Many changes have taken place in agriculture over the last 100 years. While most of the emphasis in commercial agriculture has been on maximizing yield, with truly remarkable results, this shift in focus also led to an incredible loss of bio-diversity and significant cultural losses in some communities around the world.
It’s estimated that in the last century 94 percent of global seed varieties have been lost. The new documentary Seed: The Untold Story, gives some insight into how this happened and shares the stories of people working hard to preserve the seeds that are left.
On this edition of Talk of Iowa, host Charity Nebbe talks with the co-producer and director of Seed, Jon Betz, as well as Tim Johnson of the Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah.
Seed will debut on Iowa Public Television on April 19th at 6 p.m.
In the third segment of the show, Charity talks with running buddies, Dennis Lee and Daren Shumaker, who in 2009, came up with the goal of running a marathon or more across each one of Iowa’s 99 counties.
They call themselves “Team 99 Counties” and with one more county to go, their journey is almost complete. They will finish the last county, Delaware County, on Saturday, April 15th.
