The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food / Janisse Ray

Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and Wild Card Quilt, has that folksy quality that harkens back to the gentility of a bygone age. Maybe it’s growing up in rural Georgia, as she did, that defines her character to such a degree, and comes through so well on the written page. In any case, her musings and her thoughtful prose are always a joy to read.

In this book she takes on a topic that resonated with me—saving seeds to plant for next year’s crop. Why is this so important? Well, with hybridization and genetically modified crops, farmers (and more and more, home gardeners) no longer are able to keep and replant seeds the following season. In fact, in the case of farmers, in most instances it’s illegal for them to do so. Remember that prize tomato that grandpa grew when you were young? Chances are that variety is not in any seed catalogs any more. This diminishes plant diversity and makes agriculture beholden to the big multinationals like Monsanto, where the mantra still is “better living through science,” a sensibility that many thought went out of fashion after the 1950s, at least where our food supply is concerned. The Seed Underground reads a little like Michael Pollan meets Barbara Kingsolver. It is a not a textbook for seed savers per se, but a book of interviews, ideas, and a call to arms to save seed diversity for this generation and ones to come.

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