This talk follows ongoing work around the cooperative geographies of agrobiodiversity--the things that people do (and don't do) with seeds, the things that seeds may or may not do on their own, and the ways in which seed work inspires geographic relations between people, place, and plants. Focusing on collaborative project building with Philadelphia-based Truelove Seeds, I think with present day organizing around seedkeeping in service to food and land justice movements with diasporic storytelling and transnational solidarities. I propose that Truelove's self-articulation against and beyond the globalization of economic and food systems cultivates cross-diasporic politics of radical difference. Through seedkeeping, storytelling, and creative mapping, I think with Truelove's mycelium of landworkers and activists as they articulate radical visions of just food futures, imagining with and beyond the legacies of racial capitalism.

 

Chris Keeve is a PhD Candidate in Geography at the University of Kentucky and Predoctoral Fellow of the Woodson Institute of the University of Virginia. They are also a seedkeeper, chaotic gardener, and community educator. They work collaboratively with seedkeeping projects and organizations including Nonbinary Botany, The Heirloom Collard Project, Truelove Seeds, and the Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance.