Do we need this?
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
I made a mistake. When I first started following the story of the Global Seed Vault I was intrigued. I watched as they built a very technologically advanced vault in the permafrost on the Norweigan island of Svalbard north of the Arctic circle. I noted that one of the sponsors of the site was the Global Crop Diversity Trust. I looked over their website and it looked like an okay non-profit organization but I didn’t look deep enough.
Remember the green revolution?
The Green Revolution started in 1943. Financed by the Rockefeller Foundation it propagated cutting-edge US agricultural technology, dwarf grain varieties, petrochemical fertilizers and large-scale irrigation systems throughout much of Latin America and Southeast Asia. The effect was a boom for agribiz and devastation for small-scale farmers who could not afford the initial investment in seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation projects. The environmental and social costs of this “revolution” are now well-known. In The Fatal Harvest Reader, Jason McKenney describes how petrochemicals literally change the physical structure of soils, making them less efficient at storing water, air, and nutrients. Heavy reliance on irrigation compromises arable land through the process of salinification, salts building up in over-watered soil. And then there is the cost to the environment and human health from the toxic pesticides and burning of fossil fuels in farm machinery and transport vehicles.
Unfortunately, the Global Seed Vault is backed by the same people who brought us this fatal harvest. Except this time they are pushing the technology of genetic modification - which is why the seed vault is key.
GMOs represent another technical fix dreamed up by outside “experts” and marketed by transnational agribusiness giants.
I noticed as the publicity ramped up that the seed vault was being sold on fear. It was being called the “Doomsday Vault,” supposedly able to withstand catastrophic disasters of all kinds. The real catastrophe is that they are trying to control the food supply in the name of “protecting” us. Seeds do not need to be in deep storage, available only to the “scientists” who manipulate the genes so that we have franken-food with untested effects on future generations and farmers who can be sued by the likes of Monsanto if Monsanto’s seeds drift into the farmer’s fields and contaminate the farmer’s crops (yes, this really happened).
Seeds need to be used, planted every year so they can adapt to changing climate conditions. Besides seeds get old. The germination rate goes down every year and after a few years they will not produce any more. The seeds in the vault are not seeds that you and I could go get and plant in our gardens. They are genetic material for people who want to experiment on them - and us.
I wish I could believe that Global Crop Diversity Trust was a righteous organization but given the fact that Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow Chemical and Pioneer are direct sponsors of the project I do not have much trust.
For myself, I’m counting on the local farmers, my friends at Seeds of Change and grassroots seed savers all over the world.
I found out from reading Restoring Mayberry,
a blog by Brian Kaller, a journalist in County Kildare, Ireland, that the Irish Seed Savers is the only organization supplying seeds to farms and gardens in Europe other than those imported from the Third World and Australia which means they are grown (and adapted to) places far, far away from the people who actually grow them. If anything were to happen to transportation, or to the harvest in faraway countries, Seed Savers would be the lifeline for 500 million people.
The solution to the food crisis exists, and is being fought for in many communities. It is called food sovereignty. Via Campesina is an international movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agricultural workers from 56 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.
Saving your seeds is a very satisfying thing to do. Seeds of change has an excellent rundown on how to do it for us ordinary gardeners here.
