A Seed for Change - Greek film maker says we can 'grow our way out of the crisis

Many thanks g to Cristina in Greece for her report on this – originally published on her justiceforgreece blog as

A seed For Change a documentary project by Alex Ikonomidis and the declaration on seed freedom

Alex Ikonomidis is a Greek film maker who lived, studied and worked in Lebanon. After returning to his native Greece and serving his time in the military, he took up his profession there and was happily going along, producing in the world of media and advertising when, suddenly, the economic crisis hit. Through the crisis, Ikonomidis recognized that when money becomes more and more scarce, it is important to be where food is grown.

This brought him to embark on a documentary project. A Seed for Change is his soon-to-be-released feature length film documenting why agriculture must start with seed freedom. Chemical inputs are often toxic and are disruptive to human health and the environment. “Standardized” seeds, as imposed by the agro-chemical conglomerates through legislation pushed through in much of the civilized world, are destroying our heritage of biological diversity, created by nature and harnessed by farmers for producing our food over thousands of years.

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In this TEDx talk, Ikonomidis tells us how he came to make that film.

“We were brought up in a system that made us believe food grows on shelves, clean water springs in bottles, health is in the hands of the doctors, education lives in an establishment and MONEY is the key to all; It’s time to realize that all this is not true…”

Vandana Shiva, whom he could interview for the project, is a philosopher, environmental activist, author and eco feminist. Shiva, currently based in Delhi, has authored more than 20 books. She was trained as a physicist and received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, in 1978 with the doctoral dissertation “Hidden variables and locality in quantum theory.”

Vandana has issued a Declaration on Seed Freedom. She argues that we need freedom to counter the growing trend of more and more legal and technological structures being put in place for seed slavery. Her appeal to act for seed freedom is on http://seedfreedom.in/ where you can sign the declaration and join the movement.

We disobey unjust laws that impose (seed) slavery, and we can do that creatively. By growing and sharing among ourselves the seeds of heritage. Let the corporations try to sell their modified and standardized varieties. If no one buys them, what are they going to do? If farmers don’t use them, what are they going to sell. If their poisons are no longer used on our fields, why should they produce more of them?