Seeds of Food Sovereignty with the Cooperative Gardens Commission

The Horticulturati

In this episode, we talk about seed sharing and food justice with Hayden Kesterson and DJ Needelman from the Cooperative Gardens Commission. The CGC is an international grassroots collective of volunteers working to increase community food production, resource-sharing, and food sovereignty. Founded in 2020 in response to the Covid pandemic, one of the CGC’s main projects is seed distribution: sourcing commercial seed companies’ surplus inventory and distributing shipments of seeds to a network of hundreds of “seed hubs'' around the US and Canada, which in turn share the seeds with local communities. One of these hubs is Central Texas Seed Savers, founded by Horticulturati co-host, Colleen Dieter.

Hayden and DJ run the CGC’s Seed Distribution initiative from the organization’s home base in Philadelphia. We discuss food apartheid and mutual aid; the challenges of organizing in the wake of the pandemic’s (ongoing) economic catastrophe; and why Hayden and DJ are motivated by the mighty power of seeds.

Find the Cooperative Gardens Commission at https://www.coopgardens.org and support their 2024 Seed Distribution Fundraiser!

This interview is part of Colleen’s research for her upcoming book for A&M Press about seed saving and seed libraries.

Editor Leah's note: We talk about Covid in the past-tense here. Ironically, Colleen had Covid at the time we recorded this episode, testing positive a few days later. She's recovered, but this little piece of context stands out as a reminder of how the pandemic continues to intervene into our lives, even as we imagine ourselves in a "post-Covid" world.