With all the grain of Babylon
To cultivate to make us strong
And hidden here behind the walls
Are shoulders wide and timber on
‘Til the war came
‘Til the war came
I was first introduced to the story of the workers of a group of World War II scientists, who starved to death rather than eating the seeds in the vault around them, when I was in middle school. This was supposed to be a testament to passion, whether inspired or futile, to science. While it made an impact on me, as much as I recalled in so many years later, it did not resonate with me at the time as much as say, Madam Curie dying of radiation poisoning after isolating radium. To my thirteen year old brain could not wrap my head around why these seeds were so important. And no one at the time could really explain it to me. It just was.
Nearly 10 years later, I recalled the story after reading a quote from Colin Meloy, song writer and lead singer of the Decemberists.
“The last great book I read was Hunger by Elise Blackwell. It’s about the siege of Leningrad in World War II, and there was a botanical institute. During the siege, which lasted a long time, the entire population were starving, but all of the botanists in the institute swore themselves to protect the catalog of seeds and plants and things, from not only a starving population, but also from themselves. It’s pretty amazing. I actually ended up writing “When the War Came”, a song on the new record, about that.” – Colin Meloy
Nicholai Vavilov, a Russian botanist, subscribed the work of Gregor Mendel as a model for the development of new varietals of plants. The concept was simple. Organisms inherit traits from their parents.
Trofim Lysenko unseated Vavilov as the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union in the late 1935. The Soviet government imprisoned Vavilov in 1940, for being a dissenting voice against Lysenko’s policies. At the time of his arrest, Vavilov had acquired 200,000 which were housed at the Institute of Plant Industry in what was then Leningrad. Vavilov died of starvation in a Soviet prison. It was the bodies of his assistants that were found lying among the still intact seed depository.
As I have learned of the proliferation of Genetically Modified Organisms, the story of the seed bank workers became every bit as compelling as the Curies and perhaps more so.
I grew up believing, like so many others, that GMO, along with developments in pesticides and herbicides and chemical fertilizers, allowed us to beat global starvation brought about by overpopulation. Seed banks became synonymous with post apocalyptic survival. A place were the remnants of veggies we grew before we knew about the magic of Genetically Modified food.
GMOs allowed for the homogenization of the product, desirable to the industry as it creates a consistency of product. Not allowing an organism to evolve on its own leaves it susceptible to any number of issues. It leads a lack of bio diversity. And a shift in the environment, say a potato blight, can cause irreparable damage, like a potato famine.
GMOs made it possible to ship produce, like a tomato, from geographic locations like California, where tomatoes can be grown for an extended to season, to Michigan in December where it would be impossible to imagine anything growing. Never mind that the off season, shipped tomato lacks the taste and nutrition of one grown locally in the summer.
Thanks to a small group of people, like Diane Ott Whealy and Kent Whealy who run Seed Savers, small scale gardeners have been able to preserve vegetables and fruits that, apart from their place in Seed Banks, might otherwise be extinct. There is some debate about what makes a seed an heirloom. For the sake of this article, I consider any varietal from 1945 or earlier.
It was this appeal to my love of history, that led me to this movement. Preserving cultural (even agricultural) heritage has always struck a chord with me, whether it is an Art Deco theater or a Brandywine tomato.
Heirloom implies a certain fragility. Heirloom produce is quite the opposite. They are intrinsically hearty, bred to survive the various climates where they were developed. Hybrids by their very nature are persnickety buggers, requiring loads of human influence to keep producing.
So for the time being I will continue to grow my tasty Arkanasas tomatoes. Knowing that I am carrying on the life and death work of Vavilov and his assistance in my quest for a better tasting tomato and greater horticultural security.
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