One Seed At A Time

scleaver — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:00:38 -0400

If you were hoping to save grandma’s heirloom tomato seeds for the next generation, get your seed packets ready. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway is preparing to store copies of crops and other plants in a tunnel deep in a permafrost mountain. So far, according to Scientific American, the vault has 268,000 samples and can hold up to 4.3 million more. They’ll start accepting donations in February 2009.

There are other seed banks around the world, but the Svalbard will out-store them all. In response to concerns over what global warming and monoculture farming practices will do to the variety of our seeds, the vault will be able to withstand any natural disaster, war, and temperature, and can store duplicates of seeds as well. Which seeds would you save, and why?

Photo from Kitchen Gardeners International.

Building The Doomsday Vault -- Seeds to Save the Human Race

scleaver — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

The Doomsday Vault, a tunnel in the Arctic that will eventually be lined with concrete and fitted with blast-proof doors, may be the key to human survival post world disaster. The vault will be able to withstand global warming, terrorism, and nuclear war. To save our human race, we’re going to fill it with seeds.

The idea, according to Claire Hope Cummings’ new book Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds is that those seeds will be used to recreate agriculture as we used to know it after a global attack or after our world crumbles. And, the Doomsday Vault is something that’s more immediate than we may realize. As Cummings wrote in an excerpt from her book on Alternet.org, “the integrity of the seeds are threatened, in the wild and on our farms.” Technology, patents, corporations, and the overall “degradation of the environment” are all putting our seeds in peril.

Outside of biology 101, we tend to take seeds for granted, yet, wrote Cummings, “[s]eeds are essential to the regenerative capacity of the planet. We will need their natural resilience and adaptability even more as the temperature rises.” All together, seeds and the plants they produce are how the planet breathes, not to mention the food, cloth, and now fuel that they provide us.

As we move a world of seeds that’s more sci-fi than Mendel, biodiversity is decreasing, and we’re at a crossroads in life where, Cummings ominously forecasted: “Whoever controls the future of seeds controls the future of life on earth.” So, who do you want to control life? Industrial agriculture (Monsanto and other giant ag companies) or someone else…us, perhaps?

Read Cummings’ five reasons that industrial ag doesn’t cut it in the article: Artificial Foods and Corporate Crops: Can We Escape the 'Frankenstate'?

Photo of heirloom seed packets from Veggie Gardening Tips.