“...teach a person to fish, and he’ll eat forever”
This well-known saying illustrates a principle of livelihood—a person’s means to provide their own basic necessities like food, shelter, clothing, education, and dependent care. Sometimes livelihood simply means a job—a way to bring in cash to pay the bills. In the developing world, livelihood more often means self-employment, and most often means a piecemeal strategy that assembles a patchwork of resources to sustain a person or family.
Vegetable seeds give food and livelihood together. As any gardener knows, it can be hard to overcome diseases, pests, and weather to get to harvest time. However, once you do, it’s easy to end up with excess.
Even in remote, impoverished areas, we hear again and again that some vegetables are sold as soon as they are produced—even by those facing hunger and malnutrition. These sales pay for school fees, medicines, tools, and more seeds.
One shipment of SPI seeds can sow hundreds or thousands of gardens—and such large-scale efforts will give rise to even more micro-businesses. Some may start to save vegetable seeds for resale. Others will help with harvest, storage, or taking vegetables to market.
Share this post
