savoy011

Illustration by Julie Notarianni | Courtesy of Yes Magazine . Moderator’s Note: Our guest blog today is by a scientist who long has worked with New Mexico and Colorado acequia farmers to protect the native landrace chile peppers of the Rio Arriba (Upper Rio Grande) watershed. For many years, she worked closely with the late much beloved Estevan Arellano; Sandoval has a farm in Dixon not far from the Arellano family’s permaculture operation in Embudo Cañon. I am delighted that Ms. Sandoval has agreed to will share old and new posts with followers and readers of this blog as a featured guest contributor. The work that Ms. Sandoval has engaged in over the past two decades focuses on unifying scientific methodologies with local knowledge and practices followed by acequia farmers, plant breeders, and seed savers. Her work is thus a vital part of the indomitable seed sovereignty movement, which works from the grassroots up to protect, defend, and preserve farmer control over our heritage se...

Free market fundamentalism versus food democracy I-522 SIGNALS THE NEED FOR A NEW SOCIAL ECOLOGICAL COVENANT Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA | October 6, 2013 The seed is the memory of the plant of how to live well in this place. - Margarita K. Peña People frequently ask me why I save seeds. I reply, “Because I want my corn to dance.” When I am not teaching at the University of Washington, I work on a 200-acre flood-irrigated farm that also serves as the home for my family’s foundation, The Acequia Institute. We run the farm as an almunyah , which is essentially a private, non-profit “agricultural experiment station”. We serve acequia farmers who are among the oldest family farms in the United States, dating back to well before the arrival of the Spaniards in 1598. As an experiment station we take our business of preserving and protecting plant genetic resources very seriously. Without the diversity of seeds developed by native farmers, the traditions of sustainable agriculture as we know...