Create your own seed vault; bypass terminator technology!

This article originally appeared in both the print and online version of the October 2008 Idaho Observer

From the October 2008 Idaho Observer:
Create your own seed vault; bypass terminator technology!
By Kevin Swindle

In early 2008, the Svalbard seed vault in Norway opened. It is approximately 620 miles from the North Pole. Operated by NorGen, a gene bank, the seed vault is allegedly there to protect millions of varieties of food crops from being wiped out in wars, man-made or natural disasters. It is far more likely that giant agribusiness is using this facility to advance its genetic modification (GM) technology.

There is both anecdotal and scientific evidence supporting claims that genetically modified foods are harmful to humans and animals. Plus, a component of GM research is the propagation of "terminator seeds."

Farmers, for thousands of years, have traditionally collected seeds from the crops they grow for planting the following year. Terminator seeds are seeds genetically engineered to produce sterile seeds in the plants they produce, making farmers dependent upon agribusiness to supply seeds each year.

This would be an excellent mechanism for controlling the world’s food supply, a means of using food as a weapon. Food control could be used as a means of people control.

This terminator technology is created by inserting one plant gene and two bacterial genes into the seeds. Before sale, the seeds are soaked in the antibiotic tetracycline which activates a molecular switch in one of the bacterial genes. The inserted plant gene does not activate until the seed in the plant is near maturity. The inserted plant gene produces a toxic protein that kills the seed in it’s late stages of development.

Some scientists have speculated that the sterility trait produced by the terminator gene sequence might get into plants in the wild via cross-pollination. If such a thing did occur, over a period of centuries, "heirloom" varieties of plant life could disappear.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Mississippi-based Delta Pine and Land Company received U.S. patent number 5,723,765 for the terminator technology. Delta Pine and Land is now owned by agribusiness giant Monsanto.

Creating your own seed vault:

You may not know it, but most of you reading this article already have your own seed vault: Your freezer. At the temperatures inside most freezers, seeds will stay viable for about one hundred years.

While not absolutely necessary, some of you may want to purchase a dedicated freezer for your own seed vault, especially if the freezer you have now is extremely full. There are small chest type freezers that take up little space and are available for less than two hundred dollars.
So what seeds should you put in your own personal seed vault?

First, select non-hybrid varieties. Hybrids are the first generation (F1) offspring of two different varieties of the same species. Hybrid seeds will express the desired genetic traits of the parent plants for only one generation. As such, hybrids are not a good choice for long-term survival food production.

Second, purchase seeds from reputable sources that state in their catalogs that they do not use GM seeds. If possible purchase your seeds from heirloom sources.

Third, purchase seeds for a wide variety of food crops, both foods you like and foods you don’t like (remember, you are not just doing this for yourself, but for every person on the planet).

Even if the worse case scenarios regarding terminator seeds do not occur, having your own seed vault will be beneficial. You will have a supply of viable seeds to grow for food and you can make a contribution to agriculture by saving rare and heirloom varieties of seeds in your seed vault.

Fight the future! Just because a group of madmen want to control this planet by controlling the food, that does not mean we have to just go along with it! Teach your children the importance of food security. In the process of teaching you can introduce them to a wonderful hobby called gardening, a hobby that could potentially save their lives at some point in our increasingly uncertain future.

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