[Ccpg] WOODY WODRASKA: A Manifesto for Seeds

Sat Jun 21 07:06:53 PDT 2003

(This article is reproduced with permission from WOODY (Hey, he GROWS and 
SELLS SEEDS of INCREDIBLE VITALITY! http://www.kootenay.com/~aurora  and 
ACRES USA: The Voice of Ecoagriculture (You can subscribe at 
http://www.acresusa.com))

WE HAVE ALWAYS KNOWN THIS--A MANIFESTO FOR SEEDS

  We are seed users, seed eaters, seed growers...all of us.  We have been
wrapped in a world of seeds for eons, since long before agriculture. In
hunger we ate the bird that ate the seeds; in happy accident we brewed the
beer from spoiled and worthless seeds; in unwitting service to the plant we
transported its seeds on our trouser cuffs.  We slobber over ear corn and
eat our Wheaties.  It's in our language: We are of our parents' seed, our
ancestors' seed, Adam's seed ultimately.  We are born into, thrive in, die
in, a seed sowing, seed garnering heritage.  To deny the status of the
sacred to these time capsules, these enfoldments of life we call seeds is to
court foolish disaster.  We have always known this.

But...now they're messing with our seeds.  The power grabbing corporations
and governments  propose in their arrogance and disrespect to
irradiate...manipulate... defructify...monopolize and further commodify our
ancient birthright, our real wealth: SEEDS.   We are strong when we have our
seeds, and they know this.   They would enslave us and they would use as
leverage the seeds we cherish, the seeds that nourish us.  What we would
pass on to the seventh generation as bridegift they seize as strategy.
They would put a price on the priceless and sell it back to us.

Leave our seeds alone.  Leave our seeds in the hands of the people who feed
us...the family, the clan, the village group.  The profession of "seedsman"
was created only 130 years or so ago.  Perhaps it was an aberration to try
to  centralize, and then commodify, a process that had before been disbursed
in village gardens, homestead gardens, middens and small fields.
Grandmothers and Great-uncles collected, watched over, cherished the seeds
that came down to them.  Grew them out with love and patience and infinite
care.  Grandmother's seeds... grandmother's blessing...passed from
generation to generation.  Ancestors' blessing.  Reckon three generations to
a century and 150 centuries in the history of agriculture and you have
several hundred generations of seed gathering folk, seed saving
grandcestors, passing on precious seeds to descendants.  Seeds too precious
to buy and sell; seeds that must be gifted, presented.   There is memory
encapsulated in this line of life stretching so far back.  Feelings are
there too...feelings of gratitude to Gaia, of holding dear, of well wishing
to the future generations, feelings of faithfulness...feminine feelings.

The memory is right there in the seed, in our cells, in the mitochondrial
DNA passed down the feminine line.  When I touch my seeds I tap the memory
that is there, instinctive wisdom almost lost, beaming itself into our
consciousness just when it is most needed.

  John Trudell said: " It's about our D and A. Descendants and ancestors. We
are the descendants and we are the ancestors. D and A, our DNA, our blood,
our flesh and our bone, is made up of the metals and the minerals and the
liquids of the earth. We are the earth. We truly, literally and figuratively
are the earth. Any relationship we will ever have in this world to real
power-the real power, not energy systems and other artificial means of
authority-but any relationship we will ever have to real power is our
relationship to the earth." (1)

Seeds are concentrated wealth.  Seeds are worth far more than we pay for
them now, in this aberrant commodity trade.   You can pack in a suitcase
$10,000 worth of garden seeds in any variety you choose.  The slavemasters
and their propagandists would have us believe that money is power and, since
they have money in plenty, that they are in control.  They don't want us to
have that suitcase, to be free to leave and plant elsewhere; free to stay
and plant many gardens, feed many people with real food.

If we are staunchly of the Earth, her power is ours to neutralize and
transmute the evil work of the authority-mongers, those without conscience.
We can do this with  life enhancing actions.  Repeat.  Life-affirming
actions override, overwhelm, the lifeless.  Always the great stone temples
of the arrogant become topsoil for living systems.  It's something the
corporations and governments fail to appreciate.  Their authority rests on
entropic processes, explosions, coercions,  cultural lies.  They cannot take
into account the power of life, the connectedness of life.  They would have
us forget where we come from...so we can be entertained and exploited and
addicted to their cheap dream, their gadgets and their ersatz food.  If we
are staunchly of the Earth we have access to the strength of the
generations, the ancestory, to help us put life and affirmation in the
places where death-dealing had been.  We can REMEMBER from where our power
comes.  Let us plant gardens.  Let us plant trees.  Let us tend cows.

Let us join Wendell Berry's "Mad Farmers Liberation Front."  No dues.  No
meetings.  You just have to be clever.  Don't be depressed, be clever.

Our weapons are our  tools...
our ammunition is our seeds...
our fuel is our sacred intent to do right by the future of life on the
Planet...
our marching song is  the thrumming of memory in our cells.

We march in concert, but we do not march en masse.   Our aim is not to
dominate or overpower.  There has been enough domination and power grubbing.
Rather, our aim is service.  Each of us has a plot of earth to serve, our
own elementals and devas to consult...intuition that speaks in us.  We know
how to surrender to  the task, to the plants and soil, in order to earn our
harvest.  We bend to it in joy and service, each individual one of us
mustering pure intent, a gutsy laugh, with the power of life upholding us.

Let us be clear.  There is no money in this, only sustenance.  This passing
forward of seed on the family or clan level is a matter of right livelihood,
not of commerce.

And right livelihood brings joy.  If I can feed myself, my family, a few
others perhaps when surplus appears, then I have done something REAL.
Something subversive.  I am in touch with my power, and my delight.

JOY...What if the picture that's been drawn of medieval peasant life as
basically "Nasty...Brutish...Short" is a cultural con job put out by the
rationalists and the materialists, the ones who shortly would have something
to sell us?  What if life on a subsistence level has joys and satisfactions
outweighing the challenges?  What if people used to have time to laugh and
sing?  What if there were still people in the world who could catch the
memory of this and show it to us??

A friend tells me about life in the Philippines, far back on the rural
islands...tells how, when two rice farmers or donkey drivers meet and begin
to talk, they're laughing most of the way through the conversation.  "They
laugh and say a couple words and laugh some more.  One starts laughing and
then everybody's laughing."   There is something boisterously entertaining
about what is going on in their poverty-stricken lives.

John G. Bennett wrote of an encounter in Africa: "Following a lightly
trodden path, I came upon a Basuto village.  All the inhabitants were out
hoeing mealies.  Their ages must have ranged from seven to seventy, and they
were singing and hoeing to the rhythm of their own music.  As they saw me
they all stopped and stood straight up in surprise.  Then with one accord
they began to laugh.  I have never heard such laughter.  It was pure joy and
friendship, without malice and without thought.  I joined in, and we all
laughed together for several minutes.  I waved my hand and walked on, and
they resumed their gravity and their hoeing.

"This was one of the unforgettable moments of my life.  A lifetime's
experience had convinced me that happiness is greatest where material
prosperity is least.  I had seldom seen a happy rich man, but I had seen
many happy people among the poorest villagers of Asia Minor or Greece.  I
had seen happiness in Omdurman, but this happiness that I saw before my eyes
was beyond all the others.  Here was a village totally lacking even the
smallest of the benefits of civilization.  They had not even a plough or a
cart.  And yet they were the happiest people I had ever seen.  They were
without fear and without pride." (2)

The meek inherit the Earth, for the meek remember who they are and where
their power comes from.  The meek overcome oppression  by serving the Earth.

(1) John Trudell, on the occasion of a memorial service for Earth First!
Activist Judy Bari.

(2) J G Bennett, _Witness_ Claymont Communications, 1983, pg. 229.

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