It gives a false sense of security in a world where the crop diversity present in the farmers' fields continues to be eroded and destroyed at an ever-increasing rate and contributes to the access problems that plague the international ex situ system.Ĭary Fowler, Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust and one of the main proponents of the Vault, says that the initiative " will rescue the most globally important developing-country collections of the world’s 21 most important food crops." While it's true that crop diversity needs to be rescued and protected, as irreplaceable diversity is being lost at an alarming scale, relying solely on burying seeds in freezers is no answer. However, this " ultimate safety net" for the biodiversity that world farming depends on is sadly just the latest move in a wider strategy to make ex situ (off site) storage in seed banks the dominant – indeed, only – approach to crop diversity conservation. The idea is that if some major disaster hits world agriculture, such as fallout from a nuclear war, countries could turn to the Vault to pull out seeds to restart food production. Nestled inside a mountain, the Vault is basically a giant icebox able to hold 4.5 million seed samples in cold storage for humanity's future needs. Amongst the seeds being protected this way by The Crop Trust currently are 200,000 varieties of rice and 125,000 varieties of wheat.Update: please see our clarification and further discussion at the end of the articleĪfter months of extraordinary publicity, and with the apparently unanimous support of the international scientific community, the "Global Seed Vault" was officially opened today on an island in Svalbard, Norway. They can then request to withdraw the seeds – also for free – if and when they need them. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway acts as an insurer to other seed collections: this free global service allows organizations to store their seeds once they are already placed in both their own collections and another seed bank, as a final back up. Indeed, the way humans farm and the way cities and industries have grown has damaged the diversity of crops, reducing options for future crops. It exists, in the words of its executive director Åslaug Haga, to “safeguard one of the most important natural resources” – plants. Safely burrowed into the mountain rock, deep enough to protect it from air temperature rihigh enough to avoid potential sea level rises, the Vault, which opened in 2008, is designed to last a thousand years, and to withstand a wide range of potential doomsday scenarios, including climate change, nuclear war, and even an asteroid strike. Nestled into the rocky waste of Plataberget Mountain, amongst the snow, Svalbard is the seed bank of seed banks, designed as a back-up for others. Svalbard Global Seed Vault is located on a remote Norwegian archipelago for seeds to be stored deep within the permafrost. In May 2016, Magnum’s Jonas Bendiksen witnessed the deposit of more than 8,000 varieties of crops – from sheep food to chilli peppers – from Germany, Thailand, New Zealand, and the World Vegetable Center into the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which only opens 2-3 times a year.
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