What you see here is a highly secured vault in a remote area of the Arctic.
But what’s protected inside is more important than a few hundred kilos of gold bars.
So what's inside?
Over 1 million seed samples from around the world.
A thread on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault:
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was built in 2008 in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard -- only 650 miles from the North Pole.
In fact, Svalbard is the northernmost year-round settlement on the planet, with 2,200 people living there 365 days per year.
The Norwegian Government funded the construction of the vault in 2008 with $8.8m.
Its purpose?
To safely store seed duplicates from around the world in the event that genebanks are destroyed by farm mismanagement, accidents, equipment malfunctions...or worse:
Doomsday.
In short, the vault is the ‘the ultimate insurance policy for the world’s food supply’.
But why do we need to 'back up' our seeds?
Well, the loss of a crop variety - be it by natural disaster or an atomic bomb - is as ‘irreversible as the extinction of a dinosaur.'
So in the event a critical seed responsible for feeding hundreds of millions of people were to be destroyed, there'd - in principle - be a back-up stored at Svalbard.
The seeds are stored 100 meters into a mountain at a freezing -18°C/0.4°F.
There are currently 1,081,026 samples stored there, with a capacity to store 4.5 million samples (or 2.5 billion seeds) in total.
The seeds at Svalbard represent 13,000 years of agricultural history.
While this may all seem...silly, consider these figures:
-Only about 30 crops provide 95% of food-energy needs
-The US has lost 90% of its fruit and vegetable varieties since the 1900s
As such, a lack of biodiversity in crops make them (and us!) far more vulnerable.
The vault is operated today by the Crop Trust, a non-profit based in Germany.
Their mission?
‘We race to rescue crop diversity in danger of disappearing forever.’
But the seeds at Svalbard aren't just an insurance policy. They're a statement.
Crop Trust’s Brian Lainoff:
“The seeds don’t care that there are North Korean seeds and South Korean seeds in the same aisle. They are cold and safe up there, and that’s all that really matters.”
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