Questions about ecological change, cultivation, and mobility are at the core of my new research project, Seeds of Change: Roots of Community in the Mediterranean. Turkey’s yerel tohumlar and Italy’s semi tradizionali refer to open-pollinated varieties. They are imbued with narratives of kinship, community, and locality – and are counterpoised against hybrid and genetically-modified seeds. Even as certified hybrid seeds remain hegemonic, many people are involved in the cultivation and preservation of place-specific yerel tohumlar. Local seeds act as powerful living markers of place, history, and social relations. For populations displaced by large-scale infrastructure, poverty, or war, seeds are particularly powerful markers of memory, community, and resilience. In the face of new world-wide legal restrictions and in response to climate change, scientists and farmers are advancing new claims about the value of these seeds. In the face of new restrictions on the market sale of non-hybrid seeds, scientists, activists and farmers are advancing new claims about the cultural, political, and ecological value of seeds as they work to circumvent these prohibitions. While some of those efforts assert a nationalist interest in stewarding the “essence” of Turkish and Italian nature, others, by contrast, are claims against authoritarianism and racism. This work will show the centrality of seed practices to the experience of precarious labor, authoritarianism, and ecological displacement.