Storying Seeds

Overview:

Food is an everyday relationship we have with plants and seeds. Every meal we have eaten has a farmer, steward and a seed behind it.

Understanding the seeds that are within our meals, and where they came from, helps us understand what we are eating, why, and how this relationship we have with this food came to be. 

Pedagogical Approach  

• This storying exercise is a way of noticing various seed and human movements from one land to another. It’s also a way to notice how seeds have changed, sometimes by humans, for various reasons. 

• The goal of this activity is not to prescribe or determine participants’ relationships to food, but to notice what seeds we are eating and the land relations that contextualize them. 

• This activity is meant to help us think about the food we eat and the seeds they come from, in the context of land education. Colonialisms, migration, and food security discussions may come up, which can create guilt or shame. Facilitators can remind participants that many of our choices and food systems are overdetermined by capitalism and settler colonialism. Remembering these points will be helpful throughout your facilitation:

• Seeds move around the world/from one land to another for many different reasons

• Humans move around the world/from one land to another for many different reasons

• Seeds have been changed for different reasons, sometimes for practical, ceremonial, or logistical reasons by humans, or, as in the case in many settler colonial places, to accelerate capitalism

Facilitator Note: 

This activity can be done to build our relationships with seeds without needing seeds themselves. 

Objectives: 

• To deepen our understanding of seeds as more-than-human relations, with their stories linked to ours

• To identify our personal, community, or familial foodways in relation to seeds

• To deepen our understanding of how seeds have connections with our communities

Suggested Supplies:

• Activity Sheet (Below)

• Printout of world map 

• Sticky notes, or preferably sticky index tabs 

• Pen/pencil 

Step-by-Step Instructions: 

1. Hand out the activity sheet. Facilitator should express the intention with this activity is to deepen our understanding of how seeds are a part of our daily lives. 

2. Brainstorm: 

• In groups or pairs, discuss and write down (on the activity guide) a dish or recipe that is important to you, your community, or family. Allow time to share back with the larger group

3. Using a search engine, answer the remaining questions:

• Encourage participants to support one another in answering the questions. What is one ingredient from your chosen dish? Write that ingredient down For example, if spaghetti is your choice, you may choose to write tomato sauce down as one ingredient 

Facilitator Note: You can ask participants to look up one ingredient in their chosen dish, or all of the ingredients for their chosen dish depending on time availability. 

• Using a search engine, look up the main plant that is used for your ingredient (if the participant doesn't already know). Write this down on the activity sheet. For example, if tomato sauce is your choice, you may choose to write tomato down as your plant

• Searching again, ask participants to look up where in the world their plants come from and write down what their seeds are called (if different). For example, if tomato seeds is your choice, you would write their origins being from across south america from several Indigenous south american communities

  Check-in with participants, providing assistance where needed and answer the remaining questions on the activity guide. 

• How does this plant get to your plate? (looking up transportation and where this seed is commonly grown)

• How has this seed changed over time? (has it been bred differently across time and place, changed in look/ feel and plant qualities?)

• How does it grow? How is it nourished? 

  While participants are answering the last of their questions, hand out the sticky notes

  Ask participants to write their seed name on their sticky note, placing their sticky note on or near its origins on the world map 

  As a group, take a moment to reflect on the map. Notice where all the seeds are from. Are the seeds spread out or close together? Are there any native to the lands we are on? If so, have they changed at all? (encourage the sharing of the different prompts on the worksheet) 

Facilitator Note: You can choose to intervene on colonial place names on the world map, making this a part of the discussion, along with colonial names of selected seeds. You can also create space to write down the Indigenous names on your map.

1. Encourage more participants to share back to the larger group, share their seed, where it’s from, and what they learned about their seed through answering the questions. 

More possible points of reflection: 

1. Reflect on how their seeds may help participants tell their individual story in relation to land. For example, if their seed choice was tomato seeds, and they are living in Tkaronto, we may reflect on how far the tomato seed traveled and how it changed to be in relation with different lands. If their dish of choice is close to their community ties, for example, moringa seeds from the Philippines, participants could reflect on similar stories of movement with their seeds. 

2. Encourage reflection on seed movement, why and how those seeds have moved and ended up on your plates

3. As a closing, facilitators can remind participants that seeds are a part of our everyday lives, come from many different places, and are living relations. Allow participants to share any last thoughts before closing. 

Authored by Kaitlin Rizarri for the Tkaronto CIRCLE Lab, in conversation with on-going farming & earthwork in Tkaronto