Seeds of Resistance

Seeds of Resistance is a wake-up call. With vivid and memorable stories, Mark Schapiro tells us how seeds are at the frontlines of our epic battle for healthy food.” —Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse and the Edible Schoolyard

Sun. Soil. Water. Seed. These are the primordial ingredients for the most essential activity of all on earth: growing food. All of these elements are being changed dramatically under the pressures of corporate consolidation of the food chain, which has been accelerating just as climate change is profoundly altering the conditions for growing food. In the midst of this global crisis, the fate of our food has slipped into a handful of the world’s largest companies. Seeds of Resistance will bring home what this corporate stranglehold is doing to our daily diet, from the explosion of genetically modified foods to the rapid disappearance of plant varieties to the elimination of independent farmers who have long been the bedrock of our food supply.

Seeds of Resistance will touch many nerves for readers, including concerns about climate change, chronic drought in essential farm states like California, the proliferation of GMOs, government interference (or purposeful ignorance), and the alarming domination of the seed market and our very life cycle by global giants like Monsanto.

But not all is bleak when it comes to the future of our food supply. Seeds of Resistance will also present hopeful stories about farmers, consumer groups, and government agencies around the world that are resisting the tightening corporate squeeze on our food chain.

“The latest science suggests that plants, including those of our major food crops, are engaged in a continuous interplay of responses with the environment in which they’re planted. That environment is changing; climatic disruptions are accelerating. The number of seed companies is declining, and the spectrum of seeds shrinking. The group of people involved in fighting for their seeds, and a more just and healthy food system, is expanding. Old assumptions of how we grow food are falling. New paradigms are emerging. It’s a time of profound vitality and volatility in the seed realm, with high stakes for all of us who care about our health, the planet’s health, and the food we eat. As powerful forces circle round the ground-zero ingredient of our food, one thing is becoming clear: a seed is never just a seed. Seeds are the canaries on our climate disrupted planet. They’re emitting strong signals. Let’s read them.”

Mark Schapiro has won numerous journalism prizes for his investigative work, including the du Pont-Columbia University Award. He is the author of two widely praised books on urgent environmental issues, Carbon Shock and Exposed. His articles have been published in The Atlantic, Harpers, Mother Jones and The Guardian, and his documentary work has been featured on PBS’s Frontline.

“Seeds of Resistance is a wake-up call. With vivid and memorable stories, Mark Schapiro tells us how seeds are at the frontlines of our epic battle for healthy food.”
—Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse and the Edible Schoolyard
“At the bottom of it all lies the seed: who controls it, who ‘owns’ it, who develops it, who plants and nourishes it. As Mark Schapiro so vividly and compellingly writes: Save the seed, and you save the planet. Let others control it, and they control everything. For real.”
—Mark Bittman, author of How to Grill Everything and A Bone to Pick: The Good and Bad News About Food
“If you like food and want to keep eating it, Seeds of Resistance tells a story you should know about. Over the next ten years and beyond, humanity is going to need seeds that can produce food even as global warming makes heat waves, droughts, and downpours increasingly worse. Those seeds are out there, Mark Schapiro’s globe-straddling reporting shows, championed by indigenous peoples, independent scientists, and small-scale farmers. But the three mega-corporations that are attempting to monopolize the world’s seed supply have a very different agenda. I won’t reveal how the story ends, except to say that you, dear reader, are part of it.”
—Mark Hertsgaard, author of Hot and Earth Odyssey, and environment correspondent for The Nation