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Mayan Seeds of Hope

By: Edwin Escoto

During my recent trip to some of Guatemala’s villages, I had the opportunity to witness how passionate the indigenous people (Maya Achi) are about preserving their native seeds, symbols of their identity, culture, and resistance. 

mayan seeds of hope

I spent one week with my colleagues, Tim and Judelon Lasalle, trying to learn and understand how essential and strategic it is for the Mayan people to control their own seeds – essential because they can decide what type of seed they want to save and strategic because, through the native seeds, they can grow sustainable and healthy food. How closely their choice of seeds is related to their culinary preferences is especially interesting.

The Mayan people gave us important insights in terms of coexistence with nature and common goods. They call it the Milpa system, which consists of sowing different crops such as corn, beans, and pumpkins (known as the three sisters by the Mayans), medicinal plants, some edible herbs, and other crops which are beneficial to the whole system. All these plants can grow at the same time in the same plot. The Milpa system is also considered a seed sanctuary and plays an important role in saving and preserving seeds. 

One day, we visited the community of Chiac, where Doña Silvia Sic lives. She is a co-founder and the current board president of Groundswell partner Qachuu Aloom. Doña Silvia grows corn, beans, and pumpkins in her plot, as well as some types of cover crops, like jack beans (Canavalia ensiformes) and some types of grass used for feeding cows. She harvests three times per year. 

mayan seeds of hope

But how does Doña Silvia do that? She told us that she first understands that she has to take care of the soil because if we keep the life in the soil, we will grow healthy food and be healthy people. Doña Silvia implements some agroecological and cultural practices such as minimal disturbance of the soil, cover crops, integration of animals into farming, and native seeds. Additionally, she does not use synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. These practices allow the restoration and improvement of soil life. Doña Silvia also has a garden plot where she grows a lot of edible and medicinal plants.

Doña Silvia told us that she became a seed saver (Guardiana de semillas) because she knows that the native seeds are part of her identity and are a symbol of resistance for indigenous communities. The native seeds are sacred; we need to keep them and protect them as we protect our lives. Many more women like Doña Silvia are producing, sharing, and selling multiple species of native seeds. 

Before we left Doña Silvia’s plot, Tim said:

“I would love to say thank you very much for receiving our visit. Cristobal and Edwin invited us to come visit, and we are very, very pleased we came. We very much are inspired by your hard work and your industrious efforts to create an income for your family, to grow food that is healthy without chemicals, and that, in fact, you become more innovative, creating more diverse and resilient production systems. We love that you are producing food that is more nutritious for people, making them healthier, and we love that you are integrating livestock and cows with your cropping system because that makes your food more nutritious and the whole system more resilient. Judelon and I just would like to say we are very pleased to be partners with you as donors first to World Neighbors and then to Groundswell in this effort to make lives better. So, thank you.”

Next, we headed to the Qachuu Aloom Training Center, where the organization has a small farm for showing different technologies of soil and water management and reproducing native seeds to share with more than 500 participating families of 31 communities in three municipalities (Rabinal, Cubulco, and San Miguel Chicaj) of Baja Verapaz. Qachu Aloom has named this place The Seed Sanctuary.

Our visit ended in the Seed House of Qachuu Aloom, which is part of their strategy to save native seeds for future generations. To do that, they are using pottery vessels, another legacy left to us by the indigenous Mayans. 

mayan seeds of hope

To close our visit, Judelon offered some inspirational words to Don Cristobal, who is a co-founder and director of Qachuu Aloom. She said:

“We know that the ancestors brought us here, we know that our Mother Earth is where the ancestors live, we know that it was no accident that we met […] we thank the ancestors for making this possible today, we appreciate it and we are thankful for the healing of the earth and the ancestors’ presence today. Thank you.” 

It was a fascinating visit to learn how passionate the people in this Mayan village are and to remind us that we have received the seeds from our ancestors to pass on to our daughters and sons as a guarantee for food sovereignty. 

We want to thank the people we visited for inspiring us to be seed savers because recovering the relevance of the seeds is the most meaningful part of our work.

Learn more about Groundswell’s mission and our impact in this and other parts of the world.

We stand with AFSA’s Statement on AfDB’s Dakar 2 Food Summit

We stand with AFSA's Statement on AfDB’s Dakar 2 Food Summit

What are the solutions to “feed Africa?” Please read this important statement from the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA). 

Groundswell International, through our West Africa network, is an active member of AFSA, the largest civil society network on the continent. 

Diversity, not false solutions, is key to achieving food sovereignty and resilience in Africa

As 34 heads of state and 70 ministers return home after three days of ‘food and agriculture delivery compact’ negotiations in Dakar, we reflect on the outcome of the Dakar 2 Summit “Feed Africa: Food Sovereignty and Resilience.”

We endorse wholeheartedly the commitment to free Africa from hunger and the shared resolve for Africa to feed itself with dignity and pride.

We celebrate the increased investment and the renewed commitment of governments to allocate 10% of public expenditure to agriculture.

We applaud the resolve to escape from the shame of dependency on food imports and handouts

We share the recognition of the need and benefits of engaging youth in agriculture and the appreciation of the fundamental role of women in food production.

We acknowledge the vibrant catalytic role of the African Development Bank in mobilizing such widespread African government support and enthusiasm 

However, we have deep concerns:

Any significant increase of African land under agriculture will undermine human rights. Wherever large-scale land acquisitions occur, we see failure to gain community consent, failure to compensate, forced evictions of indigenous people, women’s loss of access to productive land, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and land degradation.

The intense focus on two cereals – wheat & maize – is a rejection of Africa’s vast catalog of nutritious indigenous crops and local varieties. Resilience comes from diversity – in crops, food sources, soil amendments, and supply chains.

The failure of government leaders to see beyond the colonial narrative that African agriculture can only be modernized by adopting the practices of the Global North. Africa has its own resources and know-how to produce healthy food using effective, low-cost, chemical-free inputs, regenerating the soil sustainably.

Therefore:

We reject the continued reliance on colonial thinking – to raise production of staple crops using imported farm inputs, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and hybrid and GMO seeds. Food sovereignty is freedom from external control. A country dependent on imported fertilizer has lost its sovereignty as much as a country that depends on food imports or donations.

 We reject the tendency to entrust African agriculture and food to multinationals while ignoring the continent’s positive attributes (number of farmers, youth and arable lands). Africa should not copy the mistakes of others, but rather bring a new way of doing things.

We denounce the reliance on a top-down, public-private partnership approach to agricultural development. Where were the voices of African farmers and citizens at this food summit?

“This summit propagates the idea that African farmers don’t produce enough food because they don’t use enough chemical fertilizers,” said AFSA General Coordinator Million Belay. “The implication is that if we pump our farms with agrochemicals, we will grow more food. Even though this might serve as a short term strategy, in the end it means polluting the soil, making farmers dependent on external inputs, endangering the health of farmers and consumers, robbing people of their right to healthy, culturally appropriate and nutritious food, and increasing vulnerability to climate change.”

Africa faces the triple burden of malnutrition – hunger, micronutrient deficiency, and obesity/non-communicable diseases. Zambia showed us the failure of hybrid monocrops, which produced back-to-back maize surpluses yet became the most undernourished country in Africa, with 40% of young children stunted. In South Africa, the continent’s most industrialized country, GMO maize is the staple food, and fast food is the urban norm. Now, half of all adults are overweight (23%) or obese (27%), and NCDs like diabetes cause life-altering illnesses, disabilities, and premature death.

The authentic African solution is a commitment to agroecology and food sovereignty – the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods and the right to define one’s own food and agriculture systems.

Kenyan farmer leader Ferdinand Wafula was emphatic in his plea, “We urge policymakers, governments, and donors to provide more funding to agroecology, which offers clear solutions to nutrition challenges, the climate crisis and food insecurity.”

AFSA calls on African governments and donors to redirect funding away from failed ‘green revolution’ approaches towards proven agroecological alternatives. Uniting generations of indigenous knowledge, farmer-driven and science-based innovations, and the ecosystem’s natural processes, agroecological food systems can adapt to and help solve the climate crisis. Farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples and local communities use agroecology to steward their land sustainably, produce nourishing food that celebrates cultural heritage, and strengthen local markets and economies. This way, together, we can feed Africa.

AFSA’s Statement on AfDB’s Dakar 2 Food Summit