Fwd: FW: [Food-news] Stowing Seeds for Disaster

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>

> http://www.freecycle.org

> www.foodnews.ca

>

> Editor’s Note: Can farmers be supported by

> international laws to preserve

> the diversity of food crops? The government of

> Norway is covering all

> angles. It plays a positive role in all phases of

> the Convention on

> Biological Diversity and the International Treaty

> for Plant Genetic

> Resources, which supports farmers to continue to

> maintain and develop

> traditional farming and knowledge. Yet it has also

> decided to use its cold

> climate to create a seed bank in case of disasters

> threatening the

> continuity of human foods. HF*

>

> Stowing seeds for disaster

> Norway to create super-cold storage vault of edible

> plant life

> By SUSAN SACHS

>

> Thursday, January 12, 2006

> Special to The Globe and Mail

>

> PARIS -- The future of humankind may soon be buried

> deep within a

> sandstone mountain, locked in permafrost and encased

> in concrete behind

> blast-proof doors designed to foil terrorists.

>

> The bold experiment to preserve two million seeds,

> representing a

> veritable Noah's ark of the world's food crops, is

> expected to take shape

> this year on a remote Norwegian island.

>

> The seed bank, sponsored by the Norwegian government

> and a private trust

> promoting crop diversity, is meant to preserve the

> genetic building blocks

> of edible plants in the case of nuclear war, crop

> disease, catastrophic

> climate change, earthquakes or other natural or

> man-made disasters.

>

> " If the worst came to the worst, this would allow

> the world to reconstruct

> agriculture on this planet, " said Cary Fowler,

> executive secretary of the

> Global Crop Diversity Trust in Rome.

>

> The trust was established in association with the

> United Nations Food and

> Agricultural Organization and aims to collect and

> safeguard crop

> diversity, in part through seed banks established

> across the world.

>

> Mr. Fowler spoke to the British magazine New

> Scientist for an article to

> be published on Saturday.

>

> The Norwegian super-cold storage vault, estimated to

> cost about $3-million

> (U.S.), should eventually stock seeds from plant

> varieties from every

> continent, according to the magazine.

>

> Most of the seeds will be taken from inventories in

> existing seed banks in

> Africa, Asia and Latin America, where the safety of

> the storehouses has

> been compromised by electricity failures, political

> turmoil and poor

> security.

>

> The Norwegian facility, slated for Spitsbergen in

> the frozen Svalbard

> islands, will be " a fail-safe depository, " Mr.

> Fowler said.

>

> " This will be the world's most secure gene bank by

> some orders of

> magnitude, " he added. " But its seeds will only be

> used when all other

> samples have gone for some reason. "

>

> In announcing the project, the Norwegian Foreign

> Ministry called the

> Svalbard islands north of the mainland an ideal

> location for the

> deep-freeze stash, saying that seeds would be

> preserved in the permafrost

> even if electricity supplies fail.

>

> Spitsbergen, population 2,330, lies at about 81

> degrees north latitude. It

> boasts summer high temperatures around the freezing

> mark, a polar jazz

> festival in January and what is billed as the most

> northerly marathon race

> in June.

>

> Sixty per cent of its land mass is covered by

> glaciers and fields of snow.

> The temperature yesterday was a balmy 0, but with

> the wind-chill factor

> taken into account, the outside temperature felt

> like -19.

>

> New Scientist reported that the seed bank would be

> built inside a

> sandstone mountain lined with permafrost. The vault

> will be lined with

> reinforced concrete walls about one-metre thick, the

> magazine said, and

> sealed by blast-proof doors meant to protect the

> stock from terrorists and

> global warming.

>

> The idea for an Arctic seed bank dates back more

> than 20 years. Cold War

> concerns about the Svalbard archipelago and the

> island of Spitsbergen,

> which was exploited by Soviet mining companies under

> a 1920 treaty with

> Norway, discouraged attempts to use the frozen

> wasteland for such a

> sensitive international project.

>

> In 2004, an international treaty aimed at preserving

> and sharing plant

> genetic resources was enacted, paving the way for

> co-operative and modern

> seed banks like the one to be built in Norway.

>

> When the treaty was adopted, experts warned that the

> world was too

> dependent on too few crops, with only 150 varieties

> feeding most of the

> world's population and genetic diversity declining

> sharply.

>

> * Harriet Friedmann is a contributing editor to

> foodnews.

>

>

>

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