[Market-farming] Doomsday Vault

STEVE GILMAN stevegilman at verizon.net
Wed Feb 27 14:27:39 EST 2008


Hello All,

	Before anyone gets too congratulatory over Monsanto, here's part of  
a New York Times blog article by science journalist Andrew Revkin,  
available in it's entirety at:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/buried-seed-vault-opens- 
in-arctic/index.html?ref=science

Grain.org, a group based in Spain focused on strengthening regional  
agriculture, was one of the few entities criticizing the focus on the  
seed vault. The group worries that such moves take away intellectual  
property rights to crop varieties from the farming communities that  
developed them and provide a false sense of confidence that safe  
storage, on its own, can sustain agricultural diversity.

As the group noted in a news release today (hat tip to Danny Bloom):

"Thousands of accessions have died in storage, as many have been  
rendered useless for lack of basic information about the seeds, and  
countless others have lost their unique characteristics or have been  
genetically contaminated during periodic grow-outs. This has happened  
throughout the ex situ system, not just in gene banks of developing  
countries. So the issue is not about being for or against gene banks,  
it is about the sole reliance on one conservation strategy that, in  
itself, has a lot of inherent problems.

The deeper problem with the single focus on ex situ seed storage,  
that the Svalbard Vault reinforces, is that it is fundamentally  
unjust. It takes seeds of unique plant varieties away from the  
farmers and communities who originally created, selected, protected  
and shared those seeds and makes them inaccessible to them. The logic  
is that as people’s traditional varieties get replaced by newer ones  
from research labs -– seeds that are supposed to provide higher  
yields to feed a growing population – the old ones have to be put  
away as “raw material” for future plant breeding. This system forgets  
that farmers are the world’s original, and ongoing, plant breeders."

It’s a noteworthy point. The groups funding the seed vault, including  
the Gates Foundation, say they are also pouring money into creating  
databases and other mechanisms for maintaining poor countries’ access  
to the full array of crop strains. But what about the farmers in the  
field?

In a world tending toward monoculture, how much of this  
intergovernmental work helps sustain farming diversity, as opposed to  
museum-style genetic diversity? Do farmers matter?


On Feb 27, 2008, at 12:59 PM, market-farming- 
request at lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 06:51:53 -0500
> From: "Sharon and Steve" <shopkins at tdstelme.net>
> Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Doomsday Vault
> To: <frshstrt at baldwin-telecom.net>,	"Market Farming"
> 	<market-farming at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <009901c87939$94894520$647d8345 at your4dacd0ea75>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> 	reply-type=original
>
>
>
>
>
>> Has anyone taken note on national t.v. about the doomsday vault in
>> Norway.  What an amazing thing.  Seed Savers on steroids.  Hope
>> Monsanto  can't get the seeds stored there.
>> Lu
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Thinking, as I do, that anyone wanting a cleaner planet should be  
> thanking
> folk like Monsanto, I have to ask:  why there should be a problem  
> if they
> store some of their genetic inventory anywhere?
>
> MAsteveINE
>
>




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