Seed sovereignty, heirloom variety preservation, and traditional breeding systems.
Farmers in K Village, northeastern Thailand, have self-bred more than 250 local rice varieties and sell organic rice direct via e-commerce. With their rice cooperative incubated by the village credit cooperative, they need no subsidies even as prices fell 30 per cent.
Former consultant Chen Xi now organises members of the local clan to grow rice in the terraced fields of Yangdong Village, Qiandongnan, preserving more than twenty varieties of local paddy rice and grains and building a children’s library through purple rice charity sales.
Guan Qi died unexpectedly on a business trip in Qinghai. Colleagues at Foodthink and the Farmer Seed Network remember the “study committee member” who guarded old seeds — always tossing papers into group chats, dragging friends out for lager, mailing local specialities to farming friends across the country.
Farmer Seed Network core member Guan Qi died unexpectedly on a March business trip to Qinghai. Foodthink colleagues and partners write of a friend who bridged land and academia on the seed-conservation front line – and always dragged everyone out to try new restaurants and craft beer.
In Youmi Village, north-west Yunnan, left-behind women, including Yuting and Ga Tu, are trialling water-saving upland rice. The NGO Farmers’ Seed Network, through Jinghong-based restaurant owner Haimei, found an old Jino variety, Sickler Rice, from Xishuangbanna, leaving a spark for staple food and rice-growing culture.
From two bundles of Chinese leeks picked up at the big rural market, Uncle Li has spent over twenty years saving seed and selecting, coaxing a white shank longer, whiter, and better able to weather the torrential rain and floods of the Beijing suburbs.
An ecological farmer from Yangdong Village, Qiandongnan, the owner of Wocuiyuan Family Farm in Baoding, and the Farmer Seed Network’s Eastern Office head discuss vanishing old varieties, seed saving difficulties, and the Philippines’ “Golden Rice” lawsuit, asking who decides what we grow and eat.
Farmer Liu Yurong in Wangjingzhuang, Shexian, Hebei, has revived the White Common Bean, nearly lost from the village, yet 171 heritage varieties in the area still face the compounded pressures of replacement by new varieties, abandoned terraced fields and extreme drought.
In some villages in Sichuan, farmers and the public-interest organisation Home Action are trialling low-input, low-pesticide methods that retain local heirloom varieties, helping families eat healthily first and keeping seeds for the community to cope with heat and drought.
In Jianyang, Ya’an and other places in Sichuan, farmers including Yang Xiuyou and non-profit organisation Home Action use no-till cover, heirloom varieties and experience in storing grain to cope with harvest risk in persistent drought, while also sustaining village life for the left-behind elderly.
