Press Release
Thessaloniki, a metropolis of crossroads in the Balkan peninsula, a historical city with mixed interacting civilisations and immigration throughout millennia, hosted in Sunday, 7th of July 2024, at the Biodynamic and Ecological Agriculture Farm in Thermi, a multilevel, participatory and creative workshop of the project DiverSeedPaths, within the framework of the Erasmus+ program. The workshop was targeting to bring together European and Balkan seed savers, immigrants, farmers and gardeners. The main goal was to share experiences, valuable knowledge and personal stories of migration linked with seed, food, lost taste and the heritage wealth of agriculture.
Sharing Stories of Seeds and Inclusive Communities
Several seed savers’ organizations from Europe, Balkans and Greece, the National Seed Bank of Albania, as well as farmers, gardeners and immigrants from Thessaloniki area and Northern Greece participated to the workshop.
The workshop highlighted the multilevel precious knowledge on seeds and food preserved today which can ensure the creation of an active resilient and inclusive community in order to face severe impacts of food crisis or climate change. The discussions set out significant priorities such as the recognition of traditional agricultural knowledge and farmers’ rights, the preservation of intangible cultural heritage related to agriculture and food and the importance of education, information or public awareness. Also, the importance of an holistic approach of food term definition was emphasized, where the farmer plays a key and pivotal role.
Participants had the opportunity to exchange not only knowledge and personal seed stories but also shared tastes and flavors from organic food produced by organic farmers of Thessaloniki.
Our thanks
We are grateful to Beatrice Winterstein and Dimitris Litsas, farmers and founders of the Bioagrobdynamic
and Ecological Agriculture Farm in Thermi, for their hospitality and precious contribution to the workshop.
Finally, we want to thank all participants and especially ones who managed to travel from Europe or Balkan countries to join us, and generally all our colleagues, farmers, seed savers and immigrants who participated to this DiverSeedPaths workshop, and by the way, celebrated with us the 20th anniversary of AEGILOPS and the 30th Anniversary of the first National Festival of Organic Agriculture in Greece.
