Food Seeds Vault Critical to Building, Keeping 'Library of Life'

World Food Prize Recognizes the Significance of Seed Vault to Global Security

We hear the word "diversity," a great deal.

But it's really a big deal when it comes to ensuring an adequate food supply.

Unfortunately, as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has noted, over the last century, the world lost approximately 75% of our crop diversity.

In short, when it comes to our species of fruits and vegetables, we've lost a variety of them.

In fact, many have outright disappeared. This means they're no longer available for commercial farming.

This is a global problem, one of mammoth proportions.

In order to address it, the Norwegian Government established the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in 2008. It's the culmination of much planning over a period of many years.

Interestingly, storing seeds in the vault is free to depositors.

Today, some 400,000 seed samples are now stored there.

This Svalbard Global Seed Vault is located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, in the remote Arctic Archipelago, known as Svalbard.

In addition to the Government of Norway, the success of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault owes much to two pioneering scientists: Dr. Cory Fowler of the United States and Dr. Geoffrey Hawtin of the United Kingdom.

The World Food Prize today is the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture.

Its criteria states that it's "awarded for specific, exceptionally significant, individual achievement that advances human development with a demonstrable increase in the quantity, quality, availability of, or access to food through creative interventions at any point within the full scope of the food system."

It was conceived by the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Dr. Norman Borlaug.

The World Food Prize is administered by the World Food Prize Foundation, which builds upon Dr. Borlaug’s vision to improve the world's food supply by recognizing the latest innovations that address food security, convening global leaders each year to address the latest issues in food and agriculture, and inspiring students in food security and agriculture issues.

The prize is given each year in Des Moines, Iowa during the annual "Borlaug Dialogue," which is an annual international symposium focused on the topic of global food security.

This year's Borlaug Dialogue had its largest crowd ever.

Much of its recent success is thanks to the leadership of World Food Prize Foundation President, Terry Branstad, the former long time serving governor of Iowa, and former U.S. Ambassador to China.

Former Gov. Branstad grew up on a family farm.

This past week, the World Food Prize was awarded to both Dr. Hawtin and Dr. Fowler for "their extraordinary leadership in preserving and protecting the world's heritage of crop biodiversity and mobilizing the critical resources to defend against threats to global food security."

As the World Food Prize Foundation noted, "Over the last 50 years, their combined efforts as researchers, policy advisers, thought leaders and advocates have succeeded in engaging governments, scientists, farmers, and civil society towards the conservation of over 6,000 species of crops and culturally important plants."

Very recently, I had the pleasure of hearing both Dr. Hawtin and Dr. Fowler address the participants.

Dr. Fowler summed up best what the Svalbard Global Seed Vault really is when he called it "a library of life!"

Both emphasized the role that diplomacy played in getting the various nations to actually begin sending in their seeds.

I agree with both of them. If there's a country that deserves the World Food Prize, it it's Norway, as a result of its visionary leadership in addressing this global security issue.

The story of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is, indeed, a story of vision, leadership, and science — for all. It's a little-known story, but one with tremendous future impact on humanity and the world's security.

Let's thank the World Food Prize Foundation as we should.

They've ensured that this story is being told.

It needs to be, for it has everything to do with humankind's current and future food security — and survival.

Van Hipp is Chairman of American Defense International, Inc. He is the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Army and author of "The New Terrorism: How to Fight It and Defeat It." He is the 2018 recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Sept. 11 Garden Leadership Award for National Security. Read Van Hipp's Reports — More Here.