STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

Seeds—and their precarious role in putting food on our table—will be the subject of a free panel discussion on Sunday, May 28.

The discussion, titled “What Do Seeds Have to Do with It?” will be held from 3:45 to 5 p.m. Sunday, May 28, at the Limelight Room of Sun Valley Inn in conjunction with the Sun Valley Wellness Festival.

Panelists will talk about the importance of local, well-adapted seed stock in case crops grown from commercial seeds fail due to famine and other natural disasters.

Ali Long of the Local Food Alliance will moderate the discussion. Panelists are Bill McDorman, executive director of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance; Casey O’Leary, Snake River Seed Cooperative and Seed Library, and Brett Stevenson, a local barley farmer who is testing local grains.

In addition, Dr. Vandana Shiva, a physicist from India and author of such books as “Who Really Feeds the World: The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology,” will address “Earth Democracy: Cultivating Wellness, Cultivating Freedom,” at 7 tonight—Saturday, May 27—in the Sun Valley Opera House as part of the Wellness Festival.

Shiva, who started an organization to protect the biodiversity of seeds, will also conduct a Seed Freedom workshop from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday, May 29, as part of the workshop.

For more information, go to www.sunvalleywellness.org.