We take seeds for granted, yet they’re all around us and are obviously essential to life. We’ll discuss seeds and visit the Global Seed Vault on Svalbard (where you can take your own virtual tour).
Listen on Podbean:
Listen on YouTube:
A few resources of interest:
Who controls the world’s food supply?
Inside the Doomsday Vault (the Time Magazine article I quote)
Global Seed Vault Virtual Tour
Music: Jens East — Daybreak (ft. Henk) www.soundcloud.com/jenseast
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution V4.0
Transcription (remember, this is a direct transcription of what I said and is not actually how I write!):
Welcome to Nine Minutes of Wonder. I’m Betsy Hedberg. I hope this podcast will help you rekindle your sense of wonder for this awe-inspiring world. If you like what you hear in the next few minutes, please subscribe and share.
Hi again, everyone. The last time I spoke with you, I talked about the far northern islands of Jan Mayen and Svalbard. And I mentioned that on Svalbard there is the Global Seed Vault, which is sometimes called the Doomsday Vault because seeds are being stored in case of global disaster or for other reasons, other things that could happen in the future. And the Seed Vault has more than a million varieties of seeds from the world’s food crops from many different countries.
Today, I want to talk about that a little bit more, but I’m going to change perspectives from far away to close to home and just focus on seeds.
So you probably wouldn’t need to walk more than a few seconds from where you are right now to see, touch, and maybe even eat a seed. Seeds are everywhere. And of course, we mostly take them for granted.
Think about the last time you really paid attention to a seed. Maybe it was in your watermelon or another fruit that you had this morning, and then it was annoying. But otherwise, we don’t usually give them a lot of attention unless they’re one of our favorite snacks, like maybe sunflower seeds. I really like sunflower seeds.
But it’s 10 p.m. now, and I counted. I’ve eaten seven types of seeds today without really thinking about them. The only reason I gave them any thought is because I was planning to record this episode. So I have been thinking about seeds, but usually we take them for granted.
Let’s review for a minute. What is a seed anyway? Remember from high school biology, there are three main parts to a seed, right? So you’ve got the embryo, which is the little tiny, it’s like a little tiny miniature plant that has its own root, stem, and tiny little leaves. You may have seen these in peanuts or lima beans. You can actually open them up and see the little tiny embryo.
And if you Google seed embryos, you’ll see some very interesting images, especially the photographs. So we’ve got the embryo. That’s the tiniest part of the seed.
Then you’ve got the endosperm, which is the material that’s surrounding the embryo. And then it’s all encased in the seed coat. Remember also that nuts are seeds.
And we, you know, unless you have an allergy, we tend to eat a lot of nuts. And that fruits are ovaries of the plant that come out of the flower and that contain the seeds. So that’s just, you know, the basic botany review.
Even if you think you don’t care about this or that part, maybe it was a little bit boring or tedious, just take a moment to think about the last time you saw seeds and the last seeds that you ate. And aren’t they kind of miraculous if you give it a closer thought? Even if they’re annoying in fruit and you want to spit them out or wish they weren’t there, they are the reason why our plants and vegetables exist.
There’s an article in Time Magazine about the Global Seed Vault, which quotes the executive director of the Crop Trust, which operates the Global Seed Vault. Her name is Marie Haga, hope I pronounced that right. And she says, “Seeds generally are the basis for everything, not only what we eat, but what we wear, nature all about us.” So seeds are the basis for everything.
Think about how important they are the next time you pop a seed into your mouth or a peanut, or the next time you go out and see seed pods lying on the ground on the sidewalk, fallen from a tree.
Another way to look at this topic is to ask the hopefully hypothetical question, what if seeds just went away? It may sound ridiculous, but you never know these days, right? If a horrible plant virus went around that destroyed every seed that every plant in the world produced, of course we would all die. And I have no idea how long the extinction would take, but life for us humans, and I’m pretty sure almost all other species, would be impossible.
I could give that a little thought, like I’m sure there’s some animals, some species that could survive just fine without seeds. But all of our favorite pets and favorite animals, and of course birds and most of the animals that we know, would not do well. And the world would be a much diminished place, of course, with so much less beauty and flavor, if even some of its seeds could no longer thrive.
Another kind of disturbing thought, but this actually real, is that, and this this bothered me when I learned it recently, is that only four companies control 50% of the world’s seed stocks. Think about that for a moment. Seeds are essential, and there are only four companies in control of half of the world’s seeds.
These companies generally make farmers sign agreements promising not to save the seeds for next year, so they’ll have to buy more from the seed companies. I found a Time Magazine article from April 2017 that said, quote, “Biodiversity has decreased to the point that now only 30 crops provide 95% of human food energy needs. Only 10% of the rice varieties that China used in the 1950s are still used today, for example. The U.S. has lost over 90% of its fruit and vegetable varieties since the 1900s.”
So, I do think we need to preserve as many varieties of seed as possible, and maybe one day see if we can get a greater variety of seeds planted. It would make for a more secure world food supply and a much greater variety of flavors.
But let’s get back to the Global Seed Vault on Svalbard. You can go to seedvaultvirtualtour.com and take a virtual tour of that seed vault. If you go into seed vault number one, you can read about some of the seed collections that have been deposited there, and it’s really fascinating because they’re in these boxes that look like boxes that you might have in your garage or attic storing your old sports equipment or your extra files or photos that you don’t know what to do with.
But many of the world’s seeds are being stored in these boxes on shelves, again, like you might have in your garage. And then there are little descriptions next to many of these seeds or next to many of these seed collections, and you can click on them or hover over them. I can’t remember what you do, but you can have a look at those.
For example, for Poland, it says, “A total of 405 seed samples of barley, rye, oats, and wheat are backed up in this box, which entered the seed vault as part of Poland’s third shipment in October 2021. Poland’s National Gene Bank is the second largest in the European Union. It holds more than 75,000 seed samples of crop diversity. In 2019, Poland deposited seeds of wheat and barley, two of the world’s most important food crops.”
So you can see why the seeds are of great importance, not only to particular nations, but globally in general and related to the food supply.
I’ve been talking a lot about seeds and time is running short here.
Again, I really encourage you to go outside or inside your kitchen, look at what seeds are around you and just take a moment, even 15 seconds to contemplate how important they are and how interesting they are when you really look at them. If you look at photos online or if you break apart a peanut in your kitchen and take a close look, it’s like a little miracle.
I want to leave you with a quote from a beautiful, beautiful book that I’ve been reading.
Maybe you’ve read this book already. It’s called Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. She is an indigenous American from the Potawatomi culture. She’s also a botanist and a professor of botany. She’s blending science with indigenous knowledge and wisdom. In this book, she invites us to enter a relationship with other living beings and listen to the lessons that they offer us when we pay attention to them.
She really focuses a lot on plants. Here’s what she said. It’s a story that she tells.
“Years ago, Awiakta, a Cherokee writer, pressed a small packet into my hand. It was a corn leaf, dry and folded into a pouch, tied with a bit of string. She smiled and warned, ‘Don’t open ’til spring.’ In May I untie the packet and there is the gift: three seeds. One is a golden triangle, a kernel of corn with a broadly dimpled top that narrows to a hard white tip. The glossy bean is speckled brown, curved and sleek, its inner belly marked with a white eye—the hilum. It slides like a polished stone between my thumb and forefinger, but this is no stone. And there is a pumpkin seed like an oval china dish, its edge crimped shut like a piecrust bulging with filling. I hold in my hand the genius of indigenous agriculture, the Three Sisters. Together these plants—corn, beans, and squash—feed the people, feed the land, and feed our imaginations, telling us how we might live.”
I’ll leave it with that. Have a lovely day, and next time we’ll talk about something else.
Bye for now.