DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — How Cary Fowler and Geoffrey Hawtin began thinking of ways to prevent famine and protect the world’s food supply, they came up with what Fowler called “the craziest idea anyone ever had” – a global seed vault built into the side of an Arctic mountain.
About 20 years ago, Fowler, now the U.S. special envoy for Global Food Security, and Hawtin, a U.K. agricultural scientist, envisioned the so-called “doomsday vault” as a reserve location for seeds that could be used to produce new seeds. crops if existing seed banks were threatened by war, climate change or other upheavals. On Thursday, officials in Washington announced that Fowler and Hawtin would be appointed 2024 World Food Prize Laureates for your work.
“For many people today, it seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It is a valuable natural resource and we want to offer it robust protection,” he said in an interview from Saudi Arabia. “Fifteen years ago, sending lots of seeds to the closest place to the North Pole that you could fly to, putting them inside a mountain – that’s the craziest idea anyone ever had.”
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Svalbard opened in 2008 and now contains 1.25 million seed samples from almost every country. The largely concrete structure, built into the side of a mountain, provides genetic protection for more than 6,000 varieties of culturally important crops and plants.
Fowler and Hawtin were named the winners of the State Department’s annual award, where Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised the men for their “critical role in preserving the diversity of cultures.”
They will receive the annual award this fall in Des Moines, Iowa, where the food award foundation is based, and will share a $500,000 prize.
Hundreds of smaller seed banks have existed in other countries for many decades, but Fowler said he was motivated by concerns that climate change would disrupt agriculture, making an abundant supply of seeds even more essential.
Hawtin, executive board member of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, said there were many threats to crops, such as insects, disease and soil degradation, as well as political upheaval, but that climate change has increased the need for a safe and supportive environment. . seed vault. In part, this is because climate change has the potential to make previous problems even worse.
“We end up with an entirely new spectrum of pests and diseases under different climate regimes,” Hawtin said in an interview in southwest England. “Climate change is posing a number of additional problems on top of those that have always been significant.”
Fowler and Hawtin said they hope their selection as World Food Prize laureates will allow them to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding for seed bank endowments around the world. Maintaining these operations is relatively inexpensive, especially when considering how essential they are to ensuring an abundant food supply, but the financing needs continue forever.
“This is really an opportunity to get that message across and say, look, this relatively small amount of money is our insurance policy, our insurance policy that we will be able to feed the world within 50 years,” Hawtin said.
The World Food Prize was founded by Norman Borlaug, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his role in the Green Revolution, which dramatically increased crop yields and reduced the threat of famine in many countries. The food prize will be awarded at the annual Norman E. Borlaug International Dialogue, held October 29-31 in Des Moines.
