SOWING THE SEEDS OF FOOD SECURITY

PLMR was honoured this week to be present at the joint meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups for Agro-Ecology and Agriculture and Food for Development, to hear a fascinating address from Crop Trust Executive Director Marie Haga.

The esteemed audience of parliamentarians, academics, and campaigners heard from Marie on the vital importance of preserving the biodiversity of seeds, and how this will ensure that the future crops we will need to feed ourselves are resilient against an ever changing climate.

“The Global Community is facing an enormous challenge”, Marie told the audience. “To feed larger populations in a changing climate, while maintaining our environment. Production of more and more nutritious food on less land, with less water, less fertilizer and less pesticides does not come automatically.  And it can’t be achieved unless you go back to the building blocks of agriculture – to the diversity of crops”

The Crop Trust is an international organisation with a United Nations mandate to work with international governments, scientists and farmers to preserve the biodiversity of seeds for future generations. Its work supports global food security and research by funding a network of genebanks around the world, and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, where the world’s seeds are preserved forever against man-made and natural disasters.  The importance of its work received royal support recently, when Prince Charles was announced as the Crop Trust’s global patron.

The Crop Trust is now aiming to raise a USD 500 million endowment by the time of its International Pledging Conference in April 2016. Investment income from the endowment will guarantee the long-term conservation of key food security crops by providing funding for the crop collections stored in genebanks around the world.

PLMR is proud to support the Crop Trust in its vital work to ensure that future generations are able to feed themselves.  Our work for the Crop Trust has taken colleagues to the deserts of Morocco and the frozen tundra of the Arctic, as we captured on film the first ever withdrawal from the Seed Vault. Seeds that had been sent from Syria to the Vault had been requested by researchers elsewhere in the Middle East.

We were delighted to welcome our friends from the Crop Trust to London, and look forward to continuing to assist them with their essential mission to secure the crops that underpin life on Earth.

Click here to visit the Crop Trust’s website or view the film below telling the story of the first ever withdrawal from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault – Sowing the Seeds for the Future from Crop Trust on Vimeo.