Can seed banks save us?
International law is a start, but traditional seedkeeping is major part of the solution.
Seeds are our relatives.
Seeds have been developed along side people for thousands of years. Many indigenous languages have words developed around the practice of planting and harvesting seeds that defy translation. Language is intertwined with seeds.
Seeds have been carried by explorers, colonizers and during forced removal of indigenous people in America to take to new lands to ensure there would be food to harvest. Arriving in new lands at critical times to plant these seeds often meant whether a colony or community would survive. Arrive too close to the winter, and you have nothing to eat in the coming six months or more.
The legend of Squanto saving the Pilgrims by showing them how to plant corn, may or may not be true, but it is certainly true that the Wampanoags shared their crops with the Pilgrims and probably made the difference between survival and demise of the Pilgrims. The gratitude did not last long.1
Taking Care of Seeds
When the Cherokee Nation was removed from the East to Oklahoma, they took with them seeds as connections to their homeland and to plant when they arrived in their new designated lands. These seeds have been protected, saved and handed down and these heirloom seeds are still planted. The three federally-recognized Cherokee tribes, the Western Cherokee, the Eastern Cherokee and the United Keetowah Bank all share in the Cherokee Nation Seed Bank, and distribute seeds each year.2
Traditional ecological knowledge of how to plant these seeds is essential to the success of the crops. One widely used tradition among indigenous people is planting together the “Three Sisters” (corn, squash and beans) because it is traditional but also because it is known to be mutually beneficial to plant them together in a specific configuration.3
Other Native Nations in the United States have strong traditions in seeds. The Hopi developed their blue corn that was bred and selected to grow in their particular climate and soil over hundreds of years. Blue corn is part of their origin story.4 The Blue Corn Maiden is depicted in art Art credit.5 The Hopi live in arid conditions and the blue corn they have developed is drought-resistant and adapted to the harsh growing conditions. The people take care of the corn, and the corn takes care of the people.
Many Native Nations are now asking for their seeds to be returned that were collected by anthropologists decades ago, and now held in museum collections, in hopes of recovering their heirloom seeds. Displacement of the Native Nation and loss of land may have also led to the loss of specific seeds and crops. These seeds were developed over hundreds or thousands of years and embody the culture of the Native Nation.
The Rematriation movement is signaling the leadership of women as seedkeepers and asking for these seeds to be rematriated. This could potentially trigger the federal statute, NAGPRA, that requires sacred objects to be repatriated to Native Nations.
When we imagine living on other planets, a long-term food supply has to be planned. In the movie, The Martian, Matt Damon was part of the crew to colonize Mars because he was a botanist. Presumably he knew how to grow plants, so one would assume he brought the traditional bag of seeds? Astonishingly, no —- he resorted to potatoes stored in the bin they were kept as rations. (Spoiler alert.) Maybe it was a foreshadowing of his doomed mission.6 What kind of botanist would not bring seeds?
Matt Damon growing potatoes on Mars in The Martian (2015)
The World Prepares for Armageddon
If the worst-case-scenario of war or natural disasters came to the world, the world has been preparing for it. The International Treaty of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, or '“The Seed Treaty” is based on the international legal principle that seeds are a common heritage of humankind/mankind and should be available to all without restriction.7 The objective of the treaty is to promote sustainable agriculture which includes saving and replanting seeds. Another objective is to preserve genetic diversity of crops. One of the well known risks of monocultures which we tend toward in the U.S. with special commerical varieties is that if you have one genotype of corn, for example, one disease to which it is susceptible can destroy all the corn crop for the year in the U.S., so maintaining genetically diverse crops is essential to forestall threats to world hunger, in such a event.
This idea is being carried out in a private initiative, the Svardbard Seed Bank or the “Doomsday Vault”, 8 in a remote area of Norway. Deep into solid rock, the conditions of the vault allow it to remain cool against the threat of nuclear war or climate change.
Photo credit: https://www.croptrust.org/work/svalbard-global-seed-vault/
The United States, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) maintains the National Seed Storage Laboratory (NSSL), located in Fort Collins, Colorado. This seedbank preserves the seeds for a variety of crops for research and conservation purposes.9
The United Kingdom has established the Millennium Seed Bank Project (MSBP), maintained by the Royal Botanic Gardens. The MSBP stores and conserves the seeds of about 25,000 plant species. It focuses on collecting seeds from rare, threatened, as well as economically important plants.10
The international community through the Food and Agriculture Organization collaborates with the Global Crop Diversity Trust organization with a focus on conserving and protecting genetic diversity of the world's major food crops.11
The International Rice Genebank is managed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. As you recall, rice is particularly vulnerable to genetic contamination, and so this institute serves as a genebank for a large colleciton of rice varieties from different countries and regions.12
The Cherokee Nation Seed Bank was the first U.S. Native Nation to deposit seeds in the Svardbard Seed Bank.13
Keeping Genetic Diversity in Food Crops
Biotechnology has brought the world the ability to feed the now 8 billion people on the planet.14 It does not come without risks. The tendency toward planting only one genetic variety of a crop has to be avoided in order to ensure we are always left with disease-resistance against the next yet-unknown crop disease with at least some of our food crops.
Contamination of heirloom varieties with genetically modified crops has always been a concern. After years of research and challenges to research, there appears now that some crops are more vulnerable to genetic contamination of their genes that are carried to the next generation. Most crops may be cross-pollinated for one season by genetically modified contaminates, but they will not carry those traits to the next generation. However, one crop, rice, has been found to be vulnerable to contamination. Biotechnology companies and Native Nations have taken steps both legal and environmental to prevent this kind of destructive contamination.
As always, the unintended consequences can be devastating. Knowing about the risks before they happen and taking steps to avoid them, is critical.
More seed banks, please
Seedbanks are growing in number, and Svardbard now has seeds from every nation in the world, which would give everyone a start again should we face a crop Armageddon.
Having seedbanks could save us. But the traditional knowledge that goes with the seeds is essential. The more seed banks, the more opportunity for seeds and traditional knowledge to be preserved. Not putting all your seeds in one basket is good advice.
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https://tlio.org.uk/1637-pequot-massacre-%E2%80%8Bthe-real-story-of-thanksgiving/
https://www.keranews.org/2019-04-02/how-a-seed-bank-helps-preserve-cherokee-culture-through-traditional-foods
https://www.nal.usda.gov/collections/stories/three-sisters
https://snakeriverseeds.com/products/corn-hopi-blue-1 (I could not find a Hopi source, but here is a version of the origin story.)
https://journeyingtothegoddess.wordpress.com/tag/corn-maiden/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/in-the-martian-finally-a-botanist-in-space--but-without-seeds
https://www.fao.org/plant-treaty/en/
https://www.croptrust.org/work/svalbard-global-seed-vault/
https://www.fs.usda.gov/nsl/
https://www.kew.org/wakehurst/whats-at-wakehurst/millennium-seed-bank
https://www.croptrust.org/
https://www.irri.org/international-rice-genebank
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/05/us/cherokee-nation-svalbard-global-seed-vault-trnd/index.html
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/