Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Earth Sciences, Geography, Environment, Planning
Weblink
www.caryfowler.com/#seeds-on-ice …

SEEDS ON ICE

Mari Tefre Cary Fowler

Svalbard and the Global Seed Vault

The remarkable story of the Global Seed Vault and the valiant effort to save the past and the future of agriculture.

Closer to the North Pole than to the Arctic Circle, on an island in a remote Norwegian archipelago, lies a vast global seed bank buried within a frozen mountain. At the end of a 130-meter long tunnel chiseled out of solid stone is a room filled with humanity's precious treasure, the largest and most diverse seed collection ever assembled: more than a half billion seeds containing the world's most prized crops, a safeguard against catastrophic starvation.

The Global Seed Vault, a visionary model of international collaboration, is the brainchild of Cary Fowler, renowned scientist, conservationist, and biodiversity advocate. In SEEDS ON ICE, Fowler tells for the first time the comprehensive inside story of how the "doomsday seed vault" came to be, while the breathtaking photographs offer a stunning guided tour not only of the private vault, but of the windswept beauty and majesty of Svalbard and the enchanting community of people in Longyearbyen.

With growing evidence that unchecked climate change will seriously undermine food production and threaten the diversity of crops around the world, SEEDS ON ICE offers a personal and passionate reminder that we shouldn't take our reliance on the world of plants for granted - and that, in a very real sense, the future of the human race rides on this frozen and indispensable biodiversity.

Cary Fowler served as the Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust from 2005 to 2012. He was one of the creators of Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Fowler is also author of Shattering: Food, Politics and the Loss of Genetic Diversity and Unnatural Selection: Technology, Politics and Plant Evolution. He is the recipient of several awards: the Right Livelihood Award, the Vavilov Medal, the Heinz Award, the William Brown Award of the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Citizen Leadership, and three honorary doctorates. He is one of two foreign elected members of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
Marie Tefre is an acclaimed Norwegian photographer who captured scenes of Svalbard nature, society and wildlife, providing spectacular images and footage from the Arctic

Available products
Book Published 2016-09-06 by Prospecta Press

Comments

Seeds on Ice introduces readers to our most precious culinary resource - the Svalbard Global Seed Vault - and our most urgent challenge as eaters: protecting crop diversity for the future of food.

Your introduction to an extraordinary, farsighted venture.

A glimpse into what has become the world's most crucial agrarian library.

An extraordinary book - in equal measure fascinating, beautiful, and haunting.

Here is an adventure story and an amazing success story of one man's personal, professional, and passionate crusade for the conservation of genetic diversity in the world's agricultural crops.

There's a simple faith in a seed that these words and images convey that is beautiful.

Seeds on Ice is a marvel of great story with beautiful pictures illustrating the wilderness of the Norwegian mountain hosting the frozen seeds. But, above all, Seeds on Ice is a monument to [Cary Fowler's] passionate love for traditional farming and seeds... [He is] telling a passionate story that seeds are life, warning us to wake up and defend unmodified seeds and traditional farming, which are the bedrock of life and civilization.

A thoughtful treatise on our debt to the world of plants, and our responsibility for their stewardship ... with plenty of stunning photography.

For those of us struggling to keep the planet from cracking, it's a great comfort to know all about this project.

[A] fascinating look at a place few of us would otherwise visit.

Because the Global Seed Vault isn't open to the public, Fowler's book is the only view of it most of us will ever get... So as Fowler catalogs the history of agriculture, the long road of crop diversification and, more recently, of how many varieties have already been lost, we get stunning photography to keep us turning the pages... If the pictures of polar bears and collapsing ice shelves aren't message enough of the timeliness of both the project and the book, Fowler also notes that the Global Seed Vault has already proved its worth. The first seed withdrawal came in 2015, when deposits that had been made from a gene bank in Syria were sent back to help re-establish the banks in the region.