Seeds are essential elements within agricultural production and food systems. However, seed systems face multiple issues, including processes of commercialisation, privatisation, and crop diversity loss, that require reconsidering current approaches to seeds and varieties. Seed initiatives hold a potential to contribute to alternative and desirable seed system configurations and outcomes. In this thesis, I analyse how existing seed initiatives increase their impact, drawing on the typology of amplification processes by Lam et al. (2020). Furthermore, due to the long-term occurrence of variety losses and the complexity of the processes involved, this thesis uses system dynamics concepts and diagramming tools to map the use of local varieties from the initiatives’ perceptions. Thereby, I attempt to operationalise amplification, depict local variety use, and combine the two approaches within the context of seed initiatives. I employ a case-study approach in Italy and conducted semi-structured interviews with members of six seed initiatives. Concrete actions for almost all the frameworks’ processes were found. Building stability, influencing values and mindsets, and strategically impacting higher institutional levels emerged as suitable ways to amplify and might indicate that initiatives prepare and potentially navigate change. Enhancing the initiatives’ impact range and speed benefitted from more nuance due to diverging notions on these processes. A qualitative systems diagram with social and ecological components maps causal structures that influence the use of local varieties, showing a potential for desirable dynamics. By indicating how amplifying actions relate to the system structure, I illustrate how the seed initiatives are influencing multiple system parts. Thus, the system maps revealed perceived system structure, which by itself might run the risk of portraying path dependency, while amplification relates to agency on how initiatives might influence the system.

This comparative study aims to discover and demonstrate the potential division in preferences for, and use of, AmE and BrE vocabulary by examining the possible influence of variety shift, motivation, gender, and language contact among 181 EFL students in one upper secondary school and one university in Sweden. Accordingly, the material, a questionnaire, was distributed to probe the preferences and potential inclination factors through solicitation of background information and personal attitudes towards English. Additionally, through a selection process within the questionnaire, to determine the division in actual variety use, the respondents chose between 30 variety-dependent synonyms randomly divided into two separate columns. The results demonstrate a self-reported preference for AmE among upper secondary students, which seems to derive from its high frequency of use, and a preference for BrE among students in tertiary education, due to the more appealing sound of pronunciation and the status which it is believed to signal. Additionally, intrinsic motivation is shown to be more frequent among students who prefer BrE. The differences in variety use are, despite some minor connection to variety shift, essentially identical regardless of variety preference, motivation, EFL level and student gender, with AmE being used most frequently. However, none of the respondents used exclusively one variety without alternating between the two in at least one instance, but the extent of inclination seemed to depend on the variety with which one had had the longest contact.