Meet the Korean Adoptee Saving Seeds of the East Asian Diaspora
Raised on Long Island by an Irish-American family, Kristyn Leach is now dedicated to preserving and adapting crops of her native South Korea.
By Esther Kim
Modern Farmer
July 10, 2022
Excerpt:
Central Valley’s arid heat makes for an excellent seed-saving climate. Agrochemical giants Syngenta and Monsanto have seed campuses nearby. “Sixty percent of the world’s seeds are controlled by corporations,” Leach told public television KCET. “If you control seeds, you control food,” she said. And as political wisdom goes, if you control food, you control people.
Years ago, she co-founded Second Generation, a California farmer collective and seed company, in an effort to connect Asian diasporic communities to their beloved crops. Second Generation also runs a community seed stewardship program to “foster biodiversity, healthier ecosystems, and a more equitable food system.” Korean plants helped Leach reconnect with and reclaim her roots, too. The work is especially personal and important to Leach, who herself was unconnected from the crops of her homeland for a number of years.
Born in South Korea, Leach was adopted by a white Irish Catholic family in suburban Long Island, New York. About 200,000 South Korean children have been adopted since the Korean War. In a video for Great Big Story, she said, “The experience of adoption is so complicated. I feel really grateful to have farming be the way I interact with my culture.”
She spent her adolescence making trips to New York City’s Lower East Side, where the local ’90s punk scene and community gardens would go on to shape the way she farms today. “I’ve just always loved food and organized my life around food,” Leach says. As a teenager during Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s reign, she and her friends gravitated to radical art spaces such as ABC No Rio.
