. This was spurred on by the push to ratify laws and protocols that govern seeds.
My research on the West Coast was to understand the relationship farmers supported by SPP had with seeds. What we learnt was that farmers whose connection to land was severed, usually through forced removal during apartheid, had their cultural practice of saving seed detrimentally affected to the extent that they were buying seed.
In breakaway groups, farmers discussed how these Bills could affect them personally and as a collective. Various points were raised during the report back session, including that the Bills appear to exclude anyone who is not a large-scale propagator or farmer and that they were about protecting profits, not food security, biodiversity and local livelihoods. As one attendee stated: “These Bills are protecting big companies.
Liziwe Stofile, who farms in the city, said: “[The seed Bills] will affect the future of farming and nutrition because we’re going to lose diversity and variety of foods. We produce different foods for different [nutritional needs]. When I am hearing about the Bill, I become concerned about becoming poorer.”
The legal systems valorises one type of seed over the other and by extent, the seed practitioners too. There is also the negation of the source material used for protected or patented varieties, the silencing of generations of cultivators transforming wild species into the domesticated foods we consume today.
A look into the indigenous and endemic seed collection with seasonal sowing at Good Hope Gardens Nursery, Cape Town.
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