Linda Piacentini-Yaple
Piacentini Studios
Bend, OR
The Doomsday Vault
On a remote island in Norway, the Svalbard Seed Vault—the Doomsday Vault—was designed as a refuge to preserve the world’s diversity of seeds against global catastrophes—asteroid impacts, pandemics, nuclear war, climate change, terrorism, rising sea levels, earthquakes, the collapse of electricity supplies, and the gradual extinction of crop varieties that occur every day. Or was it?
The vault is managed under an International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and an agreement between the Norwegian government and the Global Crop Diversity Trust, both of which pay for operational costs. Who are they to hold such an awesome trust over the planet’s entire seed varieties? Plant breeders and researchers are the major users of gene banks. Today’s largest plant breeders are Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta and Dow Chemical, the global plant-patenting GMO (genetically modified organisms) giants. Is our food diversity future really being preserved?
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