The Preservation of Culture Begins With a Seed
Black seed keepers are recovering African American history
By Aaron Mok
Sierra Club
Feb 27 2021
Excerpt:
Growing up in Boston, Amirah Mitchell felt disconnected from her extended family in the South. As she sought ways to restore that connection, Mitchell turned to agriculture work, which had long been part of her family’s history. During the past 10 years, she has worked on urban farms in Massachusetts, Georgia, and Pennsylvania and has taught workshops on agroecology.
Mitchell, 28, who was a board member at the Food Project in Boston before going to work at Greensgrow Farm in Philadelphia, told Sierra, “When I started farming, it felt very healing to me. It was a way of doing some ancestral trauma healing work, and it felt very important to me that my agricultural practice was related to this.”
Eventually, Mitchell searched for ways to deepen her agricultural practice and knowledge. In 2016, she attended the Northeast Organic Farming Association conference, and while there she couldn’t help but notice that she was one of the few people of color. Looking to connect with farmers of color, she struck up a conversation with a Black elder and asked what his needs were. He told her: high-quality seeds that are culturally appropriate and easily accessible to Black farmers and gardeners.
After that conversation, Mitchell dove into the world of seed saving and heirloom crop preservation. As she learned more about the state of seed production in America, she had an epiphany: Seed keeping was the missing piece of her work toward cultural rediscovery. So she looked for a community of Black seed keepers. The process, she found, was slow.
