About us

Seed the Commons, originally and officially named Millahcayotl, is an international grassroots organization that works to create just and sustainable food systems, based on agroecology and food sovereignty, that are also independent of animal exploitation. It was founded in Switzerland in 2009 by a couple of long-time activists (Chema and Nassim) who believed that to address the root causes of everything from environmental degradation to war and human rights abuses, we need to look to our food systems. They bring their decades-long experiences with base-building movements, including anti-war activism, international anti-globalization and labor organizing, peasant movements, media activism and human rights work, to the movement-building work of Seed the Commons in the US and around the world. While we started out with just two people, many amazing volunteers have joined us along the way and our work would not have been possible without them.

The takeover of our food systems by large conglomerates is a modern mechanism of colonization. It is harmful to everyone along the food chain – farmers, workers and eaters – and is central to many of today’s pressing social justice and environmental issues. Fighting this colonization is necessary to creating a different kind of world. By decreasing our participation in the global corporate food complex, the change we create is far reaching. By growing a food system based on small-scale, people-led, agroeocological alternatives, we are wresting our resources back from corporations and reclaiming what is ours. We start to remove our support for an economic system based on war and exploitation, and build an economy that creates peace and nurtures abundance.

Working towards this vision created a challenge though. Chema was raised vegetarian and went vegan in 2003, while Nassim stopped eating animals in 1991 and went vegan in 1994. They realized that to continue to participate in the growing global grassroots movement without compromising their animal liberation ethics, they needed to create a new organization. They also realized that putting forth a new vision for agriculture was essential for the goal of animal liberation, and such a vision and focus had previously been missing from the vegan and animal rights movements.

The animal liberationist ethic of Seed the Commons is most notable in our efforts to transform farming systems. In promoting agroecology and other alternatives to corporate farming, we uphold models that are not reliant on animal exploitation (be it for feed, soil fertility or labor), and the vision we have been most successful in seeding is one of a veganic future.

Why Seed the Commons?  In the face of corporate greed, we defend and reclaim our common good: our seeds, our land, our water, our food systems. And we seed the commons with our hope, our vision, and sometimes our actual seeds! Let’s take back our fields and cities, rewild our public spaces, and grow food for communities – not profits.

Millahcayotl comes from the Nahuatl words milpa and yotl and can be translated as “the way of the milpa”. Milpas are a traditional form of Mesoamerican agriculture in which corn, beans and squash are cultivated in an integrated manner. For us, the word millahcayotl represents a holistic understanding to producing food and living as part of our ecosystems. It’s also a powerful reminder that agriculture does not require animal exploitation.