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In the 1980s, Cary Fowler was seen as a dangerous radical, campaigning against agribusiness and its takeover of the world’s seed supply. Realising that the seed collections that would feed future generations were disappearing, Fowler helped negotiate a global treaty to protect them. Today he is working with governments, farmers and even corporations to conserve the world’s most precious seeds. Deep in the Arctic permafrost of Svalbard, Norway, the seeds will be safe from every conceivable threat. Fred Pearce talks to the mastermind behind the so-called “doomsday vault”, on which construction begins this month.

Where did the idea for the vault come from?

When 9/11 happened, I was working with international agricultural research centres and their seed collections. It made us realise that there was a need for a fail-safe back-up collection of all the seeds that are most critical to plant breeders, the ones that would be essential if, after some disaster, humanity had to start again.

The Scandinavians already had a duplicate of their own seed collection stored in an old coal mine in Spitsbergen. We revived the idea, though we discovered that a coal mine is actually about the worst place to store something so precious. Mines are dangerous places – they explode, they burn. Better to tunnel into solid rock in the permafrost. The Norwegian government agreed, and blasting starts any day now.

How does the vault work?

There will be two vaults down a 120-metre tunnel in the middle of a mountain, which will have the capacity to store 3 million seed samples, representing the vast range of genetic variety among all the world’s key crops. The seeds should be safe even if there is a nuclear war, or if all the ice sheets melted or global warming went into overdrive. The vaults should be built essentially to last forever. They will function as an ultimate safety net for existing gene banks, whose collections are vulnerable to all manner of threats.

The vaults will have cooling units set at -18 °C. Over time the whole rock area round the vault will get that cold. If the refrigeration fails, the permafrost will keep the seeds safe at -6 °C. Even worst-case global warming shouldn’t affect that for hundreds of years.

What inspired your obsession with seeds?

I grew up in Tennessee and my mother’s family were farmers. But it was reading articles by a man named Jack Harlan, one of the world’s top experts on crop diversity, that changed my life. He argued that we are headed for starvation on a scale we can’t imagine because we are losing our heritage of seeds.

I began by writing a guide to where farmers and gardeners could find old heirloom varieties, and handed it out at farmers’ markets. When I got a proper job with the National Sharecroppers’ Fund, running a resource centre for farmers, they humoured me and I was able to continue this love affair.

How did you get involved in protecting global seed banks?

I began working on the politics of seeds with Pat Mooney, a Canadian campaigner. We were critical of the privatisation of plant breeding and of governments and corporations for not doing more to protect diversity. It seemed pretty radical back in the 1980s, at least to some people, but the world changed. In 1992, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization asked me to head up the first global assessment of crop diversity. Based on reports from 158 countries, I drafted a global plan of action and then went to work with others on a legally binding treaty. The treaty was agreed upon in 2001.

Now I direct an organisation called the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which is raising funds to protect the world’s seed collections and to operate the so-called doomsday vault. Governments of countries as diverse as the US and Ethiopia, corporations such as Syngenta and DuPont, farmers organisations and foundations have all contributed to the fund, which should ensure the conservation of crop diversity to meet agriculture’s needs in perpetuity.

Are the existing collections unsafe?

Yes. There have been some tragic losses. The national seed collection in Afghanistan, an important centre of crop diversity, was looted by the Taliban. Ancient varieties of wheat and lentils were held in Abu Ghraib in Iraq until the place was ransacked after the US invasion in 2003. Just last September, a typhoon pushed 2 metres of mud and water into the Philippines’ national gene bank. Afterwards they found that the foil packages containing the seeds were not waterproof. Many irreplaceable samples were lost. Of course not all crops can be stored as seed, some were planted out in fields. The yam collection was literally washed away.

But the biggest losses occur quietly, day to day, as a result of poor management, equipment failures and budget cuts. Perhaps 50 per cent of all the crop diversity in developing country seed banks is under threat. Seeds don’t last forever, even in the best freezers. Sooner or later you need to take them from the bank, plant them and harvest fresh seed to put back in. Many institutions can’t manage that, and a lot of gene banks are just watching their stuff slowly die, thus the need for a safety net.

“Fifty per cent of crop diversity in seed banks is under threat”

Some campaigners believe what we should really be doing is keeping crop varieties growing in farmers’ fields.

I wrote some of the first articles on the need for on-farm conservation and I still believe in it. Unfortunately, others who also believe in it promote this on-farm approach to the exclusion of all others. How can they say that the field is the only valid place to preserve diversity? The truth is that gene banks today are chock-full of varieties that farmers are no longer growing. They remain vital for plant breeding, though, even in these days of genetic engineering.

Agribusiness used to be considered the enemy. Has the industry changed?

Yes, even more than me, I think. Back in the 80s, the so-called radicals wanted to increase budgets for conserving diversity as a common heritage of humankind. And we wanted a global treaty to protect it. We’ve got that treaty now, and more than 100 countries have ratified. Now most companies also realise that diversity has to be conserved.

As people realise how valuable seed collections are, won’t they be reluctant to share them?

It’s sad but true. Some of us spent a long time convincing governments how valuable this genetic diversity is. Of course, we meant as a global resource, not as a commodity, but people hear that the way they want to hear it. Governments started putting walls around their national collections and refusing access.

We have gone through a kind of dark ages in which many countries have not been willing to share their diversity, and have also been incompetent at conserving it – the worst of all worlds. But I believe we are now emerging from this damaging period. We now have a treaty that guarantees access and benefit sharing and a trust to provide reliable and permanent funding to conserve all crop diversity, on the condition that recipients are willing to share. Once the vault is fully stocked, the world will also have a safety net for future generations to protect the fruits of 10,000 years of plant breeding by millions of farmers. That will be a special moment.