Presentation short abstract

This study explores community seed banks in Baringo County, Kenya, in which various forms of care are cultivated. Using a feminist political ecology lens, we examine how these informal seed banks are evolving as sites of resistance, seeking to transform how local food systems are experienced.

Presentation long abstract

This paper will explore community seed banks in Baringo County, Kenya, in which various forms of care are cultivated. ‘Seeds are living relations’ is a common understanding among many peasant and Indigenous communities. Seeds reveal connections to a shared history, anticipated futures, and the interconnections between markets, governance, and the social reproduction of food systems. This paper examines how seeds are collected, stored and shared through community seed banks in Baringo County, Kenya, and how the community seed banks themselves become spaces cultivating various forms of care - of bodies, knowledges, ecosystems, and relations. Based on a five-year engagement with farmers through the Seed Savers Network in Gilgil, Kenya and using a feminist political ecology lens, the paper will present an analysis of how the development, access, and control over seed banks influence broader socio-economic relations to food sovereignty, climate resilience, and care labour. In the context of the recent November 2025 court ruling that overturned the criminalization of informal seed sharing amongst farmers, seed banks are evolving as sites of resistance, knowledge sharing, movement building, and social reproduction that demonstrate long-term implications for transforming rural livelihoods, ecosystems, and how local food systems are experienced. The paper considers ontologies of care through the ethics, the political-economic and gendered implications of managing informal seed banks, and how labour, governance, and the well-being of communities reflect and inform the life of seeds.