This blog entry is part of a project for the class Anthropology of Nature.
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.
