My seed story starts at home. My mom always had a garden. I remember running through the yard barefoot while she spent the weekend planting flowers and picking fruit from our four trees. But my connection to the Earth starts way before this; before me. I come from a long line of farmers. My dad’s side “owned” a mountain. This is an overstatement. The legalities of ownership have always been complicated on the island of Puerto Rico. But when my grandmother and grandfather married, the two major farms that existed on either side of Orocovis’s mountain had heirs that could claim ownership of both. My great-grandparents owned tobacco farms and were the known stewards of the tobacco seed in our town. The secrets of the tobacco seeds traveled through the winds of our family. The second generation left the island for the most part. Some of my great-aunts and uncles still reside on the island and in our town. But as more of us move away and as the second generation gets older, the secrets of the tobacco seeds and the many other plants my family guards risk being lost. I first learned of this story during the pandemic. I always knew that my grandparents met in the same town before moving to the States and that my grandmother’s father had a tobacco farm that all twelve of his children worked in. But I did not understand how deep my lineage of farmers was. 

With a very holistic minded mother, I was raised on the ideas of caring for the environment and for our bodies outside of mainstream concepts. I always considered myself as a rebel from her specific ideas. I thought that science and holistic mindsets can merge; and no one could convince me otherwise. For two years before the pandemic, I had been consistently researching genetically modified organisms for school projects. It was my topic of choice. I thought it was innovative and experimental that humans had the ability to bring the most needed traits out of a plant. I often researched both sides of the argument but most of my research proved to be safe and that we need to do more genetic research. As a vegetarian and a human rights activist, I thought that GMOs were the answer to world hunger and malnutrition. In the span of two years, I completed two argumentative papers, several project proposals, and a podcast on the topic. 

Oh, how I was misinformed. 

I first learned of the environmental consequences of GMOs during my first year Gardening ExCo at Oberlin College. We watched Seed: The Untold Story (I recommend everyone to watch this when they want to understand seeds and biodiversity). It opened my eyes to the true nature of GMO; one that causes displacement and removes the indigenous property from the people that have historically relied on it. With GMOs, we have lost over 94% of the plant biodiversity on this planet. I understand what my work did for the first time. My ancestors, who guarded and protected the tobacco seed through their life work, must have been so disappointed that it took me this long. 

From then on, I wanted to write and navigate the stories that exist in my family tree to become the next generation of seed stewards. My life is far from the island; a decision that was intentional for future generations to succeed. But I cannot and will not allow myself to let these stories go. They deserved to be told and kept for generations to come. 

My story is not unique. There are thousands of displaced people who are trying to keep their seeds alive. Matriarchs, which hold a prevalent force in maintaining this knowledge, hold the key to this understanding. I want to use my writing as a vessel for the necessary environmentalism work to come. Holding place in an archive that was not designed for my stories or the stories of thousands.