Ethical Seed Farming Intensive

Grow your skills—and your seeds! This Seed Farming Intensive offers a comprehensive, hands-on exploration of seed production, guiding participants through every stage of the process and providing the knowledge needed to confidently integrate seed stewardship into your farm.

Activities include:

• Live demonstrations of seed-processing techniques, including threshing, winnowing, screening, fermentation, drying, storage, and germination

• Presentations on the plant life cycle, flower and seed production, and the history of human collaboration in developing food crops

• Discussions on key topics in the seed world, including community- and cooperative-based seed work, the consolidation of seed businesses, and seeds as tools of empowerment

• Self-reflective storytelling centered on seeds and food

Led by The Ira Wallace Seed School, a project of the Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance.

Meet your teachers:

Amirah Mitchell is a farmer, seedkeeper and community educator who has worked in agriculture and food justice since 2007. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Horticulture from Temple University, and has studied agriculture in Brazil and Panama. Amirah currently farms 10 acres in Virginia and gives community workshops on seed-keeping and agro-ecology. In 2021, Amirah founded Sistah Seeds, and farm and seed company with a mission to regenerate culturally-important varieties and seed-keeping traditions from the African Diaspora, while uplifting black seed stories and empowering aspiring black seed stewards. Sistah Seeds values sustainable farming practices, and is committed to providing seeds that are open-pollinated, never genetically modified, and always grown with love and respect.

Tomia MacQueen is an Educator (BA) of 20+ years, Farmer and Master Gardener specializing in edible gardens. She is the owner of Wildflower Farm and the founder of Dance for LIFE (Love, Inspiration, Faith and Empowerment) and Gardening for LIFE. Tomia has been an Edible Gardens Consultant for 17 years, and has been in Dance Ministry for over 15 years. She is the founder of the Healing Waters Project which provides land access and training to historically underrepresented new and beginning farmers at Wildflower Farm. Tomia partners with local organizations and schools as a featured Farmer/Mentor within youth and young adult programs such as the Outdoor Equity Alliance Agrihood Program, Upward Bound, the Princeton University Seed Farm and others. She also served as the pilot Coordinator for the Food Systems Literacy program at Princeton Public Schools, laying transformative framework for the Food Systems Curriculum. Tomia is a Board member of the Northeast Organic Farming Association New Jersey (NOFA-NJ) and a founding member of The Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance where she is a member of Admin and Seed and Operations working groups as well as the  Co-coordinator for the Value-Added Working Group, a teacher in the Ira Wallace Seed School and a member seed grower.

Reggie Blackwood is an instructor for the Ira Wallace Seed School, a project of Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance, as well as a member of the working group on Seed and Farm Operations, which manages seed hubs and growers in the UCFA network. He is videogapher and co-director of the six-film series "Southeast Seed Saving," a Southeast SARE-funded project sponsored by the Utopian Seed Project.  Reggie co-owned Southern Exposure Seed Exchange 2010 - 2018, and has used this background in worker-owned cooperatives to encourage cooperative decision-making models in his current residence of Washington, DC, where he is a worker-owner of Brighter Days dogwalking collective and an active member of Food Not Bombs DC and Ward 2 Mutual Aid. Reggie loves to talk about reproductive strategies of plants, cooperative decision-making strategies, evolutionary history of common agricultural crops, bike polo, and landlord/tenant law.

Bonnetta Adeeb, founder & President of STEAM ONWARD, Inc, a Non-profit 501(c3) organization in Southern Maryland. In addition, she works with the Cooperative Gardens Commission to distribute free heirloom seeds to communities in need, serving 300 seed hubs nationally. Ms. Adeeb, a retired teacher, was an educator for 37 years. She taught social studies and Career Research and Work-based Learning, a school-to-work educational program. The Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance (UCFA), is a program under the non-profit organization STEAM ONWARD Inc, is a BIPOC led collective that recruits and supports emergent and seasoned growers who cultivate heirloom seeds and grow culturally relevant plants for food and healing. UCFA recognizes the need for increased diversity in agriculture and in the seed industry specifically. We are bridging the gap between prospective BIPOC growers and heirloom seed companies.  Our main program areas include seed farming education via online classes as well as in-person workshops to pass on the traditional knowledge of seed saving, seed farming to pursue the art and science of heirloom plants, and seed sales to develop a more resilient and sustainable food system.