“Sometimes we are faced with droughts and other times we have floods,” says Anita António Candeeiro, leader of a women’s group of smallholder farmers in Chemba, Mozambique. Aside from losing food and income sources, these disasters also often wipe out fields, making it necessary for farmers to start from scratch, requiring fresh seeds to begin anew. This basic necessity, and arguably the most important part of farming, isn’t as automatic or readily available as might be assumed.

Seed saving has been the answer for millennia, a practice that farmers and their families have necessarily undertaken. However, it is a skill in its own right, and knowing the proper seed storage methods is vital to ensuring that seed saving is successful. Seed storage was the weak point for Anita’s community.