What language has worked well for you in getting people interested in Landrace Gardening?
I think we can all agree that ‘landrace’ is a useful, specific, and fantastic word, with a long history and growing awareness around it. We should continue to use it in many cases.
BUT the feedback we’ve been getting is that when it’s the very first thing some people hear or see, it can be a turn-off. When hearing or seeing it in a title, they try to understand the concept of Landrace by analyzing the combination of land + race. Is it a ‘race to the land’? ‘Will I be a land ‘racist’ if I use this word?’ or ‘What does ‘race’ have to do with gardening?’
And that leaves them to dismiss it, or not embrace the concept when they otherwise would, or hesitate to share something with friends. Using it in context, with a definition, farther down in the paragraph, or later in the conversation, would likely not be a problem.
Since one of the goals of Going to Seed is to expand awareness of the importance of Landrace Gardening, this response by some people to Landrace limits our future growth. And Joseph is looking for feedback on the title of the international version of Landrace Gardening.
Also note: The title of Joseph’s book isn’t about to change. There will always be a contingent of Landace Gardeners, and it will probably grow. This is about gaining some new language to use where it’s beneficial.
So, this is the first step: brainstorm ideas for alternative language! And in the spirit of a brainstorm, let’s keep feedback or discussion on others’ ideas positive. More is better for now.
I’ve found it most helpful to compare it to something they’re already familiar with, such as a barnyard mix (in chickens). I also use “locally adapted” more often than “landrace” when I first bring up the topic.
I have found “culinary focused breeding” to work. Most people love the word heirloom. Cross pollinating the best heirlooms to create the next great heirloom is more approachable conversation starter. I have been surprised at how many people do not like crossing cultivars, but also love how well commercial f1 varieties have performed?
I was visiting an organic farm and landrace was advised against because they want to know what plant or fruit they will get at harvest.
There was also a conversation with a dahlia grow whom won’t save seeds as they want to know what flower they will get. These are two specific instances where landrace was a conversation ender.
The average home gardener awareness:
. Does not know what landrace means
. Does not know the benefits of seed diversity
. Does not know the drawbacks of the regular way
. Wants more food with less work
. Wants to avoid pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizer.
. Most do not save seeds or understand the long term benefits.
We are selling an advanced form of seed saving that is vastly superior to the regular way. However, the message is against the main narrative of seed saving.
We are going up against decades of incestuous brainwashing. You got to have authority and confidence to sell against the grain.
The main selling point for me is long term gains I get each season. Every time I save seed from my best plants, I feel that I have made next season just a little easier. It’s the promise of a better harvest, a feeling of control and safety. Anything to make our life just a little easier since the time we were cast out of the perfect garden:
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
The other project I have followed and enjoyed the fruits of their labor was theDwarf Tomato Project in the right circumstances keeping phrasing specific to a specific crop can be used as a Trojan horse.
“ Community driven and delicious”
“ Our goal is to create delicious tomatoes of all flavour and size variations on
compact, easy-to-maintain dwarf tomato plants.”
One thing I always loved about Landrace Gardening are these similar concepts/different words of direct action, grassroots organizing, bottom up, decentralization that empowers everybody to solve their own problems, or achieve whatever they want to achieve. And ideally in community.
Haven’t tried to turn that into some useful phrasing. Any ideas? Y’all are really good at this!
Also, basically all the principles of principles of anarchy now that I’m aware of them.
I have not noticed that with anyone I have interacted with on this topic. Maybe it’s a trend in the US, within particular circles?
But, I have found myself not calling the method of this forum ‘landrace’ anymore, since reading up on landraces. This is because this method seems quite different to me to the landrace method, which has a recorded usage at least back to 1935 (Layley & Malden, ‘Evolution Brit. Pig’ 98), and is a quite common term throughout agricultural literature.
The way I see it, landraces differ from ‘heirlooms’ in that they are often not kept with the same degree of ‘purity’ in terms of isolation, and whilst it seems they entail phenotypic homogeneity, then can include some genetic diversity. Furthermore, they are embedded in a particular land, i.e. specific local area. And where it seems to me they differ from the ‘modern landrace’ is that they are already stable, and the rate of outcrossing (in SC species) seems quite low, or extremely low, such that they change little over time; whereas the ‘modern landrace’ method seems to me to be focused on starting with a hybrid swarm, and encouraging a high degree of outcrossing even in SC species, which seems the principle difference; and then also the trend seems to be populations which are less one-land-area based, such as various people growing out populations and sharing their seeds on a project, mixing them together, perhaps frequently.
I understand that the ‘modern landrace’ method is aimed at being land-based. So I kind of see it like an accelerated way to try to create a landrace, and, once settled in an area for long enough I would guess a population could be considered a landrace in the common sense of the word. Though I have also wondered that for SC species, if the eventual rate of outcrossing decreases so that the population is more stable, not frequently changed by neighbouring crops, then that might be closer to the ordinary landraces that people have grown around the world for millennia, bubbling away with a small degree of genetic variation just enough to keep some adaptation going over the centuries, from those rare occasional crosses that happen. Although I also see a benefit of maintaining a higher rate of outcrossing since we are in a mass extinction event and our climate is changing very rapidly, so, unlike for previous generations, quite adaptation is very important for us now. So, I see nothing wrong with a phenotypically stable population well adapted to a specific land it has been growing in for long enough, with a higher rate of outcrossing than traditional landraces, being called a ‘landrace’. But I do wonder if the term is appropriate for phenotypically varied populations, in the face of the term as it is used in the well established usage around the world. So, I see potential for confusion there, and wonder about the repercussions of taking an already existing term but using it to mean something other than it means, which, in my limited understanding, seems might be going on here to some extent in some sense. Or, at least ‘stretching’ the meaning.
It is for these reasons that I say ‘modern landrace’ method. Although, I just showed someone around my plot today explaining all about what I’m doing, and another couple of people over the last few days, and I just realised, I never once used the term ‘landrace’. I just explained what I was doing.
All in all perhaps ‘landrace’ is not a bad term to use since it is a common term, and it would seem to me the ‘modern landrace’ method is closer to the established landrace system than to heirlooms or merely single-use hybrids, or GMO crops. The intention matches landrace. But then when it comes to seeds, people who already know what landrace means would I would think expect landrace seeds to be phenotypically stable and long adapted to a specific area. Not hybrid swarms or mixes of seeds grown in multiple far apart areas. And there are plenty of landrace seeds out there (in the well established usage of the term, I mean). I have seeds from a tomato landrace and several rice landraces, for example, and genebanks have many landrace seeds available from around the world. Shops also sell them. It’s not limited to academia. So perhaps there would be some value in adopting the qualified term ‘modern landrace’, to avoid misleading people? I think I got that qualified term from here anyway.
Also, I saw a discussion where it was said people responded badly both to ‘landrace’ and ‘survival of the fittest’. To me that shows something badly wrong with culture. But I also wonder, if someone is opposed to the idea of survival of the fittest, can the same person really be interested in breeding plants? Or will they just try to nurture all the sickly plants and fail miserably at environmental selection? Perhaps in the end it might not filter out people who would be interested enough anyway, since environmental selection is quite essential. Though I do not want to pass judgement on that, I have not met such people who would have any issue with such terms or ideas.
Population?
Sounds pretty good. Although a first thought might be assuming it means growing multiple species. Not that that necessarily matters. Hmm, how about ‘adaptive breeding’? Though that might sound too technical.
In some way it might be that this applies not only to the heirloom way but also to the traditional landrace way. For example, I watched a lecture given by Prof. Debal Deb on rice, he grows … I think thousands of varieties. At least according to him, the traditional method of saving seed for those landraces was to be very careful to eliminate any off-types, and judging that by many different phenotypic traits. I did wonder how he could be sure about that, and how far back that went, since I know in some cultures some phenotypic variation was allowed in various crops even if the part eaten would be phenotypically homogenous in terms of appearance and behaviour in the cooking/eating process. But, anyway what he said did make sense.
Now I know for us who are basically starting from scratch, trying to replace inappropriate modern seeds with better seeds because we have no landrace (at least I expect that is the position for most of us for most of the crops we want to grow), it’s not the right stage to be strict like that in seed saving. We need the variation because we need to adapt plants to our land and method that are not yet adapted. And many of us might even never want to create phenotypic homogeneity even if we adapt populations to our land and method! But, perhaps there is some value in emphasising the temporal nature of this method. I see it primarily as a transitory method on the way to creating landraces in the traditional sense. And in that sense, I’m not surprised farms are not interested - they need to sell to customers who need to know they will get what they ordered, and they want that to be predictable. For that kind of situation I would think if someone uses the ‘modern landrace’ method in their area for, I don’t know, 10 or 20 years? then they can have that predictable product to sell to such customers.
Though I would expect there should still be customers out there for unpredictable/diverse harvests, like at farmers markets, or some creative restaurants etc. Anyway, I was just responding to that part because in a way I agree that the ‘modern landrace’ method is a ‘superior’ way of dealing with seeds than the system of religiously saving heirloom seeds that were adapted to a completely different place anyway. But superior especially in the context of time, that time being the transitional period as a person is adapting a population to their land. Not necessarily superior to, for example, the traditional landrace way, if at least you are growing traditional landrace seeds in the area they are adapted to, whether that be the actual area they’re from, or one that happens to do well with the population. That might even apply to some heirlooms too… I was writing up about some SI brassica populations in Japan passed down for centuries, they would perhaps class both as landraces and heirlooms, the boundaries of those terms are blurred I suppose.
That’s the kind of temporal aspect I mean. I would expect a high rate of improvement at the beginning. By beginning that could mean 3 years, it could mean 50, or 200! I would guess for example that if someone started a modern landrace rice project in Laos, it might not go so well! Since it would be hard to compete with millennia of native farming using the traditional landrace method. So, maybe looking at it like this can be helpful - I kind of see it like a restorative method, where we are living in areas that at least in the 20th century have had bad farming methods and been using bad seeds. And in many cases actually we have probably had centuries or millennia of bad farming methods. So if we want to switch to good farming methods, we need seeds suitable for that. And we’re in a rush, we don’t want to wait centuries or millennia breeding gradually like how traditional landraces came about, we want results within a few years!
But I get that not everyone wants to go on that trip. And not all customers want to buy that produce either. And I don’t find that surprising. But I think there is an excellent niche, in terms of growers and consumers. And we should exploit that, and widen that.
Ah, ‘grassroots gardening’ could be so cool if I had not had to dig out so many countless literal grass roots from my plot But still, maybe ‘grassroots plant breeding’ or something… sounds appealing? I mean, at least it gives a very quick message that yes, you can breed plants too!
My suggestion would be to dig around and see if there are any appealing words in indigenous or foreign languages that sum up the idea of diverse/strong/locally adapted types of crops.
Does anyone in the forum have links to these type of communities?
Otherwise a portmanteau that combines some key common words could work.
One issue here is discoverability. The reason why “permaculture” worked so well as a brand was that their label was both unique, easy to parse to its constituent parts, and rolled off the tongue.
Google is getting so unreliable as a search engine that you really need a completely unique string of letters (that is easy to spell correctly if you only heard it once).
I’m not sure a marketing campaign can convince anyone that’s not already open to the idea. When you’re going as far against the grain as the concepts offered here, you’re gonna win people over one by one after they see the results, and not before then.
I would just call it gardening in the marketing, dropping the Landrace. Explain the idea in the fine print, and include results people have gotten. Joseph’s biggest selling point in my opinion is the story he tells about growing melons. Or the story about his corn getting ate.
If a name is just absolutely necessary I think I would call it Legacy Gardening or “garden like your ancestors” or Lofthouse gardening or “pre-industrial gardening” or “gardening with resilience”. Sounds kinda cheesy though, I prefer just calling it gardening over those fancy terms because any term you pick to put in front of the word gardening will carry baggage or sound like a gimmick and people will turn their ears off.
The landrace concept will grow as the ideas prove themselves.
I disagree. I was new to growing, and was into heirlooms. Then I came across the modern landrace approach and immediately loved it. Maybe it’s similar to the iPhone - nobody knew they wanted it until they were made aware of it. I’m sure plenty of people were very loyal to other brands and types who then converted once they were aware of what was on offer. So I would say the key is in making people aware of what’s on offer. And the languaging of it is significant in that.
To continue with the analogy, just imagine if Apple had merely marketed the ‘phone’! Or imagine if permaculture were just called ‘gardening’ - to bring in @ShaneS 's point, imagine the torment you would have googling what you actually want! Though to add to that point, if you google ‘landrace’, you… well anyway I, get 10,300,000 results. It’s already a well established term, so just using a preexisting term that perhaps means something rather different than what is meant here, might not be ideal either.
“Modern landrace” on the other hand, gets 1,020 results, and includes things akin to what we are focused on, such as this modern wheat landrace bred in Scotland:
To me that seems like it might come across as meaning heirlooms to many people.
I think the difference there is that they would most likely be maintaining phenotypically homogenous populations, the old landrace way, if you go back far enough and if they were farmers. Though if they were gardeners, even a lot of them would have been using stabilised varieties from the seed catalogues over the last few hundred years (which are now preserved as ‘heirlooms’) - the others I would assume old traditional landraces. I think the major difference is this modern landrace approach uses a deliberately exceedingly high rate of genetic and phenotypic variation. Basically a kind of accelerated ‘pioneer’ approach. We may not be going to ‘new lands’ as such but in a way we are. Instead of arriving in wilderness (or stealing other people’s land but wanting to plant crops familiar to us), we are arriving in the land we are already in, which happens to be biologically a bit of a barren wasteland, and on top of that, is mostly devoid of suitable crops, having been inhabited from before we were born by barbarians with their chemical methods or further back than that, with their soil-erosive methods. So for many of us in terms of the farming methods we want to use, we may be ‘pioneers’.
I kind of like the sound of that, except it sounds like a focus on the gardening methods, which Joseph seems to avoid talking about. Something more seed-focused would seem more appropriate.
How about ‘cultivating seeds with resilience’?
I don’t get that sense with ‘permaculture’. And it’s very popular. And an excellent approach.
In terms of marketing, perhaps just getting some big names in permaculture on board, would do a lot. If they started raving about the ‘modern landrace’ approach, that could be quite powerful, for example. I know some who are really into heirlooms but here’s where the ‘learn by seeing’ comes in. Maybe just give away a bunch of seeds to various permaculture folk if they promise to plant them!
I spent a bit of time brainstorming. Gathering relevant words is a good place to start- happy if anyone else wants to add to this list since I surely missed some possibilities.
Landrace
Horticulture
Agriculture
Adaptation
Diversity
Hybrid
Cross
Biology
Engineer
Genetics
Alchemy
Transmutation
None of these really came together in a way that fully encapsulated the ideas going on here. Pick the wrong term to put at the front and unfamiliar people get the wrong starting impression. The community includes everything from people spontaneously blending traditional crops to those doing backyard biolab tinkering.
One phrase that did come to mind was this- “Seed Weavers”.
This focuses on the skillset that makes us all here a particular special kind of person, something more than an everyday gardener just trying to make some food and nothing more. A quick google search indicates this particular phrase has never been used before either.
Going for this approach would mean spreading the idea of a particular kind of person with an unusual, powerful set of skills. Almost like a green wizard or wise woman of the woods.
So what do you think of the idea of labeling ourselves as SEED WEAVERS?
I like “Innovative Gardening” and “Breakthrough Gardening.”
Rylan made some good points earlier. The proof is in the pudding.
The breakthrough melon story in the book is a great example of proof. It’s what I use when introducing new people to the topic.
Many regulars on this forum live in marginal areas. There’s someone who likes to grow bananas in the desert. Lol. I like to grow carrots in clay with high levels of heat and humidity. There are a lot of people in the world who want to grow crops that are not adapted to their ecosystem and have difficulty. They need a breakthrough.
Joseph has been very clever so far in how he answers objections. Here an image on his website:
The caption reads: “ Honoring the ancestors: Illiterate plant breeders that created every variety that I grow.”
Come on, if people who couldn’t even read or write breed plants, how hard could it be? Maybe I could do it too.
The right title word will come. I like “landrace” by the way.
But still, maybe ‘grassroots plant breeding’ or something… sounds appealing? I mean, at least it gives a very quick message that yes, you can breed plants too!