SEED JOURNAL
Interviews, field notes and seed news.
Posts from the making of Open Sesame and the years since: conversations with seed keepers, notes from the road and news from the seed movement.
Food Sovereignty, Organic Seeds, Politics
Rowen White, Mohawk Seed Keeper: Decolonizing Taste Buds
Rowen White is from the Mohawk Nation of Akwasasy and is the director of the Sierra Seed Cooperative. Following is an edited transcript of an oral interview Rowen graciously conducted for Open Sesame: The Story of Seeds. Unfortunately we couldn’t include the full interviews in the film so we’re making them available online. Any errors in the text are […]
Heirloom Seeds, Organic Seeds, Seed Saving
Nick Maravell: Seed Saving in the City
Nick Maravell has been farming organically since 1979. He is a founding member of the Maryland Organic Food and Farming Association (MOFFA) the Maryland Small Farm Cooperative, and Future Harvest-Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture (Future Harvest-CASA). Nick has also worked closely with other farmers and scientists at the Organic Farming Research Foundation to publish the […]
Politics
Dr. Lorrin Pang Part 2 – GMO Safety Cont’d
GMO Safety with Dr. Lorrin Pang (Part 2) What follows is the second part of a fascinating and informative interview with Dr. Lorrin Pang. Dr. Lorrin Pang is a district health officer in Maui County, Hawaii. He has his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Princeton and an MD in Public Health from Toulane. NOTE: In the following interview […]
Food Sovereignty, Politics
Wenonah Hauter – Vote with your Forks & Vote with Your VOTE
Wenonah Hauter is the founder and Executive Director of Food & Water Watch. She has worked extensively on food, water, energy and environmental issues at the national, state and local level. Her book Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America examines the corporate consolidation and control over our food system and what […]
Food Sovereignty, Sustainable Agriculture
Charles Eisenstein – Money & the Birth of Agriculture
Charles Eisenstein Interview Part 1 Charles Eisenstein is an author and public speaker, and self-described “degrowth activist”. He is the author of several books including The Ascent of Humanity, Sacred Economics, and The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible (2013). I was honored to be able to include him in ‘Open Sesame: The […]
Food Sovereignty, Seed Saving
Nancy Redfeather: Seed Connections
“We’ve lost respect for our seed. We take it for granted, we take our food for granted. And even farmers and gardeners have lost that connection with the seed.” – Nancy Redfeather Nancy Redfeather is the Program Director at the Hawai’i Public Seed Initiative/Hawai’i School Garden Network at The Kohala Center. What follows is an excerpt from an […]
Politics
The gritty truth about GMOs with Dr. Lorrin Pang (Part 1)
Dr. Lorrin Pang on GMOs Born and raised in Honolulu, Dr. Lorrin Pang is a district health officer in Maui County, Hawaii. He holds several degrees, including a bachelor’s in Chemistry from Princeton and an MD in Public Health from Toulane University. Additionally, he has a Masters in Tropical Disease. From 1985 to 2005, he served […]
Food Sovereignty, Politics
Percy Schmeiser: The Man Who Stood Up to Monsanto
This is a near verbatim transcript of an on-camera interview done with Percy Schmeiser for ‘Open Sesame – The Story of Seeds’. Percy is in the film but there was so much of his great interview we couldn’t use that we decided to put it online. We’ve done our best to correct for common grammar […]
Politics, Sustainable Agriculture
Child of the Earth: Eric Herm on GMO Seeds, organic cotton & the future of farming
Eric Herm is farmer/writer who was raised on a cotton farm in Texas. Straying away from his family’s fourth generation tradition, he attended Abilene Christian University. He graduated with a degree in broadcast journalism and began a career in sports television broadcasting which he soon gave up for a nomadic lifestyle. He traveled across America, […]
Organic Seeds
Urban Rooftop Seed Saving
I interviewed Zach on his rooftop farm on a blistering 90 degree+ day. It’s amazing what Zach is doing and what the potential is for rooftop seed farms and seed gardens. Follow is our interview. Note that it has been slightly edited for content. Any typos are entirely my fault. – Sean Kaminsky My name […]
The Film
Check out our new trailer on YouTube!
Seed Saving
Jumping Genes! A Seed Library Grows in Mora, New Mexico.
I met Marleny Alfaro while shooting at Native Seeds/SEARCH seed school. I had the pleasure of spending a day with her family when they welcomed me to their beautiful land in Mora, New Mexico. Below is our interview where the conversation ran the gamut from seed libraries to Barbara McClintock’s “jumping genes” and the “Ringing […]