What five grams of durum wheat seed can become
In 2014, the beginning fit in the palm of a hand. Five grams of durum wheat seed, the weight of a few paperclips, poured into a small packet after a visit to the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute genebank. Starting from five grams poses a multiplication problem. Seed has to become more seed before it can become bread. That meant seasons of restraint, the kind that isn’t romantic when the hungry months arrive and the grain store starts to echo.
- agricultural research
- Ethiopia
- food security
What five grams of durum wheat seed can become
In 2014, the beginning fit in the palm of a hand. Five grams of durum wheat seed, the weight of a few paperclips, poured into a small packet after a visit to the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute genebank. Starting from five grams poses a multiplication problem. Seed has to become more seed before it can become bread. That meant seasons of restraint, the kind that isn’t romantic when the hungry months arrive and the grain store starts to echo.
For up to five years, many of the farmers who joined the Seeds for Needs initiative held back what they could have eaten. They planted and harvested, and then planted again, building seed stocks slowly, carefully, season by season, until there was enough to share, and only later enough to taste.
It is easy to praise patience from a comfortable distance. It is different to practice it when school fees are due, when rain comes late, when the price of fertilizer rises again. That is why the heart of this story is not the seed. It is the people who refused to treat seed as a short-term transaction.