Cary Fowler is the brain behind the vault,  and in a new TED talk he explains the importance of saving seeds in order to feed the world’s poor, who will be disproportionately affected by a changing climate.

From the talk:

“The most interesting thing about South Africa is that we don’t have to wait until 2070 for there to be trouble (with the food crops.)

If by 2030, the maize or corn varieties — which is the dominate crop, accounting for 50 per cent of the nutrition in southern Africa  — are still in the field in 2030, we’ll have a 30 per cent decrease in production of maize, because of the amount of climate change already.  Thirty per cent decrease in production, in the context of increasing population is a food crisis.  It’s global in nature.  We will watch children starve to death on TV.

Now, you may say that 20 years is a long way off — it’s two breeding cycles for maize.  We have two rolls of the dice to get this right.  We have to get climate ready crops in the field, and we have to do that rather quickly.

Watch the talk and leave your comments bellow

But when we went around the table to debate whether or not individuals would change their habits after reading the book, the answer was a resounding no. I suppose not entirely surprising, but perhaps a tad soul crushing? I spend my entire day trying to give people the tools and information they need to make the behavioral modifications necessary to alter the crash-course direction our planet is heading in. I’ve always believed that with knowledge comes the ability to change, or at least the ability to make a choice. Perhaps there-in lies the problem – people are lazy, and don’t want to make the more difficult choice. Ah evolution, you fail me again.

Speaking of evolution (and the coming apocalypse) the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is in the news again. For those of you who haven’t heard of the project, it’s essentially a bomb-proof concrete bunker, encased in permafrost and stored way up in the Norwegian Arctic. It’s the Noah’s Ark of seed banks, designed to save us from our untimely Doomsday demise.

Apparently, our Doomsday is closer than we think. Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust and intellectual father of the Svalbard Seed Vault, recently had this to say:

“By the end of the century, average temperatures during growing seasons in many regions will probably be higher than the very hottest temperatures now. By 2030, we could see a 30 percent drop in maize production in Southern Africa; 2030 is only two crop generations away. We’re not talking about some time in the distant future when we all expect to be dead. We certainly can’t wake up in 2029 and decide to do something.”

Of course, saving seeds these days is easier said than done. Intellectual property rights have crept into all facets of post-industrial life, including mother nature’s own designs. The 2001 UN treaty of Plant Genetic Resources (ITPGR) officially resolved that farmers, breeder and scientists should have open access to the plant genetic resources of 64 species of the world’s major food crops, so long as they agree to return an equitable share of profit from any marketed product they derive.

Equitable share? Marketable products? I thought we were talking about food. Already Pollan’s treaty seems to be shot out the window. Saving our food sources, and global genetic biodiversity, will be a challenging task indeed.