DI SPATC H E S | STORING THE SEEDS
Preparing for disaster Saving the world’s seeds has become an even more important endeavour than it had been before COVID-19. By Laura Neilson Bonikowsky
H
umans are fearful. We grapple with our mortality, unable to imagine the planet without us, but optimistic that we will prevail. Our anxiety has been reflected in popular culture for eons, from the Epic of Gilgamesh, circa 2000 BC, to The Walking Dead. Our fears rise as the century wanes and the new one begins. We see multiple zeroes in a date as preternatural, convinced it portends disaster, and we react emotionally. In these early decades of the 21st Century, we are ripe for heightened fears and anticipate apocalypse through climate change or a virus (including the zombie variety.) We feel the need to prepare; in all scenarios, survivors must eat, a need to be served by the roughly 1,740 vaults and initiatives preserving seeds worldwide. They are insurance against drought, floods, food insecurity, species extinction, war, lost agricultural diversity, climate change and even a zombie apocalypse. 46
SUMMER 2020 | JUL-AUG-SEPT
