Our Seeds: Seeds Blong Yumi

 In September 2008 Seed Savers released “Our Seeds: Seeds Blong Yumi” , a fifty-seven minute film that celebrates traditional food plants and the people that grow them. 

Three minute trailer of "Our Seeds: Seeds Blong Yumi"

"Our Seeds" addresses the problems of globalised food based on hybrids that require pesticides and synthetic fertilisers. The film shows how individuals and small groups have solved these problems. A celebration of the seed keepers that stand at the source of humanity's diverse food heritage.

DVDs available here for AUD24 within Australia and AUD31 outside Australia (equivalent to  15 Euros and USD18). These prices include airmail postage. Discounts for five copies or more.

The film introduces those who stand at the source of humanity’s diverse food heritage. It is a David and Goliath story where resilience and persuasive logic triumph over seemingly invincible forces that control much of our food.
Seed Savers directors, Michel and Jude Fanton shot a hundred and sixty hours in eleven countries: Spain, France, Italy, India, Sri Lanka, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. 
The film features Pacific islanders as they face great challenges to their way of life, their culture and their traditional cultivation systems. They fall into the same traps as we do:- they replace innumerable varieties of root staples with modern hybrids that require pesticides and chemical fertilisers; they import low quality starch such as white rice, biscuits and noodles and risk losing their resilient food crops. This film seeks to reverse this trend.
There are developed instructive motion graphics and a rich sound track, mostly indigenous music recorded in the making of the film.
Audio options are original English soundtrack and Pacific Pigin.
Subtitle options are English and French.

We have allowed TV networks all over the Pacific to broadcast the film including in the Solomons, Vanuatu, Samoa, American Samoa and Papua New Guinea. It has become very popular and shown repeatedly, for example One Television in the Solomons showed it fifteen times in May 2009.

If you are an NGO in the Pacific and would like a copy of "Our Seeds: Seeds Blong Yumi", we will pay for the airfreight (on the payment page, choose the cost for sending inside Australia). We want you to have this film.

See Work Papers below for trainers to use. Please tell the local paper at the same time. Copy the press release we put on this page and email it to them. Thank you for your input! Keep in touch! michel@seedsavers.net

DVDs available to everyone here for AUD24 within Australia, AUD31 outside. 

 

In French

"Our Seeds" célèbre les plantes alimentaires traditionnels et le personnel nécessaire à leur croissance. Le film présente ceux qui sont à la source du patrimoine alimentaire diverse de l'humanité.

Tourné dans onze pays d'Asie, d'Europe et du Pacifique, le film met en scène les insulaires du Pacifique qui sont confrontés à de grands défis à leur mode de vie, leur culture et leurs méthodes de culture traditionnelles.
 
Il s'agit d'un David et Goliath où la résilience et le triomphe de la logique de persuasion sur les forces apparemment invincible qui contrôlent une grande partie de notre nourriture.

Voir la bande annonce du film et les ventes for a modest sum.. On les expedie dans tous les pays.

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Work Papers for "Our Seeds: Seeds Blong Yumi"

"Our Seeds" was made for the people of the Pacific. The DVD is being hand-delivered around the Pacific: into villages by canoe, up narrow walking tracks, passed from family to family. Like the film itself, these work papers are prepared for Melanesian subsistence farmers. Since its release in July 2008 we have given many copies to non-government and government organisations to show on their visits to communities.

Often these officers have to go by canoe or walk for hours because many islands are without roads. Mains power is very rare. At times they have to travel with a DVD player, TV, generator and the petrol. The news of a film screening spreads fast via radio coconut. Isolated families love to watch film, especially when it is made for them, dubbed in their vernacular, Pigin English. Only a handful of films are made for Melanesians.

The villagers will gather in the evening under the stars. The following discussion is usually lead by a person working in community development, or by a tribal leader.

The increasing number of Westerners attracted away from the not-so-bright lights of urban centres will find these papers useful too.

How to use the video for training

First session

Immediately after showing the film ask for feedback on its significance - how audience members felt, what they thought the messages were. Did they make any decisions? What were they? Anything else they would have liked to see in the film?
What did you learn that you did not know before? Can you explain what you thought before?

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Second session

Re-play the film chapter by chapter, stopping at the end of each to discuss some or all of the questions below. Each time ask for their response, verbal and/ or written.

1. Introduction
In Melanesia most food crops are propagated by cuttings or tubers. Think of such food crops and then others by seeds in your tribe / island. List them or just say their names.

2. Food from our ancestors
Is anyone still trading between the coast and the mountains on a swap basis? Trading without money can be a good way when there is no cash around. In other countries people are also exchanging goods. Do you have any example of that in your island or village?

3. Passing on the seeds
Do you have any current examples or do you remember traditional practices in your village where food plants are used in ceremonies or traditions e.g., birth, marriage, etc. 
What about where knowledge about foods is passed on to the younger generations?

4. Big changes coming
Have you observed any use of chemical agriculture in your islands or the mainland? 
Have you tried to save the seed of hybrid/ F1 maize or other crops? What happened?
Do you think keeping local variety is important to your culture and why is it?

5. Vanishing treasures
Do you think that this kind of loss could happen in your village? 
Can you think of varieties of bananas, yams, sweet potato or taro not seen any more?
Can you tell us what would happen if your tribal/language group would lose such a variety? Would that change any of your ceremonies at all? Could you substitute another variety?
What would happen when you language group cannot find a special type of wild forest food? Do you have any type of ritual ceremonies that need certain wild foods or plants?

6. Seeds that need poison
Does this ring a bell? How?
Have you noticed when hybrid seeds are grown that sprays have to be used because of insect or fungal damage?

7. Globalised poor food
Can you give example of this in your tribe? 
How would you raise income from processing your own food and beverages?
How would you sell them?

8. Rice comes in different qualities
Were you surprised that there are different varieties of rice when only one is available in the shops? 
Can you see a similar pattern in Melanesia with the replacement of local food by imported food?
Do you see a change in the consumption of shop food with the higher costs of transport?

9. Health problems with poor food
Who thinks that there is chicken, beef or prawns in packet noodles? Answer: None, just chemical flavours that taste like the picture on the packet.
Do you see a relationship between going less to the bush gardens and health? In which ways?

10. Bring back the good food
Do you have particular types of food plants and food that are use for specific ceremonies?
What are the traditional practices in your village/region that are saving diversity?
Are any of these varieties used for a special kind of food preparation?

11. Traditional varieties are better
What colourful varieties can you name?
Do you find that traditional varieties have more flavour, are more filling or have other superior qualities?

12. Growing mixed gardens
What sort of plants do you grow for extremes of climate?

13. Sharing keep us strong: 
Do you notice a difference in the practice of "sharing food" between people in urban areas such as Honiara, Port Vila and Port Moresby) and those living in villages?

14. The return of the local seed
What surprises you about commercial varieties?
Has anyone seen what Anand describes about modern varieties of cash crops versus traditional?

15. Joining the seed keepers
What are the traditional ways of spreading diversity in your community?
Do you think that any of the seed groups in India you have seen are applicable to your situation? Which ones and how?

16. Becoming a seed keeper
Do you have examples in your community of people who conserve a diversity of food crops?

17. Celebrating the seed keepers: 
What are you inspired to do to keep your culture?
What questions have not been covered that are specific to your culture?

Attention presenters:  we would be grateful if you would send us questions from the audience so they can be included in the next Work Papers for others to benefit.

The Seed Savers' Network, Box 975, Byron Bay, 2481 Australia.
61 2 6685 7560.     infoatseedsavers.net (replace at with @)

DVDs available here for AUD24 within Australia, AUD31 outside.