It’s taken me 25 years, but I’ve finally returned to the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, the organisation I once worked for.

This time it wasn’t in Syria but the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon … but Syria was just a few kilometres away beyond the mountains in this photo. The location has changed but not the work. ICARDA is doing some amazing work in regenerating seeds from crops native to the Fertile Crescent.

For me, it felt like old times when I lay down in the soil to document some workers collecting Medicago seeds from a regeneration plot. A group of women were painstakingly picking up seeds from the soil and sifting and cleaning them in the field.