In sacred natural sites, seed banks, and gathering spaces, communities across Kenya are reclaiming control over their food systems, alongside the knowledge and culture that have sustained them for millennia. Randa Toko shares insights from her recent visit to Tharaka and Gilgil.
Walking down the path, I am met with the voice of a river in the valley, hidden by tall vegetation. The heat of the day carries the sweet scent of tamarind pulp.
Coming into a clearing, we are welcomed by women in a gentle rocking rhythm, their voices rising together in song. Then a deep call and response rings out: “Gworo Mwiriga”.
“Gworo Mwiriga”. “Peace among the clan” is a greeting, a blessing, and a reminder of collective belonging.
We had travelled from Nairobi to Tharaka-Nithi county, on the southeastern side of Mount Kenya, an extinct volcano and the second largest mountain of the African continent. I’m visiting together with Fiona from The Gaia Foundation, and Mathieu and Rosette from GRABE Benin (Groupe De Recherche et d’action pour le Bien-Etre au Bénin), all part of the African Earth Jurisprudence Collective and here for an exchange between organisations working on agroecology, biocultural diversity, traditional ecological knowledge and seed sovereignty.
Our hosts, Simon, Agostine, Brennie, Hilda and Rebecca from SALT (Society for Alternative Learning and Transformation) welcome us in the Gaaru, a traditional gathering place that they have newly restored. Everyone is busy preparing for the 5th annual Tharaka Biocultural Festival, which will celebrate this revival of indigenous lifeways.
More than a celebration, the festival is a reclamation of ecological knowledge and cultural memory. In the days leading up to it, elders gather not just to plan logistics, but to remember the wisdom of the human and more-than-human beings who call this territory home. The festival builds on years of work by SALT, which was co-founded by Simon after he returned to his roots in Tharaka as part of The Gaia Foundation’s Earth Jurisprudence training.
Agostine, another of SALT’s co-founders, explains the meaning behind the organisation’s name: “In Tharaka, we have a proverb: when you lose the taste of something, you realise the value of salt. When someone tells a story, it must have taste. If the salt is missing, the story loses meaning.” SALT was created to bring people together through stories, starting with elder-centred dialogues rich with the meaning that comes from millennia spent belonging to a place. Even in Latin, ‘to know’ comes from the verb ‘to taste’.
In the evening, after a meal of kathongo – a dish made of pounded green corn, potato, sorghum, millet and cowpea leaf with a rich meat stew – people gather again in the Gaaru. The fire crackles beneath a sky full of stars. There is singing, dancing and murigi to drink: the delicious traditional beer made of fermented honey and kigelia fruit.
Early the next morning, we travel to the sacred Kibuka Falls, on the Tana River, for an appeasement ritual. Simon explains that this marks the turning of the agricultural year. Taking place close to the autumn equinox, it is a moment to give thanks and prepare for the coming rains and the new sowing of seeds. In the Tharakan year this is called “Thaano”, the dry period at the cusp of the rainy season.
At the falls, elders gather to offer thanks to the river and seeds are brought as a sign of gratitude. “We come to appreciate what we have received,” Simon explains. “When you are given something, you must say thank you.” Gifts from different communities are mixed and shared, creating a great confluence of seeds. Elders offer prayers, and we stand as witnesses, joining the call-and-response: “Thaai”.
The festival begins under the guidance of the clans’ spiritual leader, Mugwe, as well as elders and custodians representing Tharaka, Kikuyu, Maasai, Mijikenda, Ogiek, Tigania, Mwimbi, and Mbeere. For the next three days, different communities are also represented by their own dance groups, filling the clearing with colourful customary dress, song, and rhythms stamped into the dust.
Songs, Agostine tells me, play an important role in transmitting culture. They carry identity, memory and knowledge and are tied to the protection of Sacred Natural Sites and those who care for them. Songs educate, pass on messages, sometimes directly, sometimes through metaphor and coded language. Many songs are connected to everyday life and the rhythms of the land. There are songs for harvesting honey, sung to calm the bees. Songs for milking cows, encouraging them to release their milk. Songs for walking long distances that help energise the body and keep the group moving together. Songs for harvesting millet or sorghum, to guide the work. Through these songs, knowledge is passed from one generation to the next. They teach young people about farming, kin, community responsibilities and working with the natural world.
Around the festival clearing, seeds are displayed in calabashes, bottles and gourds. With her kind and witty eyes, Kaguna, a seed custodian, shows me her display. There are a few types of millet, like tiger and pearl, a few varieties of corn, pigeon peas, white and red sorghum, cow peas, many many beans, lentils, as well a few wild plant seeds which also form part of the regular diet.
She tells me that her journey into seed keeping began with the women in her family. “When I visited my grandmother, she taught me about seeds, about planting, about cultural practices. I learned how to store them and how to share them.” Later, when she became a mother herself, she continued this legacy. She also began to notice that many traditional varieties were disappearing, and with them, people’s relationship to food and land had been fragmenting. The food at the festival reflects this philosophy – instead of the widely consumed white maize flour used for ugali in most Kenyan shops, the ugali here is made from pounded millet and sorghum, darker in colour and richer in nutrients. “You cannot separate seed and food,” she explains. “We eat food, and we plant seed. When we share seed, we share stories.” In light of this, she started keeping many varieties and sharing them with her community, becoming a well known custodian.
Driving through small towns on the way to the festival in Tharaka, I began to notice the abundance of agro-vets storefronts. Even in remote rural areas, these small shops appear along the roadside, their shelves stocked with hybrid seeds and chemical fertilisers and pesticides. They represent the influence of the industrial agricultural system promoting commercial seed varieties and chemical input farming.
It is in the shadow of these shops that the work of Kaguna, SALT and the Seed Savers Network Kenya (SSNK) takes on deeper meaning. While agro-vets promote seeds that must be purchased again each season, alongside chemicals that deplete soils and make farmers dependent on this system, seed custodians like Kaguna are working to keep indigenous varieties alive. Exchanging seeds, sharing knowledge, and inspiring younger generations to cook traditional foods is about maintaining autonomy, nutritional security, biodiversity, and cultural identity.
The diversity of localised food systems is essential for resilience against the unpredictability of climate change. SSNK farmers and seed ambassadors, Julia and Asnath, tell me that crops such as millet perform well year to year, even in arid areas with erratic weather patterns, with varieties taking little over 2 months to reach maturity. In referring to millet, Julia says “we love it because first, it is ours, it is a seed which we plant and every season it does well”.
SSNK program officer Terryann explains that the varieties sold by agro-vets are often limited, narrowing farmers’ choices about what they can plant. Too often, she explains, the decision is shaped by what is available on the shelves of agro-vet shops. A farmer may arrive looking for a particular variety only to be told it is unavailable and that they must plant something else instead. Over time, this reduces diversity in the fields and erodes farmers’ control over their own food systems.
Julia and Asnath tell me that for women, seed saving is also a pathway into leadership within the community. Having access to seeds through the community seed bank not only saves money, but also allows women to provide food and generate income. As one of them explains, knowing she has seeds stored means she doesn’t have to rely on expensive agro-vets during planting season, giving her a sense of security and reducing tensions at home. In a context where financial stress can contribute to domestic conflict, having control over seeds offers a degree of independence. Through this work, women are increasingly taking on leadership roles in both the household and the community, gaining recognition not only as farmers, but as custodians of seed, food, and knowledge.
At the end of the Tharaka Biocultural Festival, I travel to the SSNK farm in Gilgil. Founder Daniel Wanjama worked as an agronomist for the Kenyan government before realising how many indigenous seeds were being lost, how knowledge and skills were being eroded, and the impact this was having on rural communities’ food security and sovereignty. The SSNK farm serves as a research and training centre, a place where farmers, seed custodians and community leaders come together to re-learn. There is a seed bank, a thriving food forest, an extensive seed propagation unit, and facilities that can host between fifty and seventy farmers for training.
Through the promotion and cultivation of indigenous seed varieties, SSNK works to restore farmers’ agency. Community seed banks allow farmers to conserve and access traditional seeds. This “in-situ conservation” ensures that these varieties remain dynamic, evolving in response to soil, climate, pests, and the specific needs of the communities stewarding them. By continuing to grow, cook, and share these seeds, communities keep their agricultural heritage active and resilient. Here, seed sovereignty is not an abstract concept but a lived reality, a necessity, a right, and the foundation of these communities’ livelihoods.
While I am there, several groups are visiting. A group of organic avocado farmers are meeting to explore developing a cooperative model to create a common bargaining power and gaining more control over their sales through adding value to their crop. Another group of farmers has travelled from Turkana and Baringo county in northern Kenya; for many, this is their first opportunity to train outside their region. Coming from highly arid areas, they have in recent years become increasingly dependent on seed and food aid. Through its training programs, SSNK is working with them to build resilience by strengthening their locally adapted seed systems.
The SSNK farm serves as a hub for knowledge exchange, networking across regions, and mentoring partnerships. Julia Kamau (SSNK Head of Programmes) explains that they integrate traditional ecological knowledge into their training. A central focus is farmer-to-farmer learning, which recognises and restores the value of practitioners’ knowledge, grounded in lived experience and long-standing relationships with the land. This approach challenges dominant systems that have historically discredited such knowledge in favour of formal education and agrochemical agendas.
Alongside this, SSNK’s work on the conservation of agrobiodiversity includes documenting and revitalising traditional knowledge systems, enabling communities to learn from one another’s practices. Across the country, they have recorded diverse seed preservation methods, such as the use of calabash, clay, ash, red brick and earthen bricks; this, along with studies and laboratory analysis with the National Genebank of Kenya, helps to demonstrate their effectiveness in prolonging seed viability.
Speaking with farmers and the SSNK team, I find myself deeply inspired and humbled by the work they are doing. During my visit, I meet Beatrice, one of their seed ambassadors, and visit the community seed bank she helps steward near Gilgil. The seed bank is built in a way to keep it cooler than the outside temperatures and is covered by a climbing plant: an example of the ancient and innovative wisdom that is being remembered here.
Walking into a cool and dark room my eyes adjust to a room laden with rows of jars and bottles filled with beans, corn, sorghum, millet and more. This is one of more than 125 community seed banks that SSNK has helped establish across Kenya. Together, these decentralised networks support thousands of farmers in accessing traditional and locally adapted seed varieties, reviving crops that were close to being lost.
Despite the importance of these informal seed networks, many legal frameworks make their use difficult. In Kenya, the Plant Varieties Act restricts the sale and exchange of uncertified seeds. By requiring costly and complex registration to gain exclusive rights over a variety, the law functions like a patent, concentrating control over seeds in the hands of corporations. It also criminalises the generational practice of seed saving, sharing and exchanging; farmers caught selling indigenous seeds can face fines or even jail time, yet around 80% of seeds used by Kenyan farmers come from the informal seed system.
SSNK has also been an incubating ground for the recent challenge to Kenya’s Seed and Plant Varieties Act, supporting fifteen smallholder farmers from the network who mobilised to file a 2022 constitutional petition. The petition challenged the law’s restrictions on saving, sharing, and selling indigenous seeds, highlighting how these rules undermine farmers’ rights, biodiversity, and food sovereignty.
Kenya’s Seed and Plant Varieties Act was amended in 2012 to align closely with the 1991 International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV 91), an international intellectual property framework that prioritises breeders’ rights and plant variety protection. This framework emphasises exclusive rights for commercial breeders while criminalising traditional seed saving, sharing, and exchange, undermining farmers’ autonomy, biodiversity, and food sovereignty.
As Daniel Wanjama points out to me in conversation, this reflects a form of neocolonialism, where seeds bred and stewarded by communities over generations can be patented through minor modification, effectively legalising biopiracy. In doing so, control over local agricultural systems shifts outward, concentrating power in the hands of corporations while eroding seed sovereignty and indigenous knowledge.
This court case was scheduled for the 27th November 2025, and SSNK had been closely involved in the process. During my visit in September 2025, SSNK was hosting a two-day meeting: they convened a legal team alongside policy advisors, lawyers, researchers, and farmer organisations to review the current law for recognition of indigenous seed varieties and the protection of farmers’ rights.
Two months after my visit, at the end of November, I check the news and rejoice. A historic court ruling finds that the Act was Unconstitutional. It concluded that granting exclusive marketing and property rights over seeds to breeders and seed companies violates farmers’ rights to life, livelihood and food.
It has been applauded as a landmark case for food and seed sovereignty and for the rights of peasants and farmers, especially in the Global South where UPOV 91 has been pushed onto governments despite civil resistance in countries like Malaysia, Peru, and Kenya. The ruling restores seed autonomy to millions of smallholder and Indigenous farmers in Kenya. It is also hailed as a major victory and influential example in the African context, in the efforts to defend traditional seed systems, food sovereignty, farmer rights, protect biodiversity, and strengthen local food security.
In the afternoon, Turkana farmers are gathering to share songs and dance:
“If you are not saving your own seeds, you don’t have to blame anyone. If you’re not saving your own seeds and rely on others, it is your own fault”’
I leave Kenya with a renewed commitment, inspired by SALT’s work reviving the role of seeds in ritual, and by SSNK’s training programs and policy efforts that strengthen sovereignty. Their work is visibly helping small-scale and Indigenous farmers to keep practising their resilient livelihoods despite climate change and global pressures. I am extremely grateful to all those I encountered in Tharaka and Gilgil who shared their work so generously. Asante Sana!
