AUTHORS
Florentina Rodriguez, Ed.D.
Florentina provides technical support to various urban, nonprofit, and cooperative farms in her community as a farm manager, agricultural consultant, educator, trainer, and financial/grant specialist through her business, Flora Seeds. She acts as an advisory board member for Ohio’s BIPOC Food & Farming Network (BFFN) and Seven Seed Sowers Cooperative. She founded the Miami Valley Seed Commons whose mission is to cultivate a local seedshed to support community-based food systems and regional resilience. This work includes operating local and traveling seed libraries as well as mentoring others to start community seed programs. She completed her doctoral research on culturally and community-informed seed work at Antioch University in their Environmental and Sustainability Education program. She has also served as a DEI Liaison, Racial Justice Coordinator, Grassroots Coordinator, and Outreach Director in seed-based and other community-based nonprofits.
*Photo by Florentina Rodriguez.
Mehmet Öztan, Ph.D.
Mehmet is a Turkish seed keeper and farmer. He grows and stewards culturally significant seeds of Turkey. He farmed in the Tampa Bay Region from 2012-2018, and in Preston County, West Virginia, from 2019-2024. He is also the founder of the Anatolian Seeds Recovery and Preservation (ANATOHUM) Project that aims to re-vitalize, preserve, document, and promote the traditional seeds of Turkey. Through the project, he has introduced more than 150 open-pollinated seed varieties to the American seed market.
Mehmet was a 2024 Appalachian Foodways Practitioner Fellow, and was nominated for the 2024 James Beard Foundation Leadership award in Industry Culture & Practices category. He is the co-owner of Two Seeds in a Pod seed company.
*Photo by Mike Costello.
CICS PLEDGE CONTRIBUTORS
We are a group of seed savers, small farmers, plant breeders, food practitioners, commercial seed growers, and small seed company owners. We prepared the CICS Pledge based on our years of collective experience and the challenges we faced in seed industry and our farming spaces.
Special thanks go to all the individuals who provided public and private comments. A list of these contributors will be posted here, soon.
*All of the photographs on this website, unless otherwise noted, were taken by the photojournalist Love’Yah Stewart.