Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
As seed diversity plummets globally, securing varieties will likely become even more important. ICARDA counterparts and fellow genebanks in the Philippines, Afghanistan, and Iraq have been lost due to human interventions and natural disasters, making the success of ICARDA’s move from Syria even more commendable.
The Crop Trust, the Millennium Seed Bank at Kew, and their partners are confronting this problem on a global level by identifying gaps in the world’s collections of CWRs, supporting the collecting efforts of 24 national programs to fill those gaps, and working with more than 40 institutions to develop pre-breeding materials that will help adapt crops to a changing climate.
As odd as it sounds, I can’t help but think that it’s so ridiculously easy to point fingers at the short-sightedness of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault that not only is it also all-too-easy to label it as the “Vault of Doom”, but that this can lead one to miss out on the much more dire issue of what the Vault represents in the present.
Thus far, the government of Mozambique has dutifully reformed its seed laws to conform, creating obstacles to the kinds of real solutions – to hunger, poverty, and climate change – farmers in Marracuene are creating for themselves.
Gary Nabhan has taken the fight to the corporate seed merchants through the local food movement and seed saving community.
Bring up the topic of seeds and Nabita Goud sits up a little straighter and begins to talk animatedly.
Ethical consumers in the US are increasingly concerned with the seeds used in the production of their food
More than 75 percent of the fruit and vegetable varieties that humans once consumed have already gone the way of the wooly mammoth…
73% of seed crops are now ‘owned’ by 10 corporations – while community and grassroots initiatives are working to keep global diversity alive.
Here at the Millennium Seed Bank’s ‘Great Seed Swap’ at the National Trust’s Wakehurst Place, we hear about the rich diversity of plant varieties that can be grown for food; see keen gardeners and horticulturalists exchange seeds; and learn from the experts about the importance of saving and sowing our own open-pollinated seeds.
