Jennifer Jewell

The mix of personal diary sections and the more academic, educational sections was not done particularly well in my opinion. Honestly, I don’t think the diary entries contributed much. The author dives into many social issues relating to agriculture, and seed ownership and stewardship, as well as educating the reader on the basics about seeds and plant life, and the personal asides didn’t connect strongly with these topics at times or didn’t add to the discussion. They were also too surface-level to be an interesting look into the author’s experiences either.

I was also put off by some of the ways the author appealed to this idea of the sacredness of nature to oppose harmful modern agricultural techniques. There were plenty of good, compelling arguments against, for example, the way companies are using GMOs, but then it circled back to this baseless division that put some agricultural practices, including carefully selecting for and cultivating desired traits in the ‘natural’ and ones the author disliked in ‘unnatural’. The natural = good/divine, human-made = bad (so all good things must be natural) is something that annoys me personally and that I think undermines some of the author's points, but other readers without the same pet peeves might not be bothered by it. Same with some of the other minor mixing of science with spiritual beliefs that popped up.

I did think I learned a fair bit about seeds from this, particularly about the creation and maintenance of seed banks, and I think the issues the author addresses regarding harmful agricultural processes and loss of genetic diversity are important to be aware of.… (mais)