Building a food library

A couple of years ago I heard about The Global Seed Vault in Svalbard (Norway), a backup plan for threatened biodiversity and harvests:

I have to say from my point of view it makes sense and probably this archive will be, as Cary Fowler says, essential for us in the not far-off future. When thinking about those who have access to knowledge I can’t help but think that crop biodiversity control in the hands of a few becomes a global threat. Legislative issues like patented seeds have to be urgently addressed as it has been proven whom controls seeds is in great control of food access. Some corporations, not even governments, have for years now been deciding who gets to grow what and under what conditions as painfully explained by Marie-Monique Robin’s book The world according to Monsanto.

So about our global seed archives there is no harm in asking: Who’s behind the vault, who’s promoting it? Who is behind Global Crop Diversity Trust? Here is what Wikipedia says. And you can also visit their information about the Svalbard Global seed vault.

One of the visible experiences in Svalbard is the Syrian authorities sent a backup of their collection of seeds to the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, known as Icarda, an international gene bank long headquartered in the Syrian city of Aleppo. When war seemed to be breaking Icarda moved most of its seeds to safety outside Syria, including Svalbard Seed Vault in Norway, in the Arctic circle. In September, Icardia made the first-ever withdrawal from Svalbard, to shore up new programs in Morocco and Lebanon for growing plants out to produce seed. The scientists requested 128 boxes out of 325 they had deposited in Norway, containing a total of 116,474 samples.

Besides the already positive outcomes and surely good intentions, we may be more than ever in need of promoting locally controlled archives. Fortunately some lucid people all over the world have protected local varieties and set up local seed banks e.g.the ‘seed guardians’ of Odisha, The millenium seed bank . Let’s begin to recover and ensure free, open access to the planet’s biodiversity and crop growing also in the global south.