The Global Seed Vault in Svalbard in Norway
This is quite an incredible story. Apparently things have become so bad in Syria that the Svalbard Global Seed Vault has sounded the doomsday alarm and made an extraordinary request in early September to remove thousands of samples and transfer them to a vault in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley. The aim is to preserve Syria’s unique agricultural heritage after ICARDA’s gene bank in Aleppo, which includes more than 135,000 varieties of wheat, fava bean, lentil and chickpea crops, as well as the world’s most valuable barley collection, has been damaged by the war.
What is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault?
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in northern Norway, something of an agricultural Noah’s Ark, was set up as a guarantee against mass starvation. The world’s governments poured in their countries’ seed samples – unique strains of every crop – and the doors were closed in 2008, when no one expected them to be opened for many generations. It has more than 860,000 samples, from almost all nations. Even if the power were to fail, the vault would stay frozen and sealed for at least 200 years. The vault is meant to be opened only in the event of a catastrophic event, like flooding or drought, that would threaten a crop with extinction, according to Brian Lainoff, a spokesman for the Crop Trust, one of the vault’s international stewards.
ICARDA’s gene bank in Aleppo, Syria, includes more than 135,000 varieties of wheat, fava bean, lentil and chickpea crops, as well as the world’s most valuable barley collection.
Let’s just hope things will remain calm in the Bekaa.
Sources: [CNN] [Independent] [Jazeera]
What a misleading entry. You go on at copy/paste length about the Svalbard seed vault and use pictures of it to illustrate your post but the seed samples in question come from ICARDA, near Aleppo, which is not the Global Seed Vault and doesn’t look anything like Svalbard. Then you drop into the ‘story’ the fact that the seeds are to be transferred to the Bekaa, which is the only really relevant part of this post to you as a Lebanese blog but include zero information about this apart from a wish that the Bekaa “remain calm”. Total rubbish.
It seems that you got the story quite clearly. Not sure what’s so misleading about it 🙂
Keep on hating
He’s suffering from eating lots of beans apparently 😛
Ed, the efforts undertaken to create your comment could have been invested in creating a blog of your own that would have entries to enlighten us ‘Lebanese’, entries that are not ‘rubbish and ‘misleading’. The ‘Lebanese’ guy cited international news sources and is telling us a story that is relevant to us as ‘Lebanese’.
We will be waiting for your blog Ed 🙂
With love and a lot of fava beans with rice,
Ted
I actually agree with ed. This post, along with some other posts of yours, is very misleading. Expected more of a flow in your story from someone who’s had years of blogging experience. Don’t just assume we know what you’re talking about. A better background about ICARDA would’ve been more informative. It took me 2 readings and a google search to guess the message of this post. So yeah, it was misleading.
Sure, it might have come off as aggressive, but ed was just trying to give some constructive criticism, and your response is “keep on hating.” Oh well.
There was nothing constructive about Ed’s criticism. He summarised the whole blog as rubbish. I just wanted to be sure the ‘doomsday seeds’ wasn’t some kind of agricultural bio-weapon or something so I clicked on the link. It was informative enough. You had to Google up something, so? The article was about seeds needing a safer place to he housed. Pointing out other articles is besides the point. You should have listed out all the articles you had issues with in order to make your comment more valid..
I read this weeks ago in the news. The doomsday vault in Svalbard was opened in order to replendish the stocks of seeds that were lost due to the war in Syria. Nothing misleading about the title or the post. It seems you are the only one who is mislead, you didn’t understand what was written it would appear. Which is fine, really. We all have those moments when we make fools out of ourselves online. The trick is not to make a big deal out of it, just carry on mate.
Who cares about Syria’s crops at a moment when Monsato is taking over the world’s agriculture.
Here’s an info that will light up your day.
In many European countries and in particular in France, large supermarkets are teaming up with Monsato in imposing strict regulations on local farmers by refusing any form and color defect of any products. By that, these supermarkets want nothing by clean, well shaped, orange carrots for example that will displayed on their shelves. Something farmers can’t provide as more than 40% of their products are normal but not conformed to these new regulations. Thus, pushing local farmers to great losses where they will feel obliged to opt for Monsato seeds and expertise in order to maintain their business.
Who cares about Syria’s crops at a moment when their people are getting massacred.
FTFY
Works too..
it’s monsanto anyway
Dear Ed
Nfokho
Kind Regards
Perhaps we might need them ,maybe it’s a blessing they got transferred to our lands ….
Who knows if stravation strikes again like in 1916 …