Agricultural Biodiversity, Seed Banks and the Apocalypse

By Ed Nizalowski

In the vast arena of environmental issues, each of which fights for attention, concern and funding, there are a number that fall by the wayside until some crisis forces the media and the public to become "educated" in a compressed time span. The importance of wildlife and natural biodiversity is no longer a strange topic for discussion. Both the ongoing drought west of the Mississippi and the dropping reservoirs in the Southeast have given our water resources the kind of attention they should have had decades ago. Discussions and developments relating to global warming and climate change often appear on the front page of our daily newspapers.

This same concern, however, needs to be focused on our declining and ever so fragile agricultural biodiversity. We have vast libraries and museums to store, catalog and study our historical, literary and cultural heritage, but what of the vast knowledge and experimentation that our farmers, gardeners and tillers of the soil have accumulated? For most of the general public that seldom touches anything from the earth unless it is wrapped in cellophane or Styrofoam, agricultural biodiversity seems as foreign as dropping a satellite on the face of Mars.

Bringing a greater awareness to this issue was the subject of an article in the New Yorker magazine from Aug. 27, 2007: "Sowing for the Apocalypse [The quest for a global seed bank] by John Seabrook (pp. 60-71). The "inspiration" for the article the effort by the Norwegian government to create a "Doomsday" vault in Longyearbyen, located on the island of Spitsbergen. It is hoped to someday to have a backup seed for every other seed bank in the world.

The idea of a major seed bank is probably an idea born in the 20th century. As more and more varieties of agricultural produce were dropping out of commercial favor and the threat of having them disappear completely became more of a reality, a number of crop scientists and botanists began collecting seeds. The hope was that their viability could be maintained until such time as some rare or "heritage" variety was needed back in someone's field or garden. One of the first major efforts of this type was the Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry located in St.

Petersburg. Seabrook refers to the Institute as "one of the oldest seed banks --and the most storied-- in the world." The Institute is named after Nicolai Vavilov, a Russian biologist and plant breeder who was the first man to dream of creating a world seed bank.

Vavilov's story is a remarkable one both for the determination of his vision and the tragedy that enveloped both him personally, the city of St. Petersburg and the former Soviet Union. Vavilov began his effort in the 1930's and was driven by his desire to create hardier strains of crops for Russia. Unfortunately, as with so many scientists who became lumped together with other "enemies of Stalin", Vavilov came under suspicion from Soviet authorities. He was arrested in 1940 and charged with treason and espionage. He was sentenced to death in 1941, but the sentence was commuted to 20 years imprisonment at a compound in Saratov, on the Volga River. He died of starvation on January 23, 1943, in the midst of the conflagration brought on by the German invasion of the Soviet Union. He was buried in a common grave and his dream of a comprehensive world seed bank was buried with him.

Although the effort had begun with a number of seeds collected, what happened to this facility during the Second World War has equal amounts of pathos, sacrifice and tragedy. St. Petersburg, which had been renamed Leningrad during the Soviet era, came under siege by the Germans during the winter of 1941-42. Compelled to protect the collection for posterity, scientists had to protect the seeds from both the hungry residents of the city during the day and "thousands of rats" by night. Two scientists, A. G. Stchukin, a specialist in peanuts, and D. S. Ivanov, a specialist in rice, died of starvation surrounded by thousands of packets of seeds.

Why is maintenance of our agricultural biodiversity important?
Why should we care if there are fewer and fewer varieties of food crops available through seed companies? Won't plant scientists manipulating the wizardry of biotechnology keep our bellies full? Although we may be benefiting in the short term from the remarkable increases in output brought about by laboratory experimentation, the long term effects of such developments as gene splicing and bioengineering are still unknown. And the dependence on so much technology and its concurrent applications of pesticides, herbicides and manufactured fertilizers leaves our farmers at the mercy of agri-business conglomerates and banking concerns.

Just as we have been breeding penicillin-resistant bacteria through overuse of antibiotics, we have created another "Frankenstein" in our vegetable and crop fields. Some ancient strain of maize might just be our "savior" if the commercial varieties fall prey to some "mega-disease" waiting for an opportunity to strike. The ability of native peoples and those in subsistence food environments to provide for themselves in unusual "micro-environments" is of further concern. Steve Gleissman, an agroecologist at the University of California at Santa Clara, puts it this way: "We forever lose the best available knowledge and experience of place, including what to do with marginal lands not suited for industrial production".

A survey done in 1983 tabulated what varieties had disappeared since a similar survey had been done in 1903. The results gave very sobering
statistics: cabbage (544 to 28); carrots (287 to 21); cauliflower (158 to 9); pears (2683 to 326). If a survey were to be done in 2008, it is very likely that the trends have not been reversed.

Modern geopolitics and natural disasters have further eroded our agricultural heritage. Iraq's seed bank was ransacked during the invasion; the bank was located, interestingly enough, in the town of Abu Ghraib. The most important seeds were placed in a cardboard box and sent to a similar facility in Syria. Afghanistan's seed bank was destroyed when the Taliban was overthrown. Natural disasters have destroyed seed banks in the Philippines, Nicaragua and Honduras.

Compounding the problem in Iraq was a wholesome and patriotic sounding program called Operation Amber Waves. It encouraged Iraqi's to use many of the GMO seeds from American companies. Order 81, issued by Paul Bremer in 2004, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, prohibited Iraqi's from reusing these seeds in subsequent harvests, forcing them to purchase new seed from American corporations. To paraphrase an old slogan: "If it's good for agri-business, it's good for the country!"

England has initiated a seed bank of similar magnitude to the one in Norway. Called the Millennium Seed Bank Project, this effort plans to safeguard 24,000 plant species worldwide along with all of the United Kingdom's native wild plants. Even when the target goal is reached in 2010, it will only have 10% of the world's seed bearing plants. Yet, in spite of this small percentage of the world's agricultural biodiversity, England will have first rank among seed bank competitors.

The value of seed banks is already being demonstrated very clearly. The International Plant Genetics Resources Institute based in Rome has shipped out roughly 88,000 samples a year to researchers, breeders and farmers. And for those think that it is merely quaint or an exercise in nostalgia to maintain large numbers of viable vegetable and crop varieties, Stephen Smith, research fellow for Pioneer Hi-Bred, puts it this way: "How humans use diversity in farming determines our food, our health, and our economic well-being, and that in turn determines our political security."

We might not be brought to our knees by some foreign or domestic terrorist attack. It could be a repeat of the Irish potato famine, except on a scale of vastly greater proportions. Let us hope that we are not solely dependent on the viability of seeds stored in a cavern in Scandinavia or an underground vault in England in case our agricultural cornucopia suddenly comes under assault from biological pathogens we have inadvertently created or climatic changes that may be the work of Mother Nature and/or man.

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