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Gary Nabhan, Phd., Awardee of the Vavilov Medal
As an Ethnobiologist and conservationist, US Ecologist Gary Paul Nabhan, PhD is best known for his work in biodiversity and has received numerous notable awards over the years, among them:
The Pew Scholarship for Conservation and the Environment
The John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing
Saveur Magazine Best 100 Food Initiatives
As a lecturer, food and farming advocate Nabhan believes in getting seeds into the hands of traditional farmers in their specific areas of origin. In his conversation with About Harvest he discussed the current International furor over the possible loss of the Pavlosk Russia collection of 5500 sample plants of fruits, berries and ornamentals:
AH: In your highly acclaimed 2008 book titled: Where our Food Comes From – Retracing Nikolay Vavilov’s Quest to End Famine, you tell the story of Vavilov’s lifework in safeguarding agricultural biodiversity. In brief, how did he accomplish this?
GN: Vavilov is best known for creating the world’s largest seed bank, but the story is much richer than that. As a young man, this visionary set out to discern the regions of the world richest in food biodiversity, to collect not only seed samples, tubers and tree cuttings, but also farmer’s knowledge about their adaptations, and then to evaluate these plant resources in hundreds of agricultural field stations placed in different landscapes. In short, he had a vision: to increase regional food security by increasing the diversity of climatically adapted stocks available to farmers.
L to R, Yuri Vavilov, Gary Nabhan. Yuri Vavilov is Nikolai Vavilov's only living son.
AH: How important are the remaining seed, fruit and root varieties still remaining in farmers fields and government collections?
GN: They are more important than ever but will not necessarily be able to be grown in the future in the very same places that they thrived in the past. Because conventional plant breeding and even biotech can not possibly keep up with the rate of climate change, we need to have as many varieties in farmers’ fields and orchards adapting to change, rather than merely being frozen away in a gene bank.
AH: Recently, there has been international furor over the possible loss of the Pavlosk Russia collection of 5500 sample plants of fruits, berries and ornamentals that may be plowed under on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg by the Russian Housing Development Authority to build more suburban houses. On August 11th, the Russian courts ruled that this so-called development project may move forward, despite the impending loss of Vavilov’s own plant materials and that of others. What is the current situation, as you know it?
GN: The court decision is being appealed, and now under global pressure, Russia’s highest leaders have been quoted in the press as saying they would look into the matter.
All of our readers should go online at www.croptrust.org or at www.change.org to sign electronic petitions being sent to the Russian government, in order to stop the largest avoidable loss of genetic resources that may happen in our lifetimes. But we need not chastise the Russians for their wobbly commitment to conserving genetic resources once Vavilov died; the United States once had an enormous collection of apples on the grounds of what has become the Pentagon, and it is largely gone. We need all governments across the planet to recognize such collections are irreplaceable treasures of our common world heritage that should be too important for any single bureaucracy to let destroy.
AH: From your perspective, what can people do now to keep/save/maintain agricultural biodiversity in the world?
GN: We need to make all children aware of how much they depend on plant and animal diversity to live, to be nourished. Otherwise, they too may grow into bureaucrats who don’t care to save what they don’t understand or love. Then we need to support farmers’ own efforts to grow a diversity of foods in their fields and orchards by buying their diverse produce and by supporting policies that favor such diversity. Finally we need to support back-up seed banks and botanical gardens for long-term maintenance of these treasures in case climatic catastrophes such as floods or droughts hit farms and gardens. Vote with your fork and in the polling booth for truly sustainable food and agricultural practices and policies.
