and warm air always fill me with a rush of excitement and intensity upon arrival to Metro Manila! My landing on Thursday afternoon was no different. It is a familiar intensity that I look forward to each time I return to my second home of the Philippines. After a quick night in Manila complete with a delicious veggie Kare-Kareng (Peanut Stew) at one of my “safe places” in Manila, Corner Tree Café and a lovely breakfast at Wildflour with our Program Manager Karen who met me in Manila on Thursday, we were off to our partners at Kai Farms.

Kai Farms is a 20-hectare farm in Silang, Cavite about two hours south of Manila. We connected with them last year and are so thankful for our partnership with these fellow seed savers and seed stewards. The farm is privately owned and they employ nearly 30 local community members and are actively organically farming, saving and selling seeds, and building our collective healed and whole earth! The vision of this sacred land is held and created by Karla and Amena the dynamic duo of soul earth sisters making Kai Farms a reality!

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L-R- Karla of Kai Farms, Sherry GSS, Amena Kai Farms, and Karen GSS. Pose for a photo after a great tour of the farm on Friday.

This last June we held a one-day Seed School with their farmers and other community members. This was the first seed school that two of our core farmers from the Benguet Association of Seed Savers (BASS) facilitated and our meetings last weekend were to brainstorm and make plans for our collective work restoring seed saving, organic sustainable agriculture, and ensuring that all people have access to healthy and sustainably produced food and seeds!

On Friday we toured the farm and got to visit with the Earth Worker/Earth Leaders (what they call their farmers) and tour the beautiful grounds. Each Earth Worker tends their own garden at the farm complete with beautiful names such as Gratitude, Kapayapaan (Peace), and Freedom. Each garden has a multitude of crops and they are practicing permaculture and each garden is also saving seeds. In addition to the tour and a lovely farm lunch Karen ended up giving an impromptu germination test lesson to the farmers and staff!

 

On Saturday, Kai Farms was kind enough to organize a beautiful community lunch for members of the Silang community, friends from Metro Manila, local restaurant owners, University Professors, and even the Vice Mayor and Municipal Agriculture Officer from Silang joined. We shared delicious organic food, our seed stories, and held a community discussion about our work and how we might continue to partner with Kai Farms and the greater Silang Community to continue to share our knowledge of seed saving and work together to ensure all communities have access to affordable and locally sustainably produced food and seeds.

It was inspiring to be with so many like-minded people all committed to a similar vision. I was particularly impressed with the young and dynamic Vice Mayor of Silang. He is probably no older than 35 and shared a compelling message of the great work Silang is doing to preserve their agriculture traditions and ensure the next generation of farmers stays engaged in these practices. They have declared themselves an agricultural Municipality and have also opened the first Agricultural High School in the Philippines. In addition the Local Government Unit (LGU) offers scholarships to deserving students that want to attend college to study agriculture. Each of these steps are innovative and will ensure that the next generation of farmers see the value in farming as opposed to turning away from this critically important livelihood.

 

 

 

We are very excited to partner with the LGU of Silang and Kai Farms to bring another Seed School to this community in 2018. We are also continuing to brainstorm ways Kai and Global Seed Savers can raise awareness about our shared work in 2018, likely starting with hosting a screening of SEED: The Untold Story in Metro Manila to raise awareness and funds about this movement and engage the urban support of Manila. We are so thankful for our growing collaborations with Kai Farms and look forward to seeing how our paths and work continue to grow together.

 

 

 

 

Planting Local Seeds and Leadership is the Key to Our Success

Oct 24, 2017 | Activities, Nourish Celebration

Image above: Members of the Benguet Association of Seed Savers pose for a photo after a recent monthly meeting in Tublay, Benguet.

In less than 24 hours I leave for my annual trip to the Philippines. Each year these trips are filled with different objectives, momentum, and excitement and this year’s is full of all of these emotions and more. We have had a big year as an organization: raising more revenue to date then ever before, opening our first Seed Library with our partner farmers, expanding our Seed School Technical Training Programs to new partners, and more. We have also had a very busy and big last few weeks coming off of another successful Nourish Event and announcing our new name…Global Seed Savers to better reflect our expanded mission and impact as we move into our next phase of work as an organization.

A key to our success in the last few years and moving forward is the local ownership and management of our mission, vision, and programs in the Philippines. As many of you know two years ago we hired our first Filipino Staff member and Karen, our Program Manager has been a dynamic, hard working, creative, and essential partner to the growth, broader impact, and expanding mission we are undertaking in the Philippines. We have also formed a truly counterpart Philippine NGO, Global Seed Savers-Philippines to ensure that the local management, governance, fundraising, and ownership of our continued success is in the hands of our partners. We have identified and formed a dynamic Philippine Board of Directors and we were honored to have our Philippine Board President, Padma Perez join us in Denver two weeks ago for our 7th Annual Nourish Event.

Padma and I at Nourish

Pictured during Nourish with Padma (right) to view more Nourish Photos thanks to Callen Blackburn please click here.

Padma delivered a compelling and passionate keynote during Nourish about the reality of food security in the Philippines. She compassionately described a common practice by many called pag-pag when families dumpster dive and then shake off and re-heat food scraps that have been discarded and then sell these for around 20 cents to their neighbors and community. This is the reality of hunger in the Philippines and while there is a growing demand for healthy and organically produced food, this is still only accessible to a small upper class minority in the Philippines. Our vision is that all people have access to healthy and sustainably produced food and seeds. This is a big task but like Wes Jackson the Founder of the Land Institute says and Padma shared during her compelling talk:

“ If your life work can be accomplished in your lifetime, then you are not thinking big enough.” -Wes Jackson, The Land Institute 

The challenges we face our real and ever present; three major agri-chemical companies own the majority of the worlds seeds and input markets, land development and “modernization” continue to threaten farmers land rights, and the next generations desire to leave farming and move to the cities for “better” opportunities is ever present in our country and the Philippines. However, we know at Global Seed Savers we are slowly, one farmer, and community at a time building our own collective future one that is rooted in the land, in the soil, and in the seed! I am honored to get to work with such talented and passionate partners in the Philippines and together we are ensuring a more food and climate secure world by returning to the historical practice of saving and sharing regionally adapted and affordable organic seeds!

Please stay tuned for more updates from the field as I am hitting the ground running upon arrival in Manila on Thursday. We will be meeting with our new partners at Kai Farms where we held a Seed School earlier this year and brainstorming about our future collaborations and participating in a community lunch with other seed and food advocates near Metro Manila. Thank you for your support and passion for this work and I am looking forward to sharing this up-coming trip with you all!

Mountain West Seed Summit: Lessons from the Past to Guide our Future

Mar 15, 2017 | Activities

Image above: Beautiful Sacred Seed at the Tesque Pueblo Seed Bank

Part 1: Indigenous Communities and Their Innate Resilience

I was honored to attend and have the opportunity to moderate and speak on a panel during the recent Mountain West Seed Summit hosted by our collaborators and friends at the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The panel was titled, “Working With Traditional Communities,” which was a theme of the entire Summit. The other panelists were Lynda Prim, a seasoned anthropologist that has been working with SW native peoples for over 30 years helping restore seed saving and ecological agricultural practices, to Lorraine Gray, a Mowhawk woman and Executive Director of The Four Bridges Traveling Permaculture Institute. She works to reconnect her people with the land, permaculture, and ecologically sound practices. Brett Baker, currently an organic certifier for the State of New Mexico with years of experience collecting and saving seeds throughout the SW Region. As well as, Heather DeLong the Director of DeLaney Community Farm in Aurora, Colorado which has recently transitioned into an all refugee farm. Heather joined us in the Philippines last November to help facilitate the Seed School and Farmer Capacity Building Seminar.

Wonderful to reunite with Belle, Heather, and Bill at the Seed Summit!

Wonderful to reunite with Belle, Heather, and Bill at the Seed Summit!

Beautiful altar during the Seed Swap at the Summit

Beautiful altar during the Seed Swap at the Summit

A theme we all shared during our presentations was that indigenous communities have had and will continue to have the knowledge, skills, and wisdom to build resilient and ecologically sound communities. When you look at history, it is indigenous peoples around the globe, be it our Ibaloi and Kankana-ey farmers in the Philippines, or the Pueblo and Native American populations we had the opportunity to learn from during the Summit, it is their traditions and history of resiliency, stewardship of the land, and perhaps most importantly connection to seed as the root of all life and key element to our sustenance and survival. This is what we must learn from in a “modern world,” perhaps now more than ever!

For me, the Mountain West Seed Summit was a reminder of the resiliency of our indigenous peoples and that our food and seed have a sacred connection to culture, one that is too important to be forgotten and lost.

Tesque Pueblo Beautiful Seed Bank