Florentina is the grassroots coordinator at Organic Seed Alliance. She helps break down barriers to engaging in seed policy and to translate the importance of OSA’s policy priorities to the seed growers we serve and work alongside, while encouraging collective action to make our seed and food systems more resilient and equitable. Florentina became involved in seed saving when she attended Seed School at The Agraria Center for Regenerative Practice. This empowered her to start her community’s first seed library, The Yellow Springs Community Seed Library, which launched both a permanent and mobile location in 2022. Florentina brings her traveling seed library to places like farmers markets, seed saving workshops, and schools to provide hands-on education and seed sharing opportunities to the community.
Florentina’s father is a native Chamorro, the Indigenous people of Guam, and she’s passionate about the power of seeds to connect people to their heritage and preserve traditional knowledge. Florentina is pursuing an EdD degree in Environmental and Sustainability Education at Antioch University and exploring issues of seed sovereignty and resistance as well as the role of cultural memory in the endogenous development of biocultural and agroecological seed pathways.
