Seedy Sunday
Encyclopedia
Seedy Sunday or Seedy Saturday refers to events where people get together to swap seed
s, especially heirloom
varieties, or varieties that have been in the family for years if not several generations. Seeds of Diversity Canada lists the various Canadian seed exchanges. http://www.seeds.ca/ev/events.php
The idea of conserving heritage varieties of garden and field crops was in its infancy in Canada in 1989. It was very difficult to find heritage varieties of vegetables, fruits, flowers and grains.Abundant Life Seeds was a Washington-based organization offering heritage seeds in the 1980s.
In 1989, Canada's Heritage Seed Program (now Seeds of Diversity) had been running for five years under the guidance of Heather Apple and COG (Canadian Organic Growers).
Seedy Saturday creator Sharon Rempel was a BC director of the Heritage Seed Program and wanted to find a way to bring a large number of people together to share seeds and stories. Rempel gathered a diversity of people together for a day to talk about seed.
The first Seedy Saturday was held in Vancouver B.C. Sharon's book Demeter's Wheats states that the first event happened on February 14, 1989, St. Valentine's Day, because seed is at the HEART of food security in every community.
Seedy Saturday was designed to develop a feeling of 'community' focused around seed that was 'open pollinated'
not hybrid and could be saved year to year. The heart of local food security starts with having a collection of seed that people can save and grow year after year.
Farmers and growers are the global researchers who have developed a huge diversity of crops adapted for every bioregion of the planet, yet their varieties are often not considered valuable by governments and industry. University researchers who are plant breeders often focus on developing varieties for agribusiness
not small-scale farmers who can't afford high inputs of fertilizers and chemicals. The Green Revolution
varieties serve the needs of agribusiness not small scale subsistence farmers or organic farmers.
The local food
and 100 mile diet trends are challenging the commodification
of wheat, potatoes, beef, eggs and other foods is an economic model and ideal that is at the heart of global trade agreements. Yet Variety and farmer identification on the variety are worth money to chefs and consumers at the local level and in value chain marketing
. Terroir Terroir is the interaction of the variety genetics and the environment and soil where the variety is grown. Terroir of a grape means the difference between a $5/bottle and $500/bottle of wine and is doing the same with common food crops in the 2000s marketplace.
Seedy Saturday helped mark the beginning of a new era of bringing 'variety' and 'farmer' identification to food in Canada. Seedy Saturday is an agritourism
based community event that marks the late winter and early spring optimism of 'planting new seeds' for a good harvest and food supply in coming months.
Sharon designed Seedy Saturday to have the "swap table" at the heart of the event. People brought their favorite seed, gave their variety a name, put the seed into small coin envelopes with the variety name, year the seed was grown and other information they felt was valuable to record. People shared their stories with each other about how their variety was special to them culturally, or in the kitchen in a special food or celebration.
Conserving the story and the seed has gone hand in hand for centuries and was important to bring back to seed saving and sharing in Canada.
The first Seedy Saturday participants and displays included a handful of small local seed companies selling 'open pollinated' seeds including Dan Jason running Salt Spring Seeds. USC Canada's Vancouver office manager Mary Lindsay brought the global perspective to the event. USC Canada was running a project called of Survival in Ethiopia; they were training people to do ‘on farm’ variety conservation and 'on farm' plant breeding.
Health Action Network promoted the event through the expertise of Cathrine Gabriel and other staff who linked health to local organic food and safe seed.
The Grist Mill at Keremeos where Sharon Rempel (Chief Interpreter) was growing heritage gardens and heritage wheat fields. Sharon spoke about the politics of seed saving and other people talked about the 'value' of open pollinated seed, as well as how to save seed.
Over 500 people came to hear talks about seeds, swap and buy seeds and share their stories about their favorite plants. The event was held at VanDusen Botanical Gardens in Vancouver, BC. The seeds sold had to be open pollinated and not hybrids. People swapped their stories and seeds at the Swap Table and many of these varieties became recommercialized through the small seed companies.
The Vancouver Nyala Ethiopian restaurant provided refreshments. Ethiopia is considered the Center of Diversity
globally for bread wheat. The Heritage Wheat Project and the Red Fife
heritage wheat movement had begun in the fields of The Grist Mill site. Wheat showed how interconnected the world is as plants have moved with their people for many centuries.
Seedy Saturday is not one event and the name doesn't belong to anyone. It's an annual series of nearly a hundred separate events in Canada and the UK, each organized individually and uniquely but operating under the same general theme.
The UK's Soil Association began hosting Seedy Saturday and Seedy Sunday events in 2001. The event is now in Wales, Scotland and throughout England.
The problem is exacerbated in the EU by National Seed Lists. If a seed or variety is not on the national list it cannot legally be sold. To register and then maintain a seed on the list is prohibitively expensive, so only a few seeds make it onto the list. Those that do are selected on the basis of uniformity and handling quality of the produce. As a result many seed varieties are facing extinction due to the lack of genetic diversity
.
The first Seedy Sunday in England was at Brighton
on the south coast. It has since become a major event, with people coming from all over the country. It has also encouraged many others to establish Seedy Sundays.
Seed
A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...
s, especially heirloom
Heirloom plant
An heirloom plant, heirloom variety, or heirloom vegetable is a cultivar that was commonly grown during earlier periods in human history, but which is not used in modern large-scale agriculture...
varieties, or varieties that have been in the family for years if not several generations. Seeds of Diversity Canada lists the various Canadian seed exchanges. http://www.seeds.ca/ev/events.php
The idea of conserving heritage varieties of garden and field crops was in its infancy in Canada in 1989. It was very difficult to find heritage varieties of vegetables, fruits, flowers and grains.Abundant Life Seeds was a Washington-based organization offering heritage seeds in the 1980s.
In 1989, Canada's Heritage Seed Program (now Seeds of Diversity) had been running for five years under the guidance of Heather Apple and COG (Canadian Organic Growers).
Seedy Saturday creator Sharon Rempel was a BC director of the Heritage Seed Program and wanted to find a way to bring a large number of people together to share seeds and stories. Rempel gathered a diversity of people together for a day to talk about seed.
The first Seedy Saturday was held in Vancouver B.C. Sharon's book Demeter's Wheats states that the first event happened on February 14, 1989, St. Valentine's Day, because seed is at the HEART of food security in every community.
Seedy Saturday was designed to develop a feeling of 'community' focused around seed that was 'open pollinated'
Open pollination
Open pollination is pollination by insects, birds, wind, or other natural mechanisms, and contrasts with cleistogamy, closed pollination, which is one of the many types of self pollination...
not hybrid and could be saved year to year. The heart of local food security starts with having a collection of seed that people can save and grow year after year.
Farmers and growers are the global researchers who have developed a huge diversity of crops adapted for every bioregion of the planet, yet their varieties are often not considered valuable by governments and industry. University researchers who are plant breeders often focus on developing varieties for agribusiness
Agribusiness
In agriculture, agribusiness is a generic term for the various businesses involved in food production, including farming and contract farming, seed supply, agrichemicals, farm machinery, wholesale and distribution, processing, marketing, and retail sales....
not small-scale farmers who can't afford high inputs of fertilizers and chemicals. The Green Revolution
Green Revolution
Green Revolution refers to a series of research, development, and technology transfer initiatives, occurring between the 1940s and the late 1970s, that increased agriculture production around the world, beginning most markedly in the late 1960s....
varieties serve the needs of agribusiness not small scale subsistence farmers or organic farmers.
The local food
Local food
Local food or the local food movement is a "collaborative effort to build more locally based, self-reliant food economies - one in which sustainable food production, processing, distribution, and consumption is integrated to enhance the economic, environmental and social health of a particular...
and 100 mile diet trends are challenging the commodification
Commodification
Commodification is the transformation of goods, ideas, or other entities that may not normally be regarded as goods into a commodity....
of wheat, potatoes, beef, eggs and other foods is an economic model and ideal that is at the heart of global trade agreements. Yet Variety and farmer identification on the variety are worth money to chefs and consumers at the local level and in value chain marketing
Value chain
The value chain, is a concept from business management that was first described and popularized by Michael Porter in his 1985 best-seller, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance.-Firm Level:...
. Terroir Terroir is the interaction of the variety genetics and the environment and soil where the variety is grown. Terroir of a grape means the difference between a $5/bottle and $500/bottle of wine and is doing the same with common food crops in the 2000s marketplace.
Seedy Saturday helped mark the beginning of a new era of bringing 'variety' and 'farmer' identification to food in Canada. Seedy Saturday is an agritourism
Agritourism
Agritourism, as it is defined most broadly, involves any agriculturally-based operation or activity that brings visitors to a farm or ranch. Agritourism has different definitions in different parts of the world, and sometimes refers specifically to farm stays, as in Italy...
based community event that marks the late winter and early spring optimism of 'planting new seeds' for a good harvest and food supply in coming months.
Sharon designed Seedy Saturday to have the "swap table" at the heart of the event. People brought their favorite seed, gave their variety a name, put the seed into small coin envelopes with the variety name, year the seed was grown and other information they felt was valuable to record. People shared their stories with each other about how their variety was special to them culturally, or in the kitchen in a special food or celebration.
Conserving the story and the seed has gone hand in hand for centuries and was important to bring back to seed saving and sharing in Canada.
The first Seedy Saturday participants and displays included a handful of small local seed companies selling 'open pollinated' seeds including Dan Jason running Salt Spring Seeds. USC Canada's Vancouver office manager Mary Lindsay brought the global perspective to the event. USC Canada was running a project called of Survival in Ethiopia; they were training people to do ‘on farm’ variety conservation and 'on farm' plant breeding.
Health Action Network promoted the event through the expertise of Cathrine Gabriel and other staff who linked health to local organic food and safe seed.
The Grist Mill at Keremeos where Sharon Rempel (Chief Interpreter) was growing heritage gardens and heritage wheat fields. Sharon spoke about the politics of seed saving and other people talked about the 'value' of open pollinated seed, as well as how to save seed.
Over 500 people came to hear talks about seeds, swap and buy seeds and share their stories about their favorite plants. The event was held at VanDusen Botanical Gardens in Vancouver, BC. The seeds sold had to be open pollinated and not hybrids. People swapped their stories and seeds at the Swap Table and many of these varieties became recommercialized through the small seed companies.
The Vancouver Nyala Ethiopian restaurant provided refreshments. Ethiopia is considered the Center of Diversity
Center of diversity
A center of diversity is an area that has a high degree of genetic variation for a particular species or genus of plants that can also be the center of origin for that species. The two areas often, but not always, coincide; the degree of coincidence remains the subject of debate...
globally for bread wheat. The Heritage Wheat Project and the Red Fife
Red Fife wheat
Red Fife is a heritage bread wheat and is a landrace, meaning there is genetic variability in the wheat, allowing it to adapt to a diversity of growing conditions. Red Fife is the name of a bread wheat variety that David Fife and family began to grow in 1842...
heritage wheat movement had begun in the fields of The Grist Mill site. Wheat showed how interconnected the world is as plants have moved with their people for many centuries.
Seedy Saturday is not one event and the name doesn't belong to anyone. It's an annual series of nearly a hundred separate events in Canada and the UK, each organized individually and uniquely but operating under the same general theme.
The UK's Soil Association began hosting Seedy Saturday and Seedy Sunday events in 2001. The event is now in Wales, Scotland and throughout England.
Seed Saving - farmers, the first plant breeders
An old concept, as farmers have been saving seeds for the last 11,000 years, the problem over the last fifty years, has been the commercialisation of seeds, industrial agriculture, and in the last decade, the domination of the commercial seed market by a handful of transnational companies.The problem is exacerbated in the EU by National Seed Lists. If a seed or variety is not on the national list it cannot legally be sold. To register and then maintain a seed on the list is prohibitively expensive, so only a few seeds make it onto the list. Those that do are selected on the basis of uniformity and handling quality of the produce. As a result many seed varieties are facing extinction due to the lack of genetic diversity
Genetic diversity
Genetic diversity, the level of biodiversity, refers to the total number of genetic characteristics in the genetic makeup of a species. It is distinguished from genetic variability, which describes the tendency of genetic characteristics to vary....
.
The first Seedy Sunday in England was at Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
on the south coast. It has since become a major event, with people coming from all over the country. It has also encouraged many others to establish Seedy Sundays.