Agriculture’s Trust Fund: The New Svalbard Seed Bank

Seed banks represent tremendous value for agriculture: in the event of a natural or manmade disaster of epic proportions, we won’t be scratching around in the dirt for native seeds that might have survived. They’re also a form of insurance against the day we genetically modify food plants past usefulness. We’ll have the healthy, viable seeds neatly labelled and stacked on nice clean shelves. Seed banks are so necessary, in fact, to a sense of a country’s well-being, that people have even died protecting them: during a famine in Russia years ago, two scientists locked themselves in and died of starvation rather than surrender the building to the people, who, in their own hunger, would have eaten the seeds.

Photo: Mari Tefre/Svalbard Global Seed Vault

The brand new Global Seed Vault in Svalbard is officially the largest one yet, and, many hope, the most secure. Some facilities have been vulnerable to natural disasters like flooding, or have been destroyed in the course of war, as in Iraq most recently. The idea is that no one is very likely to start a war in the snowiest, coldest, most forbidding region of Norway, and since the facility is built like a bunker deep in the ice–yet still high above sea level–it will be safe from any conceivable catastrophe. Countries that can afford it are gathering their own stock and shipping it; countries that can’t are receiving funding from organizations like the Gates Foundation. Ideally, the ancient grains from every region will be stored here, perfectly intact, waiting for their diverse genetic material to be called into action.

A major concern about seedbanks is that they encourage consolidation not only of resources, but of methods. We live in a world in which diversity in large-scale agriculture is no longer the norm. Monocultures and giant corporations are now the name of the game. The Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food notes that “more than 7000 plant species have historically been used in human diets; however, less than 150 species are today used in modern agriculture. Only 12 plant species today represent the major vegetable source in today’s menu.”

The Global Seed Vault’s site strives to remain neutral, recognizing the debate over monoculture but urging only “the sensible management of genetic resources.” Andy Revkin of the New York Times puts the matter in more provocative terms, asking, “in a world tending toward monoculture, how much of this intergovernmental work helps sustain farming diversity, as opposed to museum-style genetic diversity? Do farmers matter?”

Photo:The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture i Nigeria (IITA)

Revkin is asking the wrong question here, as I don’t think farmers, as such, have mattered for a long time. They’ve been getting sidelined by powerful corporate interests for at least the last half century, especially in America but certainly not constrained here. He should instead have asked, “in a world tending toward monoculture, how can intergovernmental work support rather than hinder farming diversity?” Governments sending seeds to be stored in a vault doesn’t really affect whether or not a small farmer can get an ancient strain of wheat to plant. He probably can’t because a corporation has purchased all the small companies that used to sell the farmer wheat and has taken all but one or two genetic strains off the market (the ones to which they hold the patents).

But what do I think of the seed bank system? At least it preserves raw, unmodified material so that if we can reverse trends back towards agricultural diversity, it will be there for the using. It costs nothing for the countries that “deposit” to “withdraw” from the seed bank; this genetic material is held in trust for the world. (Though hopefully a withdrawal will never be necessary, as the Norwegian vault is only a respository for duplicates of seeds already in storage in their native countries.) I don’t see the seed bank system as an excuse to stop trying to achieve diversity in our agricultural system, or to delve more deeply into genetic modification. Even if it’s rather a Cold War mentality, preparing for the worst isn’t a bad idea.

I think we should view the opening of the largest seed bank yet not as a deterrent to diversity but as a reminder of its value.