Feb. 26 marked the official opening of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, although this celebration was not anything akin to, say, the festivities of Disney World's 35th anniversary: visitors did not flock to this building, nestled into the side of a sandstone mountain on a remote island in arctic Norway. There, where a cover of permafrost abounds year-round, the temperature never rises much above -6 degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit, for those not wanting to pull out the conversion equation). Within this icy nest, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is structured as a fail-safe against terrorism, nuclear war, natural disaster, genetic modification -- I could go all day listing the potential nihilistic threats covered by today's media. But more pressing in our everyday, mundane lives is its basic role of protecting our current diversity of plant species.
Preserving this rich genetic history is a worthy goal; without this diversity, we'd have to rebuild our entire agricultural system from square one. From a nutrition standpoint, erasing plant diversity would also erase vitamin, mineral and enzyme-rich foods that are valuable to all animal consumers. In today's globalized market, variety provides the spice of life, and we've all become accustomed to foreign produce choices -- whether exotic or something as commonplace as a tomato -- competing with domestically raised apples and oranges. Based on these facts, the name of the game in this seed bank business is to avoid monocultures, or raising only one type of plant or crop in a certain area, which contributes to the loss of food, ecological and genetic diversity.
In modern day America, examples of monocultures are easy to pinpoint. With 80 million acres -- an area twice the size of the state of New York -- planted in the United States alone, corn is singled out as the most glaring offender. The need for such massive-scale plantings of this corn monoculture stems from corn's substantial history of being processed into a plethora of industrial products: high fructose corn syrup, alcohols, starches, soaps and plastics, to name a few. On the most basic level, corn is used in livestock feeds and eaten fresh. As grain prices skyrocket globally to the tune of 120 percent -- especially as demand increases for corn-based biofuels, transportation costs rise and corn continues to supplant traditional third-world diet staples -- the time has never been more ripe for planting more of it. But doing so requires dedicating more nonsustainable irrigation and pesticide resources to the plants while simultaneously destroying natural habitats, like meadows and woodlands. A recent New York Times article revealed that many Midwestern farmers are forgoing conservation easements placed on their land, instead tilling up new fields to plant this modern cash crop. The national dependence on the corn monoculture is only widening as corn prices -- and the industry behind it -- continue to grow.
The typical American lawn -- long heralded as the icing on the cake of single-family homes -- might be the most subversive monoculture of all. Its role as a gathering place and source of neighborly competition about whose grass is the most lush completes the American dream of a house with white picket fences enclosing a microcosm of a verdant field. In contrast to this stereotypical aspiration, grass requires significant watering, as typical lawn species decline in our summer-long heat and humidity. Similarly, most homeowners fertilize their lawns with inorganic additives, whose excess nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium wreak havoc on local waterways by washing off into storm drain systems, never having been actually absorbed by the soil. Grass lawns fall prey to weeds and crabgrasses undermining their integrity, which requires spreading even more chemicals to maintain. All in all, a lawn doesn't seem so sustainable anymore, no?
This last brief example of monoculture is for all you vegetarians and vegans out there: soybeans, which are also riding the wave of the grain-price boom. Like corn, soybeans are manufactured into a variety of products used worldwide. Realizing soy's potential, farmers in Brazil are clear-cutting rainforest acres to plant the beans. I think this speaks for itself in light of not only losing diversity to monoculture dependence, but also losing the intense diversity found within rainforests.
Ultimately, each of these monocultures further highlights the need for seed banks like the one in Svalbard. If monoculture species continue to be planted, not only will these stronghold crops like corn, grass and soybeans continue to tax resources, but they'll precipitate further losses of diversity among species whose native habitats are uprooted by farming. Returning to the doomsday media musings, one can only wonder what would happen if a super-pest or disease totally wiped out these monoculture populations, which become increasingly susceptible as more and more identical species are planted. I can only think of one word to describe that scenario: disaster. And while I realize all of this has sounded like a terrible Greenpeace advertisement, the sad truth is that the one-two punch of monoculture dependence and climate change could be a knockout to global diversity as we now know it.
Nora's column runs biweekly Wednesdays. She can be reached at nwhite@cavalierdaily.com.
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