Would You Trust This Banker?

This item currently has one comment. Add your comment.

Here’s Why You Should!

The farmers still remember how skeptical they were when Regassa Feyissa – the former Director of the Ethiopian National Gene Bank and current leader of the Ethiopian Seeds of Survival Program - showed up in their village with his bags of seeds. It was in the mid ‘90s, and USC Canada and our Seeds of Survival partners had just started working with farmers from Ejere, a small village in one of the most productive wheat growing regions of Ethiopia.

At that time, farmers in Ejere were no longer planting the diverse varieties of purple and yellow durum wheat that they had farmed for centuries. They only had one type of wheat: an introduced variety of breadwheat. The variety had been distributed by the Ethiopian government following a devastating pest outbreak that had destroyed crops in the mid ‘70s. Farmers were promised that this high-yielding variety would provide better harvests, but the seeds had some side-effects:

• The new seeds required expensive fertilizers and pesticides, which both degraded soils and cut into profits from the sale of harvest surpluses.
• Over time, farmers saw that their kids didn’t seem as healthy, and realized the variety was less nutritious.
• The wheat didn’t taste as good as their older varieties, and,
• While the new wheat produced bigger grains than the old, the shorter, weaker stalks made for poor quality forage for their livestock.

So when Regassa showed up and told them he had their old seed varieties, they were eager to listen to him, but skeptical. Where did he get our old seeds? And why would he come all this way to give them to us?

But they decided to give Regassa’s seeds a try. To this day, the farmers still laugh when they think about the shock they felt upon seeing the old wheat varieties pushing their heads up through the soil. They couldn’t believe their eyes. They were so happy to be able once again to plant their old wheat varieties; ones that didn’t require costly inputs and that met more of their needs.

A Secure Bank, a Secure Future
The farmers in Ejere were also able to set up a local Community Seed Bank, so they would never again be without their local seeds. After each harvest, they deposit samples of their local seed varieties in the Bank. Over years, they have engaged in careful crop selection and enhancement and have built up a diverse collection of seeds that are productive, well adapted to the local environment, and that produce tasty, nutritious food even under unpredictable conditions.

Thanks to the visionary work of Regassa and the Seeds of Survival movement, local farmers are now reclaiming their agricultural heritage. Their diverse collection of seeds allows them to adapt to changing conditions, recover cultural and culinary practices, and restore the health of their ecosystem.

Please consider making a donation today in support of the ground-breaking work of Regassa and the Ethiopian Seeds of Survival movement.

Leave a Comment

Name (required)

E-mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

USC Canada, 56 Sparks Street, Suite 705, Ottawa, ON Canada, K1P 5B1
(T) (613) 234-6827, (F) (613) 234-6842, 1-800-565-6872
Find us on a map . Privacy Policy
Founded in 1945 as the Unitarian Service Committee of Canada