Addressing sustainability and food security through academic seed libraries
A directed research project by Abigail Alty
This project was completed over the summer of 2023. For a portion of that time, I was staying in Chief Drygeese Territory, or Yellowknife, Northwest Territories (NWT), where I am from and where my family remains. Wildfires and their smoke have increasingly been affecting southern provinces, but in the NWT, smokey skies have long been a sign of summer.
This summer started out like many of the summers before, with the occasional smokey day, but soon the smokey days outnumbered the clear days and the air quality diminished for days and weeks at a time. The smoke affects everyone differently, and even those of us who are acclimatized to it started to move activities indoors or wearing masks. I did most of the interviews for this project in Yellowknife, and listening back to the transcripts I can hear when I had a hoarse voice from spending too much time outdoors in the smokey air.
In August 2023, Yellowknife and many other communities in the NWT were evacuated due to threats of wildfires coming dangerously near to (or entering) communities. During this time food supply chains across the NWT, regardless of evacuation status, were disrupted. Stores in majority-Indigenous communities began to run out of food. Groceries then had to be shipped by air from Edmonton, Alberta, thus increasing the already high price of goods (Pressman, 2023). First Nations were subsidizing the cost of grocery store food so that people could access somewhat affordable foods (Pressman, 2023). Hearing these stories made me reflect on the food systems we support and uphold, despite being broken and unjust; on the ways that colonization and capitalism have taken the power of food sovereignty away from communities; on the supports that vulnerable communities, like some students, are (not) receiving.
This project is about seed libraries.
But it is also about food systems, living sustainably and inclusion.
On their own, seed libraries likely cannot provide food security or reverse climate change. However, I do think there is value in reflecting on and discussing where our food comes from and how it got to our plates. I also think that people have been left out of this conversation, and they are likely the ones that are most impacted by systems meant to starve them. Seed libraries are not the answer, but they are a tool for uplifting seeds, which can be a meaningful and worthwhile pursuit. If nothing else, I want this project to show the value of seeds, not as a commodity, but as a living symbol of change and growth.