Editorial: Sacred Seeds effort preserves history for future
The nation’s first farmers were Native Americans. Today, there still are lessons to learn from their efforts so long ago.
While evolution in the farm industry has been a constant — driverless tractors may soon dot the landscape — there’s also value in hearkening back to the earliest days of farming, when Indian farmers mainly produced corn (known as maize), beans and squash.
So it’s been with a Sacred Seed project that’s sprouted up at the Salina-based Land Institute. Sacred Seed aims to preserve plant varieties that date back to indigenous tribes. Those behind the venture see the project inspired by five-year-old Sacred Seed out of Omaha, Neb., as a way to develop alternatives to destructive agricultural practices.