Hannes Lorenzen spoke to Frank Adams during a horticultural walk in the gardens of the Château d’Ansembourg, Luxembourg. A master gardener and co-founder of the SEED association for the preservation and use of the region’s traditional seed varieties, Frank Adams has long been involved in the legislative battle waged by seed savers to gain recognition for the necessity and specific nature of their work.
His face may ring a bell – Frank was one of the people interviewed for the film Seeds of Europe, in which he particularly mounted the bureaucratic hurdles making it increasingly difficult for small-scale seed breeders and growers to thrive.
In this article, he reflects on this particular aspect of his struggle, while shedding light on the principles that shape his commitment and determination to inspire.
Administrative headaches for small-scale seed producers
Ansembourg beans! Frank Adams laughs and waves a folder full of control documents in front of a long row of beans bearing seeds ready for harvest:
“If I want to register seeds of this variety with the competent Luxembourg authority for seed propagation, I should have a lot of time or a person to help me fill out the necessary forms. But I have neither,” explains the master gardener, who is giving us a tour of his horticultural business.
“If I want to sell seeds to market gardeners, I have to adhere to official variety descriptions, take photos and write crop reports, which is very time-consuming. Fortunately, I get support from the Ministry of Agriculture, although there is a shortage of staff there too. But I believe that our commitment to the diversity of our vegetable varieties is important. We now need plants that can adapt to the rapid changes in the environment and climate and at the same time provide us with healthy food. We need more time and more people for horticulture that takes care of both – and we need fewer barriers to hinder this work. Over the last few decades, vegetable growing has become far too dependent on industrial varieties that can no longer survive without pesticides. We need to take the work on local seeds back into our own hands and thus regain local diversity.”
Our gaze wanders over the autumnal, vegetable and flower-filled garden at Ansembourg Castle in Luxembourg. There is no doubt that a lot of time and passion has been invested here.
Built in the 17th century as the country residence of a blacksmith, taken over by a noble family in the 18th century and transformed into a baroque palace with French gardens à la Versailles, the Château d’Ansembourg fell into serious disrepair over the course of the 20th century. Extensive restoration work began at the end of the 1980s. Today, the castle’s carefully maintained gardens in particular, with various collections of cultivated plants (apples, pears, vegetables, culinary and medicinal herbs and roses), are a much-visited place.
Out of the niche
Frank Adams has leased part of the garden from the owners of the castle and runs a vegetable farm there. He is the co-founder and lively hub of SEED, an association for the preservation, propagation and further development of crop diversity. SEED offers gardening experience, on-site training and environmental and political education programmes
“Our offers to society are also demands on politicians. We are setting a different example here. Not to hide away in a niche, but to demand concrete and tangible changes that harmonise our economic activity with social and ecological challenges. Our project from seed to plate is well received by market gardeners and their customers: 100% local produce, maximum transparency!”
Gardener, teacher and politician
“I’m a gardener first and foremost, but I’m also a teacher and a politician. I spend two to three days a week here in the garden. I usually teach at the agricultural college for three, sometimes four days, and then I also invest two days in adult education and political work. That makes between seven and nine days a week,” the qualified master gardener calculates with a smile. “If you really want to make a difference, the much-cited work-life balance ends up looking like this,” he adds. “Everything is interdependent. The practical and research work here in the garden, the training in the company and at school and then the demanding and mediating presence in politics.” As Frank leads us through the rows of cabbages, pumpkins, celeriac, carrots and many other vegetables, he pulls out a plant here and there that has gone to seed too early or has not produced good seeds and explains his selection work to us.
“Why am I doing all this?” he says. “Because I can only make a difference together. If I want genetic, culinary, horticultural and economic changes, I have to cultivate the relevant plant varieties, market them, arouse public interest in them. Otherwise I won’t be able to sell anything, get any funding or show any success. At the same time, I have to garden, develop seeds and convince decision-makers and consumers that they need to actively support the change. Fortunately, I have fellow campaigners at SEED and in our European network who see it the same way. We live this connection of many socially relevant topics. Production, marketing, research, education and political work: everything has to happen at the same time.”
The SEED association was founded in 2012 by various Luxembourg organisations as a platform for the preservation and further development of crop diversity. In 2013, it became a registered association that is now well networked not only in Luxembourg, but also at a supra-regional and European level. It is a member of Dachverband Kulturpflanzenvielfalt, Réseau Meuse-Rhin-Moselle pour les semences paysannes et citoyennes and the European coordination of Let’s Liberate Diversity.
The main work of SEED is to preserve the traditional diversity of fruit, cereal and vegetable varieties, but the diversity of wild and cultivated flowering plants and shrubs is also covered. The association organises workshops and lectures, publishes various educational materials and distributes locally produced seeds of vegetables and flowers in Luxembourg. SEED is also involved in political work to raise awareness and support for crop diversity in politics and society.
Gardening is the most beautiful profession in the world
“Vegetables are the best food you can eat,” explains Frank as we treat ourselves to a breakfast of salads and herbs. “Vegetables are good for your health without any restrictions. You can eat as much as you want. But economically it’s difficult. Local market gardeners can hardly compete with imported vegetables, which are mainly grown on an industrial scale. Gardening in the green belt around cities used to be common everywhere – in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and also here on the Kirchberg in Luxembourg.
The city has grown, the farmland has been built on and now there are apartment blocks, shopping centres, banks and EU institutions. The surrounding countryside seems to be lost to vegetable growing. But urban farming is now en vogue with many young people, as I notice in my lessons at school. In practice, however, it is very difficult to get into commercial horticulture. Suitable land is hard to find, product prices are too low and there is not enough public support and advice. The young people also lack professional experience, and all this quickly leads to a 70-hour working week.”
Fresh vegetables as a social service
Luxembourg currently only produces around 4% of the vegetables consumed there, compared to just 1% a few years ago. This pleasing increase is due to a gradually growing number of farms and an improving political framework. The political will for more organic products and local jobs exists, but implementation is still too slow and lacking in vigour.
Ultimately, it is mostly state-funded social services that supply a well-earning middle and upper class with local organic vegetables and look after socially disadvantaged people in the process. This may be positive for vegetable production, but overall it is a rather questionable social model.
“I can’t deny it: I love vegetables! What I like to eat the most also grows the best,” smiles Frank. “But love also requires a lot of care. From sowing to selling, there are risks lurking everywhere. I have to prevent diseases and pest infestations if I work without chemicals. The most important point is always prevention, and for me that starts with naturally resistant seeds. In organic farming, I can recognise and understand many ecosystemic relationships, learn from them and view diseases and pests as an adaptation process. They are not just a threat or an enemy. I have been working without pesticides for over thirty years. I want to grow seeds from plants that don’t need “plant protection”, but have a well-functioning natural “immune system”.
Seeds and seed cultivation courses
It’s September and the main harvest time for seeds.
Frank takes us to the drying room for the harvested seeds. Here, the ripe seeds are pre-dried on grids and linen cloths before being cleaned and sorted, first by hand and then using special machines.
SEED has been organising seed growing courses and distributing seeds to hobby gardeners since 2012. The agricultural school has coordinated the production and marketing of organically certified vegetable seeds to local commercial nurseries. The school’s teaching programme also includes special courses on seed cultivation.
“Despite the progress made in the new EU organic regulation with regard to the development and marketing of organic seed,” says Frank, “it is still difficult to expand the genetic base in the vegetable sector by registering and registering new varieties suitable for agro-ecological cultivation. But this is important work. I hope we can make progress soon and also achieve the necessary recognition and support in politics!”
Ecosystemic horticulture
Adam(s) wants to return to paradise, some people joke about Frank, who describes his method as “ecosystemic cultivation”. Instead of hostile opposition, Frank sees horticultural work as symbiotic co-operation.
“We have increasingly marginalised nature from production, first through pesticides and now through biotechnology. I am convinced that biotechnology will never be able to replace the ecosystemic development and adaptation processes in seeds. On the one hand, many fundamental characteristics in the genetics of plants are predisposed in a very complex, so-called multigenic way. On the other hand, there are ecosystemic phenomena such as epigenetic mechanisms and multi-layered microbial interactions. Even though it may sound paradoxical, the incredible progress that genetic research has made in recent decades suggests to me that biotechnology in plant breeding cannot work in the long term,” Frank explains.
“I believe that organic and agroecological food production can feed the world if we focus more on sustainable quality than on short-term quantity. For me, this also means having reproducible seeds on farms and in gardens that can continuously adapt to a wide range of environmental changes without genetic engineering and pesticides.
Even if genetic engineering promises to be able to accelerate adaptation to climate change, I do not believe that the “new genomic techniques”, which are now being presented by interested parties as a panacea, can replace the adaptability of crop diversity and agroecological cultivation methods.”
More on seeds
True Bread – the Restorative work of Farmers, Millers & Bakers in Hungary
A Leek for Change! The Belgian Trio on a Mission to Save Seeds
Târ y donc a tori – Lessons on the Subversive Nature of Transmission, from a Stubborn Welshman
