After the great Tohoku earthquake on March 11th, large quantities of vegetable seeds were left unsold due to environmental issues regarding farmlands or the simple decline of sales.
“Seeds” is a project in which a group of five volunteers from various design-related fields have created stylish packaging and established a marketing campaign to recirculate the unsold seeds on the market. Utilizing their skills and knowledge in editing, manufacturing, and the distribution process, Hirofumi Akimoto, Daisuke Kiyono, Yui Takada, Kentaro Tamai and Tomoshige Fukaura took the opportunity to propose new, organic designs for promoting the seeds.
Through the use of a Google Maps tracker for showing the planting locations of the seeds, the project also aims to reconstruct the relationships between the consumers and the suffering farms. Profits will be donated to the affected farms hoping that this will accelerate reconstruction. From a one hand to another, from a person to another- from these activities, stronger relationships will sprout like flowers.
The seeds sourced for the project came from the village of Ten’ei, in the Iwase district of Fukushima, Japan, before the nuclear incident on 3.11, and thus have not been exposed to any radiation. The village of Ten’ei currently has a population of around 8,000. However, according to some of the designers, the town has consistently been facing a gradual population decline due to migration to the cities of 10 people per month. Following the March 11th disaster, the population decline has become much more rapid.
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