In ‘Seeds,’ farms and a way of life hang in the balance

The film focuses on several farmers, particularly Willie Head Jr. and Carlie Williams, who are carrying on a legacy and scrambling to hang onto their families’ land in increasingly impossible painful situations. (Indox)

By ALISSA WILKINSON

At first, only certain modern articles of clothing reveal that “Seeds” (in theaters), Brittany Shyne’s extraordinarily beautiful documentary, is set in contemporary America. The film is shot in black and white, and its images feel so ageless that you could imagine she’d somehow gotten hold of a time machine and slipped back decades, witnessing Southern Black farmers and their families as they grow cotton and sing at church and spend a quiet afternoon at home.

But though “Seeds” is a lyrical portrait of a way of life, it also harbors an urgency that’s very much of our moment. The film focuses on several farmers, particularly Willie Head Jr. and Carlie Williams, who are carrying on a legacy and scrambling to hang onto their families’ land in increasingly impossible painful situations.

Family farms have it tough all over America, but for Black farmers the situation has been especially dire. Their numbers have dwindled in the past century, and they’ve faced decades of discrimination from banks and the federal government.

In 2022, a fund was created to help farmers of any background who had experienced discrimination from the government, but the program rolled out slowly, and Black farmers in particular held President Joe Biden responsible.

In the second half of “Seeds,” Head and other Black farmers travel to Washington to protest the slow rollout and speak with government officials about the disastrous effects of the delayed money. “The president said that he had our back,” Head tells one official. “And I voted for him. But nothing has been done.”

The approach “Seeds” takes, however, isn’t journalistic. It’s something more like a softly sung ballad, handed down from generation to generation. For men like Head and Williams, the struggle to keep land in the family and make a living is about preserving the past and creating the future.

They see themselves less as individuals with grand profit ambitions and more as threads in the fabric of agrarian life, which follows seasonal cycles. Birth and death and rebirth are just part of that life. Williams, who is 89, has been farming for more than 70 years; his is a centennial farm, meaning it’s been owned by the same family for more than 100 years. To say he is connected to the land seems like a cliche. He is the land.

“Seeds” moves slowly, at times almost imperceptibly. It asks the viewer to lean into its rhythms — to watch as an elder’s hair is washed, as young people harvest crops, as a man explains different kinds of seeds, as a little child plays in the grass. Through observing and listening, we become attuned to the world of these farmers. We see what they see and understand what they long and pray for.

So when Head and the other farmers begin advocating policy change, we, too, better understand what’s at stake. The impersonal problems of financing and statistics become personal, and the history of discrimination feels much closer, more concrete. And if we’re looking closely, we can see, in the younger generations of farmers, the seeds of the future — if they’re given fertile ground in which to grow.