Planting the Seed: Time Travel, Shortages and Heirloom Crops

Seeds are the source and symbol of life. In our modern food system, with fewer and fewer people physically involved in the practice of agriculture, it’s easy to forget that our sustenance comes from the heroics of these persistent organisms.

With spring just around the corner, we’re sowing the seeds of knowledge and empathy through four unique stories. We dig into why some seed sellers’ shortage of seeds was actually due to an abundance of zealous home-gardeners. We harvest ideas from an episode of Fields, a new urban farming podcast on HRN, on how seeds are the world’s first and only time travelers, and what they can share with us about the future. We forage through the world of invasive species, and how they can be a proxy for migratory groups and sentiments towards immigrants. Finally, we conclude with a story on the cultural importance of heirloom seeds in the Cherokee nation and their historical struggle to attain seed sovereignty.