26/01/2026
Lebanese seeds are in danger!!!
Read the manifesto we have written and share widely:
A Manifesto for Seeds, Food, and Sovereignty in Lebanon
Seeds are not commodities.
They are memory, flavor, adaptation, and survival.
In Lebanon, baladi and heirloom seeds are the living foundation of our food culture and agricultural resilience. They carry generations of knowledge, shaped by climate, soil, labor, and care. To protect them is not an act of nostalgia — it is a necessity for the future.
Today, a proposed seed law will determine whether these seeds remain living heritage in farmers’ hands, or become marginalized by systems designed for industrial agriculture.
We affirm the following principles:
1. Seeds are a common good
Baladi and heirloom seeds belong to farmers and communities, not to corporations or exclusive ownership systems. They are the result of long collective stewardship and must remain free from intellectual property regimes and commercial standards that erase diversity.
2. Farmers are guardians, not traders
Farmers have the inherent right to save, reuse, exchange, and propagate seeds. These practices are not informal markets — they are the backbone of biodiversity,
food security, and cultural continuity.
3. Diversity, freedom, and the future
A living seed system rests on three inseparable foundations:
• Diversity, which ensures resilience, adaptation, and true dietary richness;
• Freedom, which safeguards farmers’ rights to steward, select, cross, save, and renew seeds;
• A future that preserves the past, because there is no evolution without conservation.
Heirloom seeds are genetically diverse by nature. Their variability — often mislabeled as imperfection — is what makes them resilient and rooted in place. Laws based on uniformity and standardization threaten this living system and undermine agriculture’s ability to respond to climate change and environmental stress.
4. Regulation must protect, not criminalize
Commercial seed production must be regulated transparently and strictly. Traditional, farmer-managed seed systems must be explicitly protected. Registration may serve to document and safeguard diversity, but what is not registered must never be outlawed. Farmers’ seeds must remain outside mandatory commercial registration, certification, and licensing requirements.
5. Food sovereignty begins with seeds
A country that cannot control its seeds cannot control its food. Protecting local seeds is essential to national food security, rural livelihoods, ecological balance, and the continuity of food cultures.
6. No place for GMOs
Genetically modified organisms threaten biodiversity, farmer autonomy, pollinators, and food integrity. Lebanon’s fields and food systems must remain free of GMOs.
7. Knowledge is part of heritage
Traditional agricultural knowledge — how seeds are selected, stored, grown, exchanged, and cooked — is inseparable from the seeds themselves. Protecting one means protecting the other.
Seeds carry the future.
To protect them is to protect taste, dignity, biodiversity, and the right to feed ourselves.
