For our grandfather and especially for the grandmothers, from the Neolithic to here, it has been customary to separate and store part of the harvest to sow. Little by little, this work has been left in the hands of the growing numbers: at present, nine companies have 63% of the seeds sold worldwide. The multinational Bayer, which is absorbed by Monsanto, has alone absorbed 23% of the total seed sales. Because we have stopped making seeds, today many of those with orchard do not know the maturity of the plants either, as most plants are young to eat. We're all schooled, but in biology, we've been taught very little about the diversity of forms of sexual and non-sexual reproduction that plants have to grow and some species of plants that in historical classes have barely mentioned us, although they've been fundamental to the survival of our people. Without making seeds, besides losing autonomy and culture, we have lost the pleasure of contemplating the beautiful flowers of many of the vegetables...

The seed gives us the basis to understand the reproduction of plants, the practical and technical explanations for the elaboration of the seeds of 60 plants – vegetables, medicinal herbs, flowers and various cereals – as well as curiosities, tricks... Native varieties are also collected, such as the zucchini that was recovered in Artozki in the battle of the Itoiz reservoir, which each year is kept in more orchards. We also found epic historical passages such as Leningrad II. During the World War, the Nazi army had completely besieged the city, as the workers of the Vavilov centre, which housed a worldwide collection of agricultural varieties, starved to death, without eating a single grain of those tons of seeds, because they knew that they were keeping a treasure to feed all the Soviet people in the future. In addition to all the above, this book will bring us closer to the global problem of seeds: how genetic technology "patent life", how hybrid seeds created by multinationals are reducing biodiversity -- that's what we've addressed in this report with the two authors of the book.

“A seed is both past and future”

We've asked the two authors what a seed is, and so they've uncovered the answer by points.

Arribas: "I don't know what a seed is, but we started in the orchard, because for us the orchard was a space of resistance, of opposition to the system that just wants to be a consumer. And the reproduction of the seed increases that resistance, gives you autonomy not to depend on the farms. It is a political and disobedient act. And it also allows your plantations to adapt more and more to your vegetable garden and your work." Badal follows: "Maybe it has another political sense: it sews the community. You can make some seeds individually in your vegetable garden, but somehow you have to go to the collective realm. In its day it was between the neighborhoods. In the current context, we are among those of Biolur or among those of Alegia or in informal networks...". Arribas matches: "Normally the plants are very generous and the seeds created will always be too many for a gardener who is dedicated to self-consumption, which forces you to organize, gather, exchange with other gardeners... that is very nice".

Then, Arribas has looked through another peak at the relationship between the seed and the community: "Before, the seeds were at the center of the culture of the baserritars. We have lost that and we must recover it in order to re-create culture. Every time I make corn, I remember how my neighboring grandparents here talked about the laundering of corn and its importance in the economy and in social life and how they went to the auzolan, how they linked and sewed community there ..." Badal follows: "Yes, I am also interested in culture: agricultural biodiversity and cultural biodiversity cannot be separated. For the older farmers of today, seeds are an economic resource: seed is something that serves production and if it does not serve they will not use it. Instead, we have another relationship with seeds, we are always talking about the concept of variety. In fact, in the 20th century, in a single century virtually all old varieties have disappeared, that is, 75% of the cultivated biodiversity has been lost, so the seeds of the old varieties that we still find live as a treasure. Somehow, those seeds become patrimony for us, and sometimes the old farmers see them like this, they call them "seeds of my house," and it's always been important that the seed be homegrown."

Arribas has focused on the economic: "We, as a community, have lost our seeds and our knowledge, but economic powers have not lost them, because they are very clear that there is the essence. And that is what we want to recover, also from the economic point of view. In the book we mention this story that Eduardo Galeano told, of how the slaves, when fleeing the plantations, carried their children and seeds kept in their hair, because it was the only way to maintain their lives: to maintain their family and their food system. Today, I don't know what many people would have done on a getaway, perhaps the mobile charger... We are a long way from that awareness: we have to attach importance to seeds, because there is our food, our future. That is very clear from the agro-industry. And we have to be mindful, to be sovereign."

Badal has associated another concept with the seed: "A seed is also a door. It gives you the opportunity to see what the rural world of yesteryear was like and to think about how we've come up to date, to better understand the historical processes of the last decades. It's something that swings over time." Round Arribas: "Yes, a seed is both past and future. This past has brought together many weather situations and events, and all that memory in local varieties is now very valid for the changing times in which we live, in order to be able to launch our food system in this climate crisis. It's a whole seed.

Hybrid seeds: what bargain but...

As reported in the book, the F1 hybrid varieties have increased in recent years in our orchards: cabbage, zucchini, melon, tomato, bell pepper, eggplant... Arribas explains what a hybrid seed is: "It's a seed that comes from forced pollination. Why is this process being done? The first generation of plants that comes from hybrid seeds is generally very homogeneous, so they are all the same and strong plantations are produced. That is why they are very interesting from an economic and productive point of view, and our agro-ecological partners are also increasingly using hybrid seeds. But the paradox is that the next generations of these plantations are not viable. We can argue whether they're sterile or not, but if not all of them are sterile, the next generations come out very different, very heterogeneous and perhaps unproductive. So, if you use hybrid seeds, you can't use their seeds to increase. That is why, for us, hybrid seeds are enemies, because we are producing less and less biodiversity, that is, we are assuming a standardisation in orchards and, furthermore, we are losing autonomy, because we are dependent on breeding companies. Of course, that is a round business for the multinationals. With hybrid seeds we cannot create and adapt our varieties to our needs, to our orchards, to our climate...". In the book, Marta Barba Gassóc has written an article explaining the kilometers that "Basque tomatoes" make: the seeds of the creation of tomato plants of the Jack variety that grow in the Basque Country are hybrids and are made with cheap labor and toxic techniques, so the multinationals produce those seeds in the Global South.

Badal explained that in recent times hybrids offer another "advantage", namely, the development of resistance to a ailment: "But these diseases are often viruses and, as COVID-19 has taught us, viruses are dying and new variants are continually coming out, so seed companies are also continuously creating new generations of seeds." Arribas adds: "But where do companies producing hybrid seeds come from? There are varieties that are not hybrid! ". Badal: "In other words, to develop these resistances they resort to seeds kept in seed banks," he added. Although the fear of disease is a good hook for selling hybrid seeds, Badal has dispelled the fear of: "If you work ecologically your vegetable garden, most of these diseases are not going to be a problem for you."

Transgenic: risk of patenting life

The issue of GMOs has always aroused debate and curiosity, and the book deals with the subject. For this occasion, the reader will enjoy the article that Guy Kastler has expressly written for the book. Kastler is an international referent, a historical member of the European Peasant Way and the Seed Network of France.

Arribas explains in this way what a transgenic seed is: "Your genetic information is a directly manipulated seed. There's a lot of discussion about whether it's good for health -- I at least don't want to try it, and I don't care. The key to me is another: GMOs are an imposition on the sector. Because the problem is that if you produce GMOs on your soil, you are contaminating the corn in my estate. So you're depriving me of the right that I have to sow the corn that I want. That is why GMOs should be banned, because they are crops that go against our freedom."

Companies developing GMO technology promise that GMO will make it possible to end hunger in the world. Arribas says it's "propaganda." "We have been with GMOs for 25 years and hunger is not over. This is the usual trap for companies to sell an innovation that we don't need. We all know that the problem of hunger is the problem of separation, it is related to the cultivation model and the poor distribution of resources".

Badal reviews the development of GMOs and places the debate today: "If we look at the characteristics of the transgenic varieties that were originally opened, especially soybeans and maize, it is clear that the characteristics sought in those varieties were precisely those that approached the agro-industry: for example, to sell more herbicides (among them, glyphospates)... then a second generation came out, a long time ago, for example, a Indian rice with vitamin A, with the argument to end the hunger. And in recent years, there has been the greatest struggle with next-generation GMOs. All this is due to new genetic techniques, especially the technology called crispr cas or "genetic editing", which has among its many applications the world of seeds." Kastler explained in his article that the COVID-19 vaccine that spread like vaccination was also made with this technology. Badal continued: "The impellers affirm that these new seed varieties are not transgenic, since in classical transgenics a portion of genetic material of another species was introduced into plants, while with genetic editing what they incorporate to plants is the genetic material of the same species, but genetic engineering is always present, and there is the debate."

Beyond the debate on the impact of GMOs on health and the environment, Kastler focuses his article on the risk of "privatizing life". Badal explains how life is being privatized through patents: "These large companies of transgenic seeds say that in order to continue their innovation they must patent technology, that is, patenting the method they have used to create transgenic plants and, on the other hand, protecting the new varieties they produce. And they call on states to adopt regulations to protect the rights of these companies. The seed lobby has an organization of great international impact, called UPOV, and its strength is enormous, for example, if a state wants to participate in these great international trade treaties, it first has to enter that organization."

The issue of licences raises controversy in cultural creation, but surreal situations arise when what a company patents is a variety of plants, that is, when nature itself and farmers patent the result of 10,000 years of work. The book contains several extreme cases and Arribas explains the mechanism as follows: "If you don't have a variety registered, any company can take seeds from the variety of your vegetable garden and privatize it by itself. That's why we say that 'privatize life'. And from now on you can ask for money from you for using the variety registered by him. Such cases have been reported, particularly in South America and Asia, but also in the Spanish State. If you want to patent your transgeny, patent it, I don't care, but you can't patent a common heritage."

Initiatives in the Basque Country working for seeds

That hybrids do not serve seed, on the one hand, that GMOs contaminate the plantations of growers who do not want them; that technological patents and protected varieties derived from them want to privatise nature, on the other, there are increasingly barriers for the horticulturist who wants to cultivate their seeds. And Badal pointed out one last hurdle: "It was previously customary to make seeds in the farmhouses - in most cases it is a work of women - and they were exchanged or sold in the local markets. In a few decades we have gone from there to the global monopoly of transnational incubators, and now any farmer who intends to sell seed has to obtain authorisation for it and is required to fulfil the same conditions as large companies, for example, to produce a lot of kilos of seed each year. And that's another way of depriving farmers of their rights." The first battle of the Aleka project was to obtain that permission, and Arribas concludes the following: "Any small project, which is done from the farmhouse and agroecology, must necessarily be done from disobedience, because the law does not even contemplate that there may be this type of small project".

Trabak traba, the book collects several collective initiatives for the elaboration and dissemination of seeds in the Basque Country. This section is written collectively and in it we will find, on the one hand, the seed networks: The Seed Network of Navarra (article written by Ester Montero and Tania Gómez on their initiatives) and the Seed Network of the Basque Country operating in the CAPV. On the other hand, the book explains the organizations of the agroecological sector that work around the seed: The Earth Society of tomorrow (which operates in the Northern Basque Country, is written by Niko Mendiburuk), Bionekazaritza (in Álava) and Biolur (in Gipuzkoa, written by Leire Ibarretxe). Thirdly, we will know the seed producers of the Basque Country through this book: Aleka is the association of cereal and legume producers in Navarre, Hazialde, and Lorea Lizarreta has been in charge of writing the account of their activities.

Finally, the book also collects information projects on the subject of seeds: for example, the Haziera seed archive of the Cristina Enea foundation, the Hazien library (project involving more than 20 public libraries in Navarra) and the Eskolen hazi network (involving 15 schools in Gipuzkoa). Let this book be useful to all of them and serve to make the public aware of the importance of seeds and become a small local and community breeder.