MendoSeed & Xa Kako Dile:
The Urgent Work of Reclaiming Our Seeds
by Julia Dakin
Two years ago, I co-founded the organization Going to Seed, which supports food growers by helping them learn how to adapt crops to their local conditions. We received a grant from the Clif Family Foundation to support farmers, and though it’s an international organization, there are three Mendocino County farms in our grant program: Nye Ranch, which focuses on adapting sweet corn to cool coastal summers; Earthlings Veganics, which will grow melons, hull-less squash and flour corn; and Open Circle Seeds, which is adapting dry-farm watermelons in Potter Valley.
One of Going to Seed’s initiatives supports adaptation projects in local communities, including right here on the coast. At a presentation last year, about 40 people got inspired and committed to growing and adapting three heat-loving species to this cold coastal environment: sweet corn, melons, and butternut squash. But in spite of the enthusiasm, we did not receive enough seed returns to sustain the project. Participants wanted more education and support. It became clear that a culture shift was needed, with more people and resources to make it work.
A revised vision of education in addition to seed sharing evolved, and we named it MendoSeed: a mobile community seed-cleaning resource that would also function as a collection and distribution system for local seeds. We even got a physical home when the Caspar Community Center gave us half a garage to use for storage, which has become crucial.
I see adaptive crop production as a matter of life and death. The state of agriculture and the quality and quantity of non-patented, organically grown seeds is an emergency, especially in areas that face climate or pest challenges. In addition, corporate control of genetics is an existential threat to long term food security. A seed’s genes control its nutrient density, which has declined over the years in produce grown with mass market seeds. Genetics also determine the ability to grow in varied and challenging environments.
Genetics is a challenging concept for a lot of gardeners, yet drought (or fog) tolerance, disease resistance, and nutrient density are mostly genetic. In spite of this, many food growers spend much of their time and energy talking about soil health and management practices. These are also important, but I believe regenerative agriculture is missing a giant piece of the puzzle, and until we realize that our food system is under threat, we will continue to fertilize, spray, coddle, and worry about crops that are not adapted for the precise growing conditions at hand. Shifting agriculture must start with local models like this.
And it isn’t just the lack of locally adapted seeds that is an emergency. The bigger emergency is how overpowered food growers have become. We completely depend on those seed catalogs and websites. “Local food” almost entirely depends on patented hybrids from very far away. Can that really be considered local? We’re going to need to work hard to empower ourselves to become active participants in the crops we depend on.
As an under-resourced community seed project, it’s going to take us a while to get people even thinking about these issues, let alone feeling confident enough to grow, collect, and share their seeds back with us. During this time of education, expansion, workshops, and seed sharing, we need more financial support to keep going. We have applied for several grants to support building a template and supportive resources for local projects, but funding remains scarce.
While I was struggling with the challenges of sustaining this fledgling seed effort, a serendipitous series of events led to a conversation that gave me hope. I was supposed to go to Tennessee to a seed conference as part of Going to Seed. But in the end, I couldn’t get on a plane because a raccoon had snatched my purse with my ID (and lunch) off my doorstep while packing my car for the airport at 4am. I had to stay home, and gifted with a few unscheduled days, I was able to spend a full day accompanying U’ilani (U’i) Wesley of Xa Kako Dile: on a trip to speak with Sherwood Valley tribal women. On the long drive there and back, we talked a lot about seeds.
U’i had had a journey of her own while traveling around Northern California during the previous weeks. It felt like that raccoon snatching my purse was a push in a direction that might make things possible, and I’d finally found somebody that shared my sense of urgency and could be a partner in the next phase of growing a movement that could shift agriculture.
As a result of our talks, MendoSeed is integrating with Xa Kako Dile, an indigenous women-led and -directed non-profit doing work in the space of indigenous knowledge and land stewardship. Their location in Caspar will be incorporating a lot more seed work, including gatherings, concerts, volunteers, and growing for seeds as well as food. We are going to work together to secure a fuel-efficient vehicle that can be the SeedMobile and travel around Northern California with a focus on Tribal communities. Our growing seed collection can be housed at Xa Kako Dile. I am assisting with grant writing and fundraising for Xa Kako Dile:, while U’i is a charismatic and visionary voice for the project.
Stay tuned to learn and participate in local seed exchanges and ventures. Our group feels strongly that there is not a moment to waste. We will literally be growing our future.
Reflections from U’ilani Wesley
In my work with Xa Kako Dile:, I work with tribes around Mendocino County. There is a lot of diabetes because of the food that is most accessible to a lot of tribal elders—the USDA food program providing tribes with “commodity foods” is literally killing people. People need vegetables to be healthy, but they don’t have access to them. So, for the last year we’ve been growing food and sharing it with elders from tribes around the county: Sherwood, Big Valley, Coyote Valley, Pinoleville, Round Valley, and Redwood Valley.
The food people eat is either medicine or it’s poison. Through centuries of colonialism, a lot of people have lost their connection with Mother Earth, and with traditional culture. Eating plants and good food can help to both bring it back and restore health.
I was hearing from my mentors and Indigenous leaders that we need to focus on the seeds as well as food. We’ve lost much of our cultural connection to seeds, and people don’t have access to good, local seeds that can grow good, nutritious food. The most accessible seeds are purchased from places like the Dollar Store or Walmart. For many generations, seeds have been grown by corporations that use a lot of fertilizers and chemicals, or the harvest they produce isn’t very nutritious. And then we keep buying them every year, because it’s not in our culture anymore to think of seeds as tied to a place, tied to us. So, we need to make healing produce available to people, but we also need to make sure they have a connection with the seeds, and with each other, and the earth. We need to re-connect with the mentality that seeds are our relatives, as Native peoples have thought of them for the past thousands of years. This will require changing the culture. Singing together, working together.
Learn more at goingtoseed.org/pages/community-seed-projects.
Julia Dakin grows food and seeds in Caspar, where she has been adapting some warm-season crops to coastal summers, and sells seeds locally through Quail Seeds. A couple of years ago she co-founded a non-profit called Going to Seed.
Photos by Yvonne Boyd