Imagine a bank that gives you a ten fold return on your investment and helps secure the world’s food supply all for the price of a song! Kindly send this letter to your friends and we can make it happen.
The Best Bank is a Seed Bank.
Seeds for a Song PDF
For millennia, farmers the world over saved part of their crop to plant the following year. The tastiest tomato, the largest potato, the hardiest squash would be kept for seed. Countless varieties were developed, saved
and traded. This practice is eroding. Small seed houses have been purchased by large companies, even organic farmers plant hybrid seed that cannot reproduce the following year. Companies like Monsanto are patenting genes from plant species collected in poor countries and making it illegal for peasants to plant seeds that their own ancestors developed.
What can we do?
Having grown up on a small mixed farm in Prince Edward Island, saving seed comes natural to me. I started a seed bank in my own community a few years ago. Every spring we get together, have a party and trade seed—luscious tomatoes, heirloom beans, rare grains. It’s fun, and it gives one a sense of security to know that our food supply is not entirely in the hands of a few
multi-national corporations. This is an issue for all of us; the city gardeners and rural farmers. It is my dream, and the dream of many others, that we develop seed banks in homes and communities all over.
How can we make this dream come true?
I am a professional musician and I will always play music, but that is not enough. I believe each of us can help create heaven on Earth, one idea at a time.
What do I have to give?
A song. I’ve just released a new album, Late Night Parlour. I want to give away a song for this project. The song is called “Dance Me Outside”. It was inspired by my parents who always found time to go dancing, even when there was so much work to do around the farm.
I invite you to download “Dance Me Outside”. For $0.99 you get a song that will inspire you to dance around the kitchen and you will be part of a banking system that puts people’s needs first. Of course, this will help me too. More people will hear my music, and I will finally be able to make this project fly.
Gardeners are invited to send me a self-addressed stamped envelope and I will send you some amaranth or heirloom bean seeds while my supply lasts! Part of the project money will go to hiring an organic farmer to grow seed that we can give away to start other seed banks. We will donate the rest to indigenous farm organizations in India and Latin America who are desperately trying to retain ownership of the seeds for their traditional rice, maize and other staple food crops.
I am so excited about this project, it is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. If you like to garden, dance or just enjoy good food, help me spread the word through e-mail and Facebook. My hope is that this idea will fly faster than dandelion seed in a summer breeze.
Happy gardening, dancing, and eating from beautiful Prince Edward Island.
—Teresa Doyle
Please note that this is not a formal PEI Food Security Network project. For more information on what you can do to help and to buy Seeds for a Song tracks, please contact the organizer directly by visiting www.teresadoyle.com.
