As the world’s agriculture and food systems face a crisis of disappearing seed diversity, a new short film tells the story of how African farming communities and organisations are reviving traditional seed diversity across the continent, and resisting mounting corporate pressure to use industrialised seed and farming methods.
Seeds of Sovereignty shows that farmers around the world have saved and bred an unimaginable wealth of seed diversity to meet their many different challenges, but as corporate seed and chemicals replace farmers’ own ingenuity, this diversity is steadily disappearing. Reviving farmers’ in-depth knowledge of how to save and adapt seed is critical, and the film is aimed to encourage others to do so by setting out the key stages in this process.
Through interviews and stunning cinematography from across the continent, the 35-minute film unpacks an approach aligned to the principles of the growing global food sovereignty movement and provides a guide for anyone looking to revive traditional, diversity rich, seed and farming systems around the world.