‘Seeds’ Review: A Quietly Stunning Doc Contemplates the Present and Future of Black Farmers
A close friend, reflecting on her own photography practice, recently told me that she still had so much to say in black and white. I thought of her sentiment while watching Seeds, Brittany Shyne’s delicate meditation on Black farmers in the United States. The film uses black and white palette to gorgeous effect, finding precise language in moody shades and dramatic contrasts.
Premiering at Sundance in the U.S. Documentary competition, Seeds observes two Black farmers in the contemporary American South. Shyne, who also serves as cinematographer, constructs an empathetic portrait of agrarian life while also revealing threats to its survival. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a long history of discriminatory practices against Black farmers, including refusing to process loans or approving smaller loan amounts compared to those dispersed to white farmers.
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Last year, in a historic move, the agency agreed to distribute $2 billion to roughly 40,000 Black farmers across the country as a corrective. But they have been slow to pay, and parts of Shyne’s film track how Willie Head Jr., a farmer in Pavo, Georgia, who inherited his grandfather’s land, navigates this unwieldy bureaucratic process.
Seeds is not a journalistic investigation but a poetic contemplation that recalls Garrett Bradley’s Time, which also premiered at Sundance back in 2020, and RaMell Ross’ Hale County This Morning, This Evening. Moving at a tranquil pace, Shyne primarily watches Head and Carlie Williams, an 89-year-old farmer in Thomas County, Georgia, tend to their land and their people. The director relies on close-up shots — a tractor cutter head harvesting plants, a wrinkled hand fondling stored seeds, a bag of pecans ready to be weighed — to accentuate the film’s intimate vantage point and create a more immersive experience.
Shyne plunges us into scenes of life with little fanfare. Seeds leads with a funeral, conversations between a grandmother and her grandchild about heaven, and heavy machinery traversing a cotton field. There’s a pragmatism to the way the tractor cuts through the pillowy substance so weighted by historical implication; the moment jars the senses and affirms the depth of African-American connection to this land. Williams’ family farm in Georgia, for example, is one of the oldest centennial farms in the U.S, a designation given to tracts of land that have been owned by the same households for more than 100 years.
The aging tiller takes pride in that fact as well as his work. In one scene, while selling his pecan harvest in town, Williams tells a young store employee that he’s been a farmer since he was 18. It’s heartbreaking, then, that after laboring for 70 years, he can barely afford to buy new glasses a doctor prescribes after his cataract surgery.
Williams’ precarious financial situation reinforces the importance of Head’s advocacy. When we see the younger farmer frequently calling USDA officials for updates on promised subsidies or journeying to Washington D.C. to protest in front of the Capitol, we have a clear understanding of its necessity. These narratives — with their complementary arcs — also deepen our investment as viewers.
“Farming is the backbone of the world,” says one farmer in Seeds. “That’s who feeds the people.” It can be too easy to forget, especially in America, where we are so divorced from our foodways, about this labor. Shyne, as if wanting us to remember, dedicates significant screen time to showing how Head and Williams tend to their crops.
It’s here that her choice to shoot Seeds in black and white especially pays off. Stripping the land of obvious color allows us to experience it anew. That scene of tractors plowing cotton conjures memories of a fraught history because of its resemblance to archival images. When the sunlight bathes a group of young Black farmers harvesting watermelons or Head’s great-grandchild plays in the grass, the land appears more optimistic and inviting. Shyne also experiments with contrast to more effectively translate the high stakes of preserving this kind of life.
What happens to the land matters greatly to all the farmers in Seeds. Head dispenses practice advice — making the film a kind of instructive tool — alongside philosophical musings. He talks about the difference between expensive seeds (which yield once) and heritage seeds (which keep offering), reads an almanac and demonstrates how to listen to the signs the land gives about weather patterns.
Head is especially preoccupied with making sure his great-grandchildren understand the importance of this land. He encourages them to run around, to feel the grass, to connect to the Earth under their feet. In the early 20th century, Black farmers owned 16 millions acres of land; today that number has shrunk to roughly a million. With Seeds, Shyne helps spotlights the farmer, the mature and the budding, fighting to protect what remains.
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