[Infowarrior] - Buried Seed Vault Opens in Arctic

[Richard Forno]

 February 26, 2008,  7:18 am
Buried Seed Vault Opens in Arctic

By Andrew C. Revkin

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/buried-seed-vault-opens-in-arct
ic/index.html?hp


[UPDATED, 8:30 a.m.] After several years of planning and digging, the world
has its first secure, deep-frozen repository for backup supplies of seeds
from hundreds of thousands of plant varieties that underpin agriculture. The
Svalbard Global Seed Vault was built into a frigid mountainside in Norway¹s
northernmost archipelago, deep in the Arctic. It had its ceremonial opening
Tuesday morning in the frigid gloom of the Arctic winter.

There are something like 1,400 seed banks around the world, guarding samples
of crop plants ranging from alfalfa to yams. But, as I wrote last year, this
agricultural archive is eroding under forces including war, storms, scant
money or bad management, particularly in the world¹s poorest or most
turbulent places. A Fort Knox has been needed, many experts said. Now they
have it.

Some advocates for strengthening the capacity of local communities to
sustain their agricultural traditions and crop diversity on their own aren¹t
happy about this kind of centralized approach, though (more on this below).

No one questions the vulnerability of many of the world¹s seed stores.
Iraq¹s bank of ancient wheat, barley and other crop strains in the town of
Abu Ghraib ‹ made infamous for other reasons ‹ was looted during the war
(mainly for the containers holding grain samples, not for the grain itself).
An international rice repository in the Philippines was shredded by a
typhoon.
crop In Mexico, seeds are placed in foil bags before they are shipped to the
Arctic vault. (CIMMYT)

The new repository is intended to be an insurance policy for individual
countries and also for humanity more generally, should larger-scale disaster
strike (anything from pestilence to an asteroid impact).

The Norwegian government put up more than $7 million for construction. The
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is providing money to help developing
countries package and ship seed samples, as part of a broader $30-million
project to protect the genetic diversity of the world¹s main food crops.

The ongoing operation of the seed vault will be paid for through the Global
Crop Diversity Trust, which is maintained by contributions from countries,
international agencies, and foundations.

A secure supply of thousands of varieties of keystone crops like rice and
wheat will be ever more important, experts say, as populations grow, climate
changes, and people keep moving species around the global, both
intentionally and accidentally.

Grain.org, a group based in Spain focused on strengthening regional
agriculture, was one of the few entities criticizing the focus on the seed
vault. The group worries that such moves take away intellectual property
rights to crop varieties from the farming communities that developed them
and provide a false sense of confidence that safe storage, on its own, can
sustain agricultural diversity.

As the group noted in a news release today (hat tip to Danny Bloom):

    Thousands of accessions have died in storage, as many have been rendered
useless for lack of basic information about the seeds, and countless others
have lost their unique characteristics or have been genetically contaminated
during periodic grow-outs. This has happened throughout the ex situ system,
not just in gene banks of developing countries. So the issue is not about
being for or against gene banks, it is about the sole reliance on one
conservation strategy that, in itself, has a lot of inherent problems.

    The deeper problem with the single focus on ex situ seed storage, that
the Svalbard Vault reinforces, is that it is fundamentally unjust. It takes
seeds of unique plant varieties away from the farmers and communities who
originally created, selected, protected and shared those seeds and makes
them inaccessible to them. The logic is that as people¹s traditional
varieties get replaced by newer ones from research labs -­ seeds that are
supposed to provide higher yields to feed a growing population ­ the old
ones have to be put away as ³raw material² for future plant breeding. This
system forgets that farmers are the world¹s original, and ongoing, plant
breeders. 

It¹s a noteworthy point. The groups funding the seed vault, including the
Gates Foundation, say they are also pouring money into creating databases
and other mechanisms for maintaining poor countries¹ access to the full
array of crop strains. But what about the farmers in the field?

In a world tending toward monoculture, how much of this intergovernmental
work help sustain farming diversity, as opposed to museum-style genetic
diversity? Do farmers matter?