Seeds of Change

Seeds of Change

    There was some disturbing news the other night and it had to do with the war in Syria.  Despite the difficulty of trying to sort out the politics, one thing is certain and that is that we are losing priceless artifacts that are centuries old.  Destroying temples are one thing, but now the crisis is reaching a point where the future of the world could be even more affected...the seed bank.

     Some of this I had covered in an earlier post on seed and crop domination.  But some decades ago, a few countries and scientists had the foresight to not only seek to preserve our ancient food heritage, but to build a facility far out of reach of most...away from wars, rising seas, and errant travelers.  And now, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault deep in the Arctic Circle holds 860,000 varieties of seeds.  But for the first time, seeds are leaving the vault instead of going in...the war in Syria has reached its hand deep into the Arctic.

    PBS Newshour and others reported: “In one sense, it would be preferable if we never had to retrieve seeds from the Seed Vault, as a withdrawal signifies that there is a significant problem elsewhere in the world,” Marie Haga, Executive Director of the Crop Trust said in a statement. “However, we can now see that the vault, as the ultimate failsafe, works the way it was intended to do.”  Said CNN: The bloody conflict in Syria has left scientists at an important gene bank in Aleppo -- where new strains of drought- and heat-resistant wheat have been developed over time -- unable to continue their work in recent years.  Now, with no sign of conditions in Syria improving, scientists have begun recovering their critical inventory of seeds, sourced from around the Fertile Crescent and beyond, that have been in safekeeping beneath the Arctic ice.  The seeds are being planted at new facilities in Lebanon and Morocco, allowing scientists to resume the important research they've been doing for decades, away from the barrel bombs of Aleppo.  As of yesterday, the seeds had been successfully transported to both Lebanon and Morocco.

    This isn't the first time that war has reached its hand into historical records.  The genetic depository in Japan was completely destroyed by the atom bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, wiping out centuries of ancestral records and documents.  But in many modern wars, an unwritten moral code (an ironic term in the case of war) is to leave certain historical or religous monuments untouched.  Thus, cathedrals in Germany remain (some say the tall spires of the cathedrals were used as land markers for the Allied bombers), and ancient ruins in Italy and elsewhere remain.  But in Syria, the fighting is too close and apparently too erratic for scientific safety...and after all, they're only seeds.

    But one complication in our world is specifically that, a lack of genetic diversity.  Crops from bananas to corn are growing more and more limited to a single variety.  One virus or mold can cause havoc throughout the world, devastating entire crops (this is already happening with the banana crop as told years ago in The New Yorker).  In the case of the seeds in Syria, there was an existing seed bank in Aleppo, trying to break the chain on similarity and preserve the seeds of crops from yesteryear.  Said CNN: The gene bank in Aleppo, run by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, is one of the most important in the world and includes more than 135,000 varieties of wheat, fava bean, lentil and chickpea crops, as well as the world's most valuable barley collection.  "These are land races that were inherited from our grand-grandparents, most of them are unfortunately extinct now," ICARDA Director General Mahmoud El-Solh said.  "And this is where the cradle of agriculture (was)10,000 years ago.  In this part of the world, many of the important crops were domesticated from the wild to cultivation."  ICARDA representative Thanos Tsivelikas, who is overseeing the withdrawal from the vault, describes the operation as "a rescue mission; these seeds cannot be replaced."  The ICARDA Aleppo center had sent nearly 80% of the seeds and samples to the Global Seed Vault as a backup by 2012, with its last deposit being in 2014.

    This "they're only seeds" feeling can be a devastating one, the world going on as normal until suddenly, the price of a loaf of bread skyrockets and a scramble for a new variety of wheat ensues.  Think of the years needed to develop a resistant variety, to grow a test crop in many different climates and conditions and to hope that that test crop can succeed on a massive scale...then the actual planting and waiting begins.  Then the harvest, then the testing to see if the result is viable (does it have the same nutritional value, has no toxins, can cook and be digested properly, is safe for all ages including children and babies?).  Because of all of these questions, scientists behind the scenes (both commercially and non-commercially) are constantly working to both protect and create possible seed replacements.  But hybrid and pesticide-resistant seeds (which tend to lose their effectiveness over several generations as bugs and diseases adapt) are seemingly everywhere and (so far) winning in judicial courts over genetic patenting...but it would appear the mood of the public (and farmers) might be changing.

    In a new film titled Open Sesame, filmmaker M. Sean Kaminsky "...looks at the necessity for seed diversity and how monoculture-farming practices threaten it.  In the past century, we’ve lost an astonishing 90 percent of the fruit and vegetable seeds once available," says Modern Farmer.  In an interview with the filmmaker, writer Su Avasti captured him saying this about seeds:  Seeds connect to something in our DNA, and it gets woken up.  It’s almost a mindset.  When you save or share seeds, they become woven into our lives and our cultural memories.  The tomatoes you grow remind you of the first time you made homemade pasta sauce.  When you trade seeds, you trade stories. And that gives them another kind of life that is just as nourishing as growing them for food.

    The University of Chicago echoed this sentiment in a research paper on preserving seed diversity:  Seed Savers Exchange*, a not for profit organization based in Iowa is at the opposite end of the formal system.  They collect seeds from thousands of members as well as from their 950-acre farm and sell  them via catalogue and internet.   Their seeds come with no replanting restrictions and have never been genetically modified.  Seed Savers Exchange was one of the first signatories on the Safe Seed Pledge in 1999, a promise to never “knowingly buy or sell genetically engineered seeds or plants”.  The SSE’s mission extends beyond simply opposing GMOs, they seek to enhance and preserve the cultural significance of farming and gardening while giving their patrons access to genetically diverse seeds.   Each seed packet comes with a history of the lineage of that variety of seed, attempting to bring genetic diversity to fruition through the appeal of a story, a technique also used by the Jane Addams Hull House Museum Seed Library.  In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Hull House Museum director said, “There’s no reason every urban library in a city couldn’t be a seed library,”  The model is simple, check out a packet of seeds, plant them, and return the seeds that the mature plant produces.

    If all of this somehow appears not that relevant to your world, imagine if the seeds were not agricultural seeds but human ones...your seeds, and a massive virus was steadily marching across the planet decimating humans due to our own lack of diversity.  This has been explored by movies and books throughout the decades; but in the case of our edible and decorative crops (edible necessities to other animals), the crisis is just as personal and just as vital.  Our survival (without meaning to denigrate or simplify the term) takes planning...and thanks to a few relatively unknown scientists and countries, that planning continues today, war or no war.


*According to the research paper from the University of Chicago, "The Seed Savers Exchange is one of the world’s largest suppliers of heirloom varieties and in addition to distributing seeds to gardeners and farmers, SSE has taken the next step in seed preservation: donating seeds to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault."