View of Lake Geneva from this wheat–faba bean field. Photo: Adèle Violette

In early June, the Seeds4All project team was invited by artist Alexandra Baumgartner to contribute to the fifth edition of Food Culture Days, a multidisciplinary biennial organised in Vevey, Switzerland, by the platform of the same name. The programme, at the crossroads of art, food, and societal issues, proffered a theme rich with meaning: "At the frontiers of our tongues."

Here, tongues are not only organs of taste—gateways to symbols of culture, memory, and identity—but also languages—means of expression, dialogue, and transmission. Between them, frontiers emerge as dividing lines—geographical, social, economic, or symbolic. They separate as much as they connect, delineate as much as they open up spaces for encounter, exchange, and negotiation.

In preparation for our contribution to the festival’s programme of activities, we set out to meet some of the actors working to conserve and reclaim Switzerland’s seed and agricultural heritage.

Our journey through the cantons of Vaud and Valais was a sensory exploration of a region shaped by multiple interweaving borders: between Switzerland and its European neighbours, between rural populations in the mountains and the plains, between the different links in the agri-food chain, between producers and eaters.

In a global context marked by rising trade tensions, identity-based isolationism, and climate pressures, we wanted to understand how Switzerland, landlocked at the heart of the European Union, approaches the challenges of food sovereignty and navigates its many borders.

How can the necessary relocalisation of food systems be reconciled with a need for exchange based on mutual aid, complementarity, and reciprocity? Can local biodiversity (and its products) support territorially grounded agricultural economies while also nurturing the emergence of spaces for innovation and cooperation across diverse realities?

Emerging from our Swiss immersion, we offer a two-part reflection on how seeds can become anchoring points for rebuilding connections and fostering healthy interdependencies in the pursuit of collective empowerment. Part 1 available here.

Author: Adèle Pautrat, July 2025

A few kilometers from Saint-Léonard and Erschmatt, in the canton of Vaud, we met Gerald Huber, a French organic farmer who has been based in Aubonne for about 10 years. On his 45-hectare farm, he grows cereals, beets, and maize, and raises a small herd of cattle for meat production.

Before taking over the farm as a tenant, Gerald—an agronomist by training—worked as an organic farming advisor, first in France, then in Switzerland. A speciality in cover crops, he has found that this topic “builds bridges” between farmers of all backgrounds: organic and conventional, tillage and no-till, livestock farmers and growers.

“It’s really a kind of common denominator. Through it, we can talk about soil, crop combinations—asa well as about legumes and diversity…”

This experience has taught him an important lesson: the top-down approach in agricultural advising—telling farmers what to do without giving them the tools to understand the system as a whole—seriously hinders the transition to agroecological practices, which are inherently more complex.

In agroecology, no chemical inputs means keeping an eye on pests—while welcoming their predators, like ladybugs, and wildflowers like this mountain clover. Photos: Adèle Violette

“In an agroecological model, it’s the farmer and their land that must take precedence over scientific recommendations. What I need is a big-picture view, because agroecology means moving away from specialisation and focusing on practices that maintain soil fertility. From there, based on your specific growing conditions, you can choose—and more importantly, test intelligently—your crops, your varieties, your equipment, and so on. What you really need isn’t someone telling you what to do, but someone who supports you, observes with you, and thinks with you about the best way to improve yields while preserving your long-term production capacity.”

Gerald advocates for involving the farmer directly in strategic discussions alongside researchers, industry representatives, and policymakers. In concrete terms, this means bringing farmers to the table—and compensating their expertise—when it comes to deciding which innovations should be prioritised to drive the agri-food transition.

“We simply need to recognise the intelligence of farmers. Because in the end, it’s always the person closest to the problem who’s most likely to find the solution.”

Gerald and Alexandra observe a cornfield where the young shoots must survive the appetites of hungry crows. Photo: Adèle Violette

Gérald shares this vision with several fellow producers, with whom he co-founded in 2021 an alternative and innovative agricultural advisory project: the GIREB – Independent Group for Biological Research and Experimentation.

GIREB’s mission is to promote the exchange of experiences, to pool field trials, and to disseminate the results obtained in the transition towards a farming model free from synthetic inputs. It has three overarching objectives:

• Successfully implement direct seeding in organic systems
• Achieve nitrogen self-sufficiency,
• Secure and improve yields.

To meet its second objective, GIREB actively supports the reintroduction of legumes, particularly through crop combinations such as cereals and fava beans. Capable of fixing atmospheric nitrogen, these crops become indispensable agrotechnical tools for building more autonomous and resilient farming systems.

This stunning intercropped wheat–fava bean field was teeming with pollinators—their joyful, intense buzzing all around us.Photos: Adèle Violette

As Gerald describes it, this quest for resilience is rooted in relationships, and requires increased cooperation among all links in the agri-food chain. GIREB fosters this process by including not only farmers but also processors and distributors in its initiatives, consistently working to build bridges between the technical, social, economic, and biological aspects of the transition.

It is about viewing agriculture not as a collection of isolated actors, but as a living ecosystem of interdependence—a fertile web of connections between people, territories, knowledge, species, and practices.

Here, market outlets and consumer habits emerge as key challenges. For new agricultural practices to be meaningful, the products they generate must find a place in the market.

Despite the growing interest in plant-based proteins, both Gerald and Olivier (see part 1 of this series of article) agree: the commercialisation of lesser-known species and varieties remains a challenge, for both the processing sector and consumers. New narratives, new uses, and new markets must be created to give life to this cultivated biodiversity.

Alexandra shows me the anthers—the tips of the stamens, the flower’s male organs, which produce and release pollen—on this beautiful, colorful rye ear. Photo: Adèle Violette

It was this search for new narratives that we sought to explore at Food Culture Days in the wake of our inspiring encounters in the cantons of Vaud and Valais. Invited by artist Alexandra Baumgartner, we co-led a walking conversation through the streets of Vevey, opening a space for discussion around key questions with a group of curious and engaged participants.

What role do seeds play in food sovereignty? How can we bring biodiversity back to our fields and access local, living crops? Photos: Adèle Violette

With Gerald Huber, this walk quickly turned into advocacy for a more conscious, sovereign food system—one that brings meaning back into the acts of buying, cooking, and sowing.

Taking back control over our food begins with reclaiming control over our purchasing power. It’s a simple idea on paper, but one that runs up against serious barriers: in a context of widening inequalities and multiple consumer markets—where travel, leisure, and fashion dominate with overwhelming marketing force—choosing a local and sustainable diet often means rethinking budgetary priorities. And the competition is fierce.

Another major obstacle is the widespread sense of powerlessness, fuelled by a globalised framing of food issues. This is why it’s so crucial to relocalise our frameworks of understanding, and to speak at the scale of the individual: your plate, your health, your concrete choices, and the impact these have on your local territory.

In Switzerland, several initiatives are already working to reconnect consumers with local food production. This includes the Marque Valais, a regional label guaranteeing product origin, and the Gastronomie 0 km label, which promotes short supply chains and local sourcing.

Erschmatt Botanical Garden (see part 1 of this series of articles) is also working to bring in consumers. The association partners with local schools, where children discover traditional seeds, learn how to bake bread, and leave with a loaf they’ve made themselves. More recently, Erschmatt has begun to curate a collection of traditional objects and stories around Valais crop varieties, with the plan of opening a museum in the future. The goal is clear: to relearn how to use, cook, and appreciate these local resources—conduits of identity, flavour, and resilience.

To illustrate the need for renewed connection and meaning, Gerald brought with him a prototype of a bread made from a blend of cereal and fava bean flours—a simple yet powerful symbol of the multiple layers of innovation required by agroecological transition: experimenting with new agronomic techniques, reinventing uses, recipes, and flavours, and opening up market opportunities for forgotten or emerging crops. Photo: Adèle Violette

Beyond advocating for a conscious, joyful, and engaged approach to food, Food Culture Days proved to be a fertile space for breaking down boundaries and weaving shared narratives across borders and cultures.

In this context, we had a remarkable encounter with the Zurich-based collective Koma Culture Estudio, which works to promote and pass on agricultural and culinary knowledge around corn—a grain still largely overlooked in Europe as food for humans, yet a staple ingredient in the cuisines of Central and South America, from which the members of the collective originate.

Over the course of a long, hands-on cooking session, we learned how to make tamales, a traditional dish especially popular in Colombia and Venezuela, where it is closely associated with festive meals. A form of generational heritage passed down from grandparents to grandchildren, the tamale embodies a living memory that Koma Culture Estudio brings to Switzerland as an act of shared cultural heritage.

Colorful and appetising snapshots capturing the artful tamale preparation—each detail crafted with care and beauty. Photos: Adèle Violette

The three different corn varieties we're grinding to prepare the dough for tamales. Photo: Adèle Violette

The Central Kitchen, a key hub of the Food Culture Days, where for five days, various collectives and associations took turns preparing lunches and dinners inspired by diverse food traditions. Photo: Adèle Violette