By Jennifer Heath, with photography by Sheryl Shapiro We're riding along the Shomali road north of Kabul, Afghanistan, with a van full of seeds and engineers. 
This highway was once called "The Green Tunnel," there were so many trees lining it on both sides. In 1979, as Soviet tanks trudged toward Kabul, they knocked them down, every one, for fear of mujahidin snipers. This is farm country: vineyards and wheat and orchards or fruit trees for family use shading the fields from the hard arid summer sun. In the 1990s, the Taliban, mostly Pakistanis, with young fundamentalist-trained Afghans in tow, came up from the South to conquer Afghanistan and in the process ripped all the grapevines and small fruit trees out by the roots to send back to Peshawar. They burned the homes and villages nearest the Shomali road. We drive past stubs of scorched vines here and there that the Taliban missed, past ruins of mud-brick buildings that now look like rock formations in Moab. There are few trees left in Afghanistan. War combined with abject poverty contributed to an almost absolute deforestation throughout the country. The capital city of Kabul, the prize for all the brutal factions fighting across twenty-three years of war--once pristine, clean, full of glorious pines and spruce--is today a dusty landfill, a dump with tall empty dried trunks, few gardens, and none of the exquisite flowers that Afghans love. There's not a shrub left in what was once a magical, fragrant Land of Lilacs. As if this weren't enough, Afghanistan has suffered a five-year drought and the famine that goes with it. War is a major cause of environmental destruction, worldwide. In post-war Afghanistan, the water is polluted, the climate changed by the constant heat of bombs and fire, and animals die or flee. It was a joy, and a surprise, just to see doves and magpies, to realize they had somehow survived. I am an American who grew up in Afghanistan. I've been involved with that country's fate, one way and another, for decades. When the United States began bombing the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, I saw, as did many Afghans, the opportunity at last for reconstruction. I am by profession a writer, and by passion, a gardener and environmentalist. So it was natural for me to think immediately of Seeds for Afghanistan. I put a call out through the internet, to friends and family by e-mail, made flyers and distributed them everywhere, and alerted the newspapers to my project. I asked only this: bring me seeds-- vegetables and flowers, anything that will grow in Zone 4, and I will see to it the Afghans receive them. Of course, I had no idea how, in fact, I would get the seeds to Afghanistan, but as a believer in the "if you build it, they will come," theory of living, this seemed like the least of my worries.
Read the rest at http://www.seedsofchange.com/enewsletter/issue_35/afghanistan.asp
The bold and courageous County Commissioners of Santa Fe County NM have created a document we can use to initiate similar resolutions in our own regions.
SANTA FE COUNTY Resolution No. 2007 - 9A Resolution in Support of a "Declaration of Seed Sovereignty:
A Living Document for New Mexico"WHEREAS, our ability to grow food is the culmination of countless generations of sowing and harvesting seeds and those seeds are the continuation of an unbroken line from our ancestors to us and to our children and grandchildren.WHEREAS, our ancestors developed a relationship with plants that allowed their cultivation for food and medicine and this has been a central element of our culture and our survival for millennia in regions throughout the world.WHEREAS, the concurrent development of cultures of Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas resulted in a plethora of food and crop types including grains such as maize and wheat; legumes such as beans and lentils; fruits such as squash and chile; vegetables such as spinach and those of the cabbage family; and roots such as potatoes and turnips.WHEREAS, these foods and crops, though developed independently of each other, came together in New Mexico with the meeting of Spanish, Mexican, and Native American cultures to create a unique and diverse indigenous agricultural system and land-based culture.WHEREAS, just as our families are attached to our homes, our seeds learn to thrive in their place of cultivation by developing a relationship with the soil, water, agricultural practices, ceremonies, and prayers; thereby giving seeds a sacred place in our families and communities.WHEREAS, the way in which seeds become attached to a place makes them native seeds, also known as landraces, also makes them an important element of the generational memory of our communities.WHEREAS, the continued nurturing of native seeds or landraces has provided the basis for the community coming together for communal work such as Cleaning acequias and preparing fields as well as in ceremony, prayers, and blessings thereby binding our communities, traditions, and cultures together.WHEREAS, the practices embodied in working the land and water and caring for seeds provides the basis for our respectful connection to the Earth and with each other.WHEREAS, our practices in eating for native seeds (Iandraces) and growing crops provide for much of our traditional diet and results in our ability to feed ourselves with healthy food that is culturally and spiritually significant.WHEREAS, clean air, soil, water, and landscapes have been essential elements in the development and nurturing of seeds as well as the harvesting of wild plants; and that these elements of air, land, and water have been contaminated to certain degrees.WHEREAS, corporate seed industries have created a technology that takes the genetic material from a foreign species and inserts it into a landrace and is known as Genetically Engineered (GE) or transgenic crops.WHEREAS, seed corporations patent the seeds, genetics, and/or the processes used in the manipulation of landraces, and have gone so far as to patent other wild plants or the properties contained in the plants.WHEREAS, GE crops have escaped into the environment with maize in Oaxaca, Mexico and canola in Canada and crossed into native seeds and wild plants.WHEREAS, organic farmers have been sued by seed corporations when these patented genetic strains have been identified in the farmers' crops, even though the farmers were unable to see or stop pollen from genetically engineered crops from blowing over the landscape and into their fields, thus contaminating the farmers' crops.WHEREAS, the effect of this technology on the environment or human health when consumed is not fully understood.WHEREAS, the seed industry refuses to label GE seeds and food products containing GE ingredients.WHEREAS, the pervasiveness of GE crops in our area cannot then be fully known due to the lack of labeling and therefore carries the potential for genetic pollution on our landraces.WHEREAS, countries such as Japan, England, and countries in Africa have refused genetically modified foods and prohibit the introduction of GE crops on their lands because of their unknown health effects.WHEREAS, indigenous cultures around the world are the originators, developers, and owners of the original genetic material used in the genetic engineering of crops by corporations today.WHEREAS, this declaration must be a living, adaptable document that can be amended as needed in response to rapidly changing GE technology that brings about other potential assaults to seeds and our culture.NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Board of County Commissioners of Santa Fe County supports the following:• The traditional farmers of Indo-Hispano and Native American ancestry of current day northern New Mexico collectively and intentionally seek to continue the seed-saving traditions of our ancestors and maintain the land races that are indigenous to the region of northern New Mexico;• Seek to engage youth in the continuation of the traditions of growing traditional foods, sharing scarce water resources, sharing seeds, and celebrating our harvests.• Reject the validity of corporations' ownership claims to crops and wild plants that belong to our cultural history and identity.• Object to the seed industry's refusal to label seeds or products containing GE technology and ingredients and demand all genetically modified seeds and foods containing GE ingredients in the State of New Mexico to be labeled as such.• Object to the cultivation of GE seeds in general but especially within range of our traditional agricultural systems that can lead to the contamination of our seeds, wild plants, traditional foods, and cultural property.• We will work with each other, local, tribal, and state governments to create zones that will be free of genetically engineered and transgenic organisms.• We will also work together to address other environmental abuses that contaminate our air, soil, and water quality that certainly affects our health, the health of our seeds and agriculture, and the health of future generations.• We will work together with the traditional farmers representing various acequia, Pueblo, tribal, and surrounding communities to create, support, and collaborate toward projects and programs focused on revitalization of food traditions, agriculture, and seed saving and sharing.PASSED, APPROVED and ADOPTED this 30th DAY OF JANUARY, 2007.
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
