2013 October 03
Seeds
1. How might such solutions, products, or knowledge change your life?
The 'product' in question is the Svalbard Global Seed Bank (1). The 'solution' offered by this product is the preservation of food-crop seeds through coordinated seed saving. The problem this solution address is the loss of agricultural biodiversity through climate change and mono-cropping. Mono-cropping is the agricultural process of growing just one type of plant. Usually this refers to growing only corn, season after season, instead of engaging in crop-rotation, but it also refers to growing just one type of that corn, usually one species.
This single-species monocropping is dangerous, even when not considering climate change. Diversity is the resource natural selection uses to make sure life continues. Consider the best known case of monocropping failure: Ireland's Great (Potato) Famine. Most have heard of it. One third of the farmers of Ireland grew one species of potato, but a fungus came and decimated this species of potato crop. Over a million people died of starvation, and a million more emigrated from Ireland (2). An example you might not have heard of, is the banana. Did you ever notice that banana-flavoring does not really taste like bananas? Well, it does. It tastes like the banana species that used to be common in US stores, the Gros Michel. A fungus wilt wiped out vast tracts of banana trees. After this catastrophe, growers switched to the Dwarf Cavendish, the species you eat today. All of the common bananas you have ever purchased from a United States grocery store are genetically identical. They are clones. They do not even have seeds; those tiny black spots in the banana are the remnants of what would develop into seeds in a wild plant.
The saving of seeds would prevent the extinction of crop species. Not only is there an intrinsic value in protecting the biodiversity of our environment, but this seed saving gives the human species options if climate change or blight makes us unable to grow the crops we currently subsist on.
2. What is innovative about the product or idea presented?
The Svalbard Global Seed Bank utilized an existing structure, an old mine, to create the bank itself. The facility takes advantage of the freezing landscape as natural refrigeration for the seed bank, as the best way to save seeds is to dry them and freeze them (1). Its purpose is not unique, as there other seedbanks, but their common goal is innovative: conserve something that is not actually being used, because the world might need it.
3. Why does the solution, products, or knowledge benefit the planet?
As stated, biodiversity gives us options. If every welsh sheepdog on the planet spontaneously perished, ranchers could turn to bearded collies to herd their stock. If your favorite pen dies, but you still need to write your paper, you turn to another pen even if the blue is not quite the same color, because you NEED to finish the paper. The stock NEEDS to be herded. Humans NEED agriculture. It is arguable that human civilization, as it stands now, only exists because of the development of agriculture. It makes sense to protect our future agriculture through the preservation of threatened species and conservation of redundant species.
4. How does the solution, products, or knowledge transform human-nature relationships?
The idea that agriculture is variable, that the foods we eat are not always available year round or in our hometowns, tends to only register in our minds when we see the cost of fruits and vegetables in the grocery store. Apples because less expensive in the fall, for example. The loss of biodiverstity profoundly affects humans by changing their environment; it changes what is available to them from their environment. Seed saving projects aim to prevent that by encouraging the view that we are part of this changing environment and can and will be affected by it, period. By promoting the knowledge of the need to save biodiversity, it promotes the notions of human-environment connectedness.
5. Identify possible pitfalls in the solutions, products, and knowledge presented.
The Svalbard Global Seed Bank actually only save agricultural crop species. Essentially, even in trying to save food plant biodiversity we are looking at food plants through a distinctly ethnocentric lens. Have Westerners stored seeds of the Balsam Apple vine? The plant is poisonous when ripe, but unripe cukes are edible, though bitter. It is arguable that no one facility or organization can save everything, so it is necessary to continue the idea with other seed banks that focus on saving other types. For example, the Millenium Seed Bank Project in Sussex, London, England, saves 'wild plant' seeds. They currently have the largest number of seed species, reaching one billion in April 2007. In October 2009, it reached its 10% goal of banking all the world's wild plant species by adding Musa itinerans, a wild banana, to its seed vault. As estimates for the number of seed bearing plant species have increased, the current 33,187 species that have been banked represent 11.06% of the global total (4). It could be argued that the Svalbard facility is actually the small focus facility for the Millennium project. Either way, redundancy is key, and that makes multiple seed banks, in multiple locations, necessary.
Resources
1. http://www.ted.com/talks/cary_fowler_one_seed_at_a_time_protecting_the_future_of_food.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel_banana
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Seed_Bank_Project
If you are really interested in the idea of seed saving, I can offer you two interesting works of Fiction that revolves around it. Treasure Planet, an animated movie based in a future that seems a lot like Treasure Island, and revolves around the discovery of a seed ark that could save the dwindling human species, and City of Pearl by Karen Traviss. The latter includes an interesting look at what could happen if agriculture becomes dominated by corporations and their trademarked crop species, but includes the discovery of a seek ark that could save Earth from these corporations.
Seeds
1. How might such solutions, products, or knowledge change your life?
The 'product' in question is the Svalbard Global Seed Bank (1). The 'solution' offered by this product is the preservation of food-crop seeds through coordinated seed saving. The problem this solution address is the loss of agricultural biodiversity through climate change and mono-cropping. Mono-cropping is the agricultural process of growing just one type of plant. Usually this refers to growing only corn, season after season, instead of engaging in crop-rotation, but it also refers to growing just one type of that corn, usually one species.
This single-species monocropping is dangerous, even when not considering climate change. Diversity is the resource natural selection uses to make sure life continues. Consider the best known case of monocropping failure: Ireland's Great (Potato) Famine. Most have heard of it. One third of the farmers of Ireland grew one species of potato, but a fungus came and decimated this species of potato crop. Over a million people died of starvation, and a million more emigrated from Ireland (2). An example you might not have heard of, is the banana. Did you ever notice that banana-flavoring does not really taste like bananas? Well, it does. It tastes like the banana species that used to be common in US stores, the Gros Michel. A fungus wilt wiped out vast tracts of banana trees. After this catastrophe, growers switched to the Dwarf Cavendish, the species you eat today. All of the common bananas you have ever purchased from a United States grocery store are genetically identical. They are clones. They do not even have seeds; those tiny black spots in the banana are the remnants of what would develop into seeds in a wild plant.
The saving of seeds would prevent the extinction of crop species. Not only is there an intrinsic value in protecting the biodiversity of our environment, but this seed saving gives the human species options if climate change or blight makes us unable to grow the crops we currently subsist on.
2. What is innovative about the product or idea presented?
The Svalbard Global Seed Bank utilized an existing structure, an old mine, to create the bank itself. The facility takes advantage of the freezing landscape as natural refrigeration for the seed bank, as the best way to save seeds is to dry them and freeze them (1). Its purpose is not unique, as there other seedbanks, but their common goal is innovative: conserve something that is not actually being used, because the world might need it.
3. Why does the solution, products, or knowledge benefit the planet?
As stated, biodiversity gives us options. If every welsh sheepdog on the planet spontaneously perished, ranchers could turn to bearded collies to herd their stock. If your favorite pen dies, but you still need to write your paper, you turn to another pen even if the blue is not quite the same color, because you NEED to finish the paper. The stock NEEDS to be herded. Humans NEED agriculture. It is arguable that human civilization, as it stands now, only exists because of the development of agriculture. It makes sense to protect our future agriculture through the preservation of threatened species and conservation of redundant species.
4. How does the solution, products, or knowledge transform human-nature relationships?
The idea that agriculture is variable, that the foods we eat are not always available year round or in our hometowns, tends to only register in our minds when we see the cost of fruits and vegetables in the grocery store. Apples because less expensive in the fall, for example. The loss of biodiverstity profoundly affects humans by changing their environment; it changes what is available to them from their environment. Seed saving projects aim to prevent that by encouraging the view that we are part of this changing environment and can and will be affected by it, period. By promoting the knowledge of the need to save biodiversity, it promotes the notions of human-environment connectedness.
5. Identify possible pitfalls in the solutions, products, and knowledge presented.
The Svalbard Global Seed Bank actually only save agricultural crop species. Essentially, even in trying to save food plant biodiversity we are looking at food plants through a distinctly ethnocentric lens. Have Westerners stored seeds of the Balsam Apple vine? The plant is poisonous when ripe, but unripe cukes are edible, though bitter. It is arguable that no one facility or organization can save everything, so it is necessary to continue the idea with other seed banks that focus on saving other types. For example, the Millenium Seed Bank Project in Sussex, London, England, saves 'wild plant' seeds. They currently have the largest number of seed species, reaching one billion in April 2007. In October 2009, it reached its 10% goal of banking all the world's wild plant species by adding Musa itinerans, a wild banana, to its seed vault. As estimates for the number of seed bearing plant species have increased, the current 33,187 species that have been banked represent 11.06% of the global total (4). It could be argued that the Svalbard facility is actually the small focus facility for the Millennium project. Either way, redundancy is key, and that makes multiple seed banks, in multiple locations, necessary.
Resources
1. http://www.ted.com/talks/cary_fowler_one_seed_at_a_time_protecting_the_future_of_food.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel_banana
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Seed_Bank_Project
If you are really interested in the idea of seed saving, I can offer you two interesting works of Fiction that revolves around it. Treasure Planet, an animated movie based in a future that seems a lot like Treasure Island, and revolves around the discovery of a seed ark that could save the dwindling human species, and City of Pearl by Karen Traviss. The latter includes an interesting look at what could happen if agriculture becomes dominated by corporations and their trademarked crop species, but includes the discovery of a seek ark that could save Earth from these corporations.
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