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  • From: STEVE GILMAN <stevegilman AT verizon.net>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Doomsday Vault
  • Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:27:39 -0500

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@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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