Remember the movie WALL-E and saw how the Earth was presented there? Ah..yes. It is uninhabited wasteland covered by mountains of trash without any signs of living soul and vegetation.
Where were humans then? They went to space aboard high-tech starliners waiting to finally get rid of Earth's buildings of trash. Their government call it "Operation Cleanup". Isn't that a sad state to be in?
So what is the moral story of this movie and the relationship of it with this post? It's exemplary to how a single PLANT could rebuild the Earth's natural ecosystem and make it habitable for humans again.
Are we ready to face this kind of environmental dilemma?
Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon once said in his remarks back in 2009 in Norway that, sustainable food production may not begin in cold Arctic environment, but it does begin by conserving crop diversity.
What is sustainable food production anyway?
It is a crucial process to reduce poverty globally and to put stable food prices in the market through innovative solutions and integrated system of plant and animal production practices.
In this post, I will concentrate in discussing one area of our food source - the plants or the CROPS.
Image taken from: YouTube video, GoPro Cause: Forever Securing World Food Supply with Crop Trust
The result of minus 18°Celsius environment inside the facility - the door leading to the Vault literally got froze.
Did you know that almost 500 feet inside a deep icy mountain in the town of Longyearbyen, Norway, lies a facility and a tunnel designed to withstand an apocalyptic event or global catastrophe?
This facility is protecting a huge safety deposit box containing 13,000 years of agricultural history.
Image taken from: YouTube video, GoPro Cause: Forever Securing World Food Supply with Crop Trust
The tunnel leading to the Vault's frozen door.
Image taken from: YouTube video, GoPro Cause: Forever Securing World Food Supply with Crop Trust
Inside the Vault where the seeds are stored for safekeeping.
TIME and The Telegraph call it Doomsday Vault while The New York Times said, it is a Fort Knox of food. Though they all differ in putting nicknames of this vault but one thing is for sure, this is not just some kind of dark theme or end of the world slogan. This “Vault” according to Cary Fowler is the foundation of life. It’s our life on Earth and it’s the future of our food supply.
Image taken from: YouTube video, GoPro Cause: Forever Securing World Food Supply with Crop Trust
The areal shot outside facing the Vault's facility.
Image taken from: YouTube video, GoPro Cause: Forever Securing World Food Supply with Crop Trust
The front of the Vault shot from outside.
Image taken from: YouTube video, GoPro Cause: Forever Securing World Food Supply with Crop Trust
The bridge leading to the facility's outside door
This vault has 890,886 seeds samples from most diverse collection of food crop seeds from around the world.
Image taken from: YouTube video, GoPro Cause: Forever Securing World Food Supply with Crop Trust
Special package for special seeds. This will be put in sealed boxes and will place in shelves inside the Vault
What is this Vault?
It is a Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV) located inside the deep mountain on a remote island in the Svalbard archipelago called Spitsbergen, specifically in the town of Longyearbyen.
Image courtesy of Google Map
Google Map showing the SGSV's location (in Northern Europe )
Image courtesy of Google Map
And a representation of distance between SGSV's facility and Manila, Philippines - 8,796.58 kilometers (5,465.94 miles)
Robert Zeigler, Director General of the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute, shows rice seeds destined for Svalbard.Image Source
I am astonished to learn that IRRI has its global headquarters in Los Baños, Laguna.
Back in February 26, 2008, IRRI (Internation Rice Research Institute) shipped some 70,000 different accessions of rice from 123 countries and IRRI's Director General Robert Zeigler was present and on hand during the opening ceremonies to deposit the container #1 into the Vault as the first crop placed in there.
The rule is, once the crops are inside the vault, there should be no way to get it back in outside world.
But recently, Syria requested for seeds inside the vault with the help of International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) because of an on-going civil war in their country and considering the difficulties in transferring its collections from its Head Office in Aleppo, Syria to Beirut.
ICARDA wanted to retrieve and rebuild its seeds collection from the Artic vault to grow new plants from those seeds and harvest duplicate copies.
So what do you think of this VAULT beside of being cool and cold?
As for me, the next time you have crops in your hands, don't just think of it as crops to feed mankind, think of it as the future of our kind.
Thank you for reading my post. I will leave you for now with a quote from a renowned Agriculturist, Mr. Fowler.
You could think of the seed vault as being a library of life for which we have an incomplete card catalog. We know the books are there, we know they contain a wealth of information we haven’t quite read them all yet.
-Cary Fowler
References:
[1] https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2009-09-02/remarks-global-seed-vault
[2] http://time.com/doomsday-vault/
[3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/3325710/Svalbard-Global-Seed-Vault-ark-of-the-Arctic.html
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/world/europe/29seeds.html
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q906bSLEkw
[6] https://www.croptrust.org/our-work/svalbard-global-seed-vault/
[7] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/global-seed-vault-svalbard-syria_us_560152ebe4b00310edf87694
[8] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/24/443053665/scientists-tap-seed-vault-to-rebuild-a-vital collection-stranded-by-war
[9] https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-seeds/syrian-war-spurs-first-withdrawal-from-doomsday-arctic-seed-vault-idUKKCN0RL1KA20150921
[10] https://www.croptrust.org/our-work/svalbard-global-seed-vault/faq-about-the-vault/
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault
[12] https://www.ifpri.org/strategic-research-area/ensuring-sustainable-food-production
[13] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-john-salerno/what-is-sustainable-food_b_428570.html
[14] http://www.businessinsider.com/svalbard-doomsday-seed-vault-melting-permafrost-climate-change-flood-2017-5/#that-way-the-genetic-diversity-of-crops-around-the-world-is-supposed-to-be-kept-safe-7
[15] http://irri.org/about-us/our-history
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