All Starts With Seeds: Farmer-scientist journeys towards biodiversity and a secure future

Could the path to sustainability begin with the people who never left it?

Around the world, traditional farmers are quietly sustaining the future of our food. All Starts With Seeds follows agricultural biodiversity scientist Awegechew Teshome across ten countries where ancestral crops thrive and resilience is grown-seed by seed, story by story.

Awegechew's firsthand research and collaboration with Indigenous and family farming communities reveal how traditional knowledge and practices are key to preserving biodiversity, combating climate change, and feeding a fragile planet.

From the highlands of Ethiopia to the Altiplano of the Andes, the slopes of the Himalayas, the open plains of South India, the hillsides of Central America, and the arid and semiarid lands of the Sahelian region of West Africa, farmers and scientists are working together to restore crops once thought to be lost. They protect seed systems, and revive sustainable agriculture from the ground up.

All Starts With Seeds celebrates the skills and knowledge of traditional and Indigenous farmers. The author demonstrates our ultimate dependence on the seeds and ancestral crops they steward and calls us to expand farmer-scientist collaboration for a sustainable future for everyone.