Seeds & Cultures Summit, a fully booked event, highlighted Mesoamerican foodways
By PIPER AWEEKA — city@theaggie.org
On Sunday, April 27, the UC Davis Student Farm was abuzz with people attending this year’s Semillas y Culturas, translated to Seeds & Cultures, Summit. Born from a desire to raise awareness around the sustainable agriculture of Indigenous Mesoamerican communities, 2025 marks the seventh year the event has been held at UC Davis.
Through workshops, presentations and speeches, attendees learned about what sustaining native foodways means in a world rapidly feeling the effects of climate change and cultural interconnection.
Tiffany Herrera, a fourth-year English and Chicana/o studies double major, highlighted the community’s excitement surrounding the event.
“This is my fourth time at Semillas y Culturas; I really love it,” Herrera said. “I first got introduced to the summit through one of my [Chicana/o studies] professors. After a food justice course, I find it really valuable.”
In sharing her admiration for the annual seminar, Herrera also honed in on its collaboration with the university.
“It’s a lot of people’s first introduction to the student farm and ecological garden,” Herrera said. “It gets people on campus, and more importantly, it gets people to engage with native foodways.”
Located at the edge of the UC Davis campus off of Hutchison Drive, the student farm is directed by Colin Dixon. Dixon elaborated on how the farm connects to the summit’s objectives.
“We do a lot of work here around food production [and] crop production but also food sovereignty,” Dixon said. “It’s the aspect of what it means to not just eat food, not just grow food sustainably, but also how to sustain cultures through making and sharing food. That’s definitely a big emphasis of this event.”
Dixon further described how the farm’s sustainability values align with those of the event.
“Bringing people together to talk about the knowledge, some of the traditions that are of California and of Mesoamerica, of the place where we are, and be able to highlight the homeland we’re on,” Dixon said. “Another important aspect of this event is bringing campus communities together. Bringing these different stories, different kinds of expertise together so that we can learn across communities and across generations.”
Melissa Moreno, the director of the Semillas y Culturas Summit, shared how integrated seeds and culture really are.
“This is an interdisciplinary collaboration,” Moreno said. “My training is in ethnic studies, native Chicano studies, but we also have farming [and] agriculture, as well as culinary knowledge. Bringing these worlds together is the exciting part.”
The food, catered by Savory Café, is one of the main components Moreno sees as helping to share the Indigenous knowledge the event is all about.
“We started with trying to raise awareness about the Mesoamerican Southwest and California regional foodways,” Moreno said. “Every year, the major food item is the cactus. This year, it’s made by Savory Café, all from scratch.”
Moreno concluded by emphasizing the summit’s growth in popularity after the effects of COVID-19.
“This has been a beautiful seventh summit in collaboration with [Dixon] [and] Jacqueline Ross [co-organizer], as well as Juan [Barajas], the owner of Savory Café,” Moreno said. “When we started the event, we had 50, 100 and, at some point before COVID, we had 200 attendees. Now, we’re building up again. Today we even have a couple of people from UC Santa Cruz, all the way here just to check this out.”
Written By: Piper Aweeka — city@theaggie.org
