I was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s spinning wheel (charkha) to start saving our indigenous seeds in 1987. A century ago, Gandhi made the charkha an instrument for freedom from the British Empire, which was an “empire of cotton”. Today we save indigenous seeds for freedom from seed monopolies in the hands of agrochemical and pharmaceutical giants such as Bayer Monsanto. One could call it an empire over life or bioimperialism.

Both the charkha and the seed embody freedom from fossil fuels, which have changed the trajectory of human evolution, bringing us to the brink of extinction.

And it is Gandhi and the spinning wheel which show the way for freedom in our times, the existential freedom to have a future as a species on our beautiful, generous, abundant, living earth.