Seed saving conference

When the subject shifted from the modes of communication among the seed savers in Belo Horizonte to who was going to assume responsibility for the inventory, I kind of zoned out of the conversation for a second to reflect on the absurdity of the situation.

Here were these two American backpackers who don´t speak much Portuguese sitting in on a conversation that would impact the future of agribiodiversity in Belo Horizonte, and quite possibly, the rest of Brazil.

It was at this point that I raised my hand and meekly asked in broken Portuguese, "So, how do the seed savers talk to each other?"

There was a long pause as everyone in the circle turned their head towards my direction. Everyone seemed to be taken by surprise that I would say anything. I hadn't spoken above a whisper all day (and that was just to Avery). Or maybe something really interesting was happening behind me.

Then, in unison, everyone shifted their gaze to the woman sitting next to me, who translated my question, from Portuguese to Portuguese, so everyone could understand. They then spent the next 20 minutes trying talking about who should be in charge of letting everyone else know what was happening with the network and trying to pass all responsibility onto everyone else. 

This question was the crowning achievement of the day Avery and I spent at a day-long meeting on agrobiodiversity in Belo Horizonte hosted by the local urban agriculture network. 

If I hadn't spent the previous year working very closely with the seed-saving network in Ecuador, I would have had little idea what they were talking about. Luckily, most of the Portuguese words are cognates with the Spanish, so I grasped the main concepts.

Seven paragraphs into this post, you are probably wondering how we find our way into a conference on seed saving?

Well, it all started at our hostel in Belem when we started talking to a woman, who turned out to be a professor of international development at American University. When I told her I what I had been doing in Ecuador and what I was interested in doing in Brazil, she was nice enough to share some of her contacts with us.

After exchanging a few emails, Avery and I were waiting with a group of 50 gardeners and seed savers in the plaza outside an art museum in Belo Horizonte, preparing to take a bus to this rendezvous.

The meeting got off to an outstanding start, which was headlined by a sumptuous breakfast spread. After a few camaraderie-building exercises of singing, dancing, and hugging, the sessions got underway.

Someone spoke about the reasons for having a conference about agrobiodiversity: he said it was the limiting of the genetic variability in vegetables we eat, chemical and machines used in agriculture, and natural resource exploitation, among many others.  He went into a lot more detail, but given his monotone and how many times we have heard this (and with so much more energy), we need not get into it.

After he got the crowd warmed up, we got into breakaway sessions to talk about a few specific themes. The session was supposed to be a rotation between a few groups, but delays forced everyone to choose one station between the following options: conscious eating, seed saving processes, visits to a local farm, and medicinal plants.

After sizing up the people who would be giving the presentations, Avery and I decided that the husband-wife dynamic duo at the medicinal plant station would be our best bet. Also, we figured we had enough background in the other themes that we could potentially learn something at this station.

At this point, there was a little memorial session to honor a fallen seed saver and local environmentalist, which followed by a great snack before the breakaway groups.

The husband-wife group started the session by handing out leaves from different medicinal plants to each participant. We were told to close our eyes and use our other senses to get to know the leaves (a la “hug-a-tree”). After a few minutes, we could open our eyes and see what we were dealing with. Afterwards, the presenters then walked around the room and told people the names of the plants they were dealing with.

The separate sessions didn't finish on time, as is typical in breakaway sessions at most conferences, so while ours finished early, we were able to sneak into a few other ones.
The seed saving talk was interesting but didn't compare to fruit-salad making in the conscious eating station.

After that great appetizer, there was an outstanding lunch buffet followed by a tour of the ecologically-designed structures on the premises.

The afternoon sessions featured the glorious moment described at the beginning of the post where I made a constructive contribution to the day.

The day ended with an exchange of seeds, seedlings, preserves, artwork, and other items people brought from their farm. Avery and I didn't know about this exchange. Otherwise, we would have told everyone to bring their kitchen knives for us to sharpen—we are blazing a trail of sharp knives everywhere we go in South America (i.e. hostels, hosts, fellow backpackers).

In other exciting news, the woman sitting next to us would have slept all day, but her naps kept getting interrupted by the passing of materials around the room. Her first nap ended when the attendance sheet came around. He next nap ended when some other document was being distributed. In the breakaway session, she was awoken every time a different medicinal plant sample was passed around the room. Her phone woke her up during three separate naps, and for one call, she picked it up and had a 45 second conversation while the speaker was talking to the group (next to her!).

At one point, I leaned over the Avery and said "Can't a woman just get some sleep around here? C'mon!"