{"id":35152,"date":"2014-03-12T09:09:21","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T14:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=35152"},"modified":"2014-03-12T14:56:06","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T19:56:06","slug":"seeds-of-time-taking-a-look-inside-the-noahs-ark-for-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/03\/12\/seeds-of-time-taking-a-look-inside-the-noahs-ark-for-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Seeds Of Time:&#8217; Inside the Noah&#8217;s Ark for Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B8Szs6GSs1w?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>)<\/p>\n<h4>&#8220;The Fate of\u00a0Humankind\u00a0Rests Upon These Genetic Resources&#8221;<\/h4>\n<p>On a hillside in Norway near the North Pole sits a large, angular vault jutting out of the mountain. It&#8217;s an area so cold there are literally signs warning of polar-bear crossings on the roads nearby. Inside this icy vault? Nearly a million types of seeds, frozen to be preserved for the next few thousand years.<\/p>\n<p>Think of it as a Noah&#8217;s Ark for climate change, a way to preserve existing crops that could be lost in a warming world. The man who led the effort to create it, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cary_Fowler\">Cary Fowler<\/a>, is the subject of a new film premiering at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin this week, called &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/seedsoftimemovie.com\/\">Seeds of Time<\/a>.&#8217; I sat down with Fowler and the director of the film, Sandy McLeod, to hear more about it. Take a listen to our conversation:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/139203858&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_artwork=true\" height=\"166\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h4>Why Preserve Seeds?<\/h4>\n<p><em>Cary Fowler, Scientist:<\/em> &#8220;There&#8217;s a huge diversity in seeds and varieties\u00a0of\u00a0different crops. And that diversity isn&#8217;t just\u00a0nice\u00a0and beautiful and tasty, but it&#8217;s also the essential resource for helping our agricultural crops adapt to whatever&#8217;s going to come tomorrow.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>Sandy McLeod, Director:<\/em> &#8220;It&#8217;s\u00a0sort\u00a0of like having a toolbox for the genetics: heat\u00a0resistance,\u00a0or drought tolerance, or some of the other traits food will need to have in the future.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_35168\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, where nearly a million seeds are being kept in a frozen state to prepare for climate change. \" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/03\/hungry_still024_WM.png\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-35168\" alt=\"The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, where nearly a million seeds are being kept in a frozen state to prepare for climate change. \" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/03\/hungry_still024_WM-300x168.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/03\/hungry_still024_WM-300x168.png 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/03\/hungry_still024_WM-620x348.png 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2014\/03\/hungry_still024_WM.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Photo courtesy of &#39;Seeds of Time&#39; Film<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, where nearly a million seeds are being kept in a frozen state to prepare for climate change.<\/p><\/div>\n<h4>Why Put the Seed Bank Near the North Pole?<\/h4>\n<p><em>Cary Fowler, Scientist:<\/em> &#8220;It&#8217;s pretty simple. To preserve seeds long-term, you freeze them. So you could do it in your freezer in the kitchen. But we do it in a little more orderly fashion. It&#8217;s the backup for everybody else. And of course, it&#8217;s unique because it&#8217;s inside of a mountain near the North Pole, where it&#8217;s deadly cold. It&#8217;s the most secure place in the world for this collection.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h4>What Comes Next?<\/h4>\n<p><em>Cary Fowler, Scientist:<\/em> &#8220;I actually feel much more optimistic now [than I did thirty years ago]. And I can&#8217;t say that we&#8217;ve solved problems forever, but we&#8217;ve certainly made a start at it. And when\u00a0I walk through the shelves of seeds down in the seed vault \u00a0near the North Pole, I really do get a wonderfully optimistic, hopeful kind of feeling. I realize, gosh, you know, there are over 800,000 different varieties of crops that as far as I can tell are now actually safe and not going to follow their brethren into extinction.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>Sandy McLeod, Director:<\/em> &#8220;I have to say, from making this film, I would have to admit that I&#8217;m probably more alarmed than I&#8217;ve ever been about food and how we treat it and how we deal with it. And the vault is a major accomplishment, but there&#8217;s so much more to be done. And that&#8217;s the thing I see ahead of us: How do we make agriculture sustainable? That&#8217;s a big question.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>You can catch &#8216;Seeds of Time&#8217; this afternoon at the Long Center in Austin; information on additional screenings at the festival is <a href=\"http:\/\/schedule.sxsw.com\/2014\/events\/event_FS15075\">available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>) &#8220;The Fate of\u00a0Humankind\u00a0Rests Upon These Genetic Resources&#8221; On a hillside in Norway near the North Pole sits a large, angular vault jutting out of the mountain. It&#8217;s an area so cold there are literally signs warning of polar-bear crossings on the roads nearby. Inside this icy vault? Nearly a million types of seeds, frozen [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[58],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35152"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35152"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35163,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35152\/revisions\/35163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}