Cary Fowler – författare

It was through control of the shattering of wild seeds that humans first domesticated plants. Now control over those very plants threatens to shatter the world's food supply, as loss of genetic diversity sets the stage for widespread hunger.Large-scale agriculture has come to favor uniformity in food crops. More than 7,000 U.S. apple varieties once grew in American orchards; 6,000 of them are no longer available. Every broccoli variety offered through seed catalogs in 1900 has now disappeared. As the international genetics supply industry absorbs seed companies—with nearly one thousand takeovers since 1970—this trend toward uniformity seems likely to continue; and as third world agriculture is brought in line with international business interests, the gene pools of humanity's most basic foods are threatened.The consequences are more than culinary. Without the genetic diversity from which farmers traditionally breed for resistance to diseases, crops are more susceptible to the spread of pestilence. Tragedies like the Irish Potato Famine may be thought of today as ancient history; yet the U.S. corn blight of 1970 shows that technologically based agribusiness is a breeding ground for disaster.Shattering reviews the development of genetic diversity over 10,000 years of human agriculture, then exposes its loss in our lifetime at the hands of political and economic forces. The possibility of crisis is real; this book shows that it may not be too late to avert it.

“The story of Svalbard's seed vault reads as an amazingly optimistic science fiction story— but these remarkable photos remind us, happily, that's it true. For those of us struggling to keep the planet from cracking, it's a great comfort to know all about this project.” —Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New PlanetThe remarkable story of the Global Seed Vault—and the valiant effort to save the past and the future of agriculture: Now updated with a new chapter by the author and photos from recent improvements in the facilities.Author Cary Fowler, father of the Global Seed Vault, was named a 2024 World Food Prize Laureate.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.

A groundbreaking interdisciplinary history of the century-long battle over our planet's most vital intellectual property: the seed. Unnatural Selection demonstrates how America's intellectual property laws reshaped global agriculture with consequences we're still grappling with today.Seeds and planting materials are central to the agricultural system that feeds us all. Yet there has been surprisingly little interest in seriously analyzing the legal and political processes through which intellectual property rights and policy are constructed for this all-important biological diversity. Concentrating on the American experience, Unnatural Selection offers a comprehensive history and insightful sociological analysis of the struggle to own, control, and benefit from agriculture’s plant diversity. Unnatural Selection elucidates the seldom-told story of how the United States acquired seeds of non-native crops from abroad in the 1800s and multiplied and distributed them to farmers to encourage experimentation and crop adaptation to local conditions, thus promoting the spread of agriculture on the continent. It was one of the largest and most consequential agricultural experiments in human history. In the United States it also gave rise to the modern seed and nursery industry which began to push for legal mechanisms to protect and advance their interests in the marketplace. Cary Fowler provides the most complete history to date of the origins of the Plant Patent Act of 1930 and the Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970. He examines how Congress and the Courts expanded these intellectual property rights, and then how and with what effect these issues of control and ownership became international controversies in the 1980s—controversies that continue, largely unresolved, to this day. Features a new preface by the author.