Claire Hope Cummings, a longtime ally of the OCA, has been selected as a winner
of the thirtieth annual AMERICAN BOOK AWARDS for 2009 by the Before Columbus Foundation. Cummings was an environmental lawyer for 20 years.
An environmental journalist, she has also farmed in both California and
Vietnam. This essay is an excerpt from her new book, Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds

(Beacon Press, 2008) .

On
a frozen island near the North Pole, a huge hole has been blasted out
of the side of an Arctic mountain and a tunnel has been drilled deep
into the rock. When the facility under construction here is completed,
it will be lined with one-meter-thick concrete, fitted with two
high-security blast-proof airlock doors, and built to withstand nuclear
war, global warming, terrorism, and the collapse of the earth’s energy
supplies. It’s known as the “Doomsday Vault,” and in it will be stored
millions of seeds and mankind’s hope for the future of the world’s food
supply.

The idea is that in the event of massive
ecological destruction, those seeds could be used to reconstruct the
planet’s agricultural systems. Exactly who might remain to begin
replanting the earth after such a catastrophe is only one of the
questions this astounding project raises. The more immediate question
is, are seeds in peril? The answer is yes, especially the seeds that
provide us with food, fiber, and fuel. Both the diversity and the
integrity of seeds are threatened, in the wild and on our farms. They
are being put at risk by agricultural technologies, patents and
corporate ownership, and the overall degradation of the environment.
The plight of seeds is one of the most important environmental stories
of our time. Until now, however, this critical issue has not received
the attention it deserves.

Seeds are as critical to our
survival as air, water, and soil. And yet despite the everyday miracles
that they perform, we tend to take them for granted. Seeds sustain the
beauty and vitality of the earth. Seeds are essential to the
regenerative capacity of the planet. We will need their natural
resilience and adaptability even more as temperatures rise.
Biologically, each seed has a unique way of fulfilling its promise.
Taken together, the world’s seeds maintain the plant systems that keep
the planet breathing. Every breath we take has been exhaled by a plant,
which turned it into oxygen for us. Seeds have always been our silent
partners in maintaining life on earth.

People and plants
coevolved through the ages, and that relationship has been mutually
beneficial. Seed plants dependably meet our needs, producing the corn
and rice we eat, the flax and cotton we weave, and the oak and pine we
use for shelter. Eighty percent of the people in the world still rely
on plants as their primary source of medicine. The remains of long-dead
plants provide all of us with our fossil fuels. As metaphors, seeds are
a rich source of inspiration in art, literature, and religion. We
cannot afford to lose any more of this generosity, this beauty, this
abundance.

We find ourselves at a dramatic turning point
for life on earth. Population and consumption are rapidly expanding.
Industrial food production is exhausting the planet’s basic biological
support systems, making them even more vulnerable to the effects of
global warming. The natural world is experiencing catastrophic losses
of biodiversity, fresh water, and fertile soil. All of these trends are
threatening seeds and forcing us to take a careful look at how we will
feed ourselves in the future. It comes down to this: whoever controls
the future of seeds controls the future of life on earth.

Is
industrial agriculture, with its focus on chemical and genetic
technologies, the best choice for ensuring a healthy future? Genetic
engineering is a commercial technology controlled by private
corporations, who use it to dominate agricultural production from seed
to stomach and to profit from every bite. Given the enormous
environmental stress the planet is under right now and increasing
demands on our natural resources from all forms of human activity, can
this one technology provide for our food and environmental security?
The answer is, unequivocally, no.

There are five solid
reasons that genetic engineering is not right for agriculture. One:
it’s bad science. It was developed on the basis of flawed assumptions,
which have since been discredited by the scientific community. Two:
it’s bad biology. It was deployed without regard for its potential for
genetic contamination and its risks to human health. Three: it’s bad
social policy. It puts control over seeds and the fundamentals of our
food and farms into the hands of a few corporations who have their own,
not our, best interests in mind. Four: it’s bad economics. After
billions of dollars and thirty years, only a few products have been
commercialized, and they offer nothing new. No one asked for
genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and given a choice, consumers
would reject them. Five: it’s bad farming. GMOs don’t address the real
issues plaguing agriculture; they’re designed to substitute for or
increase the use of proprietary weed and pest control chemicals.
Patented and genetically altered seeds perpetuate the very worst
problems of the industrial food system, and they are undermining the
autonomy of the farmers who use them.

According to the
Global Crop Diversity Trust, the organization that is building the
Doomsday Vault, there are more than 50,000 edible plants in the world.
About 150 of them have been commercialized, and only 40 of those are
cultivated regularly. Only three of them – rice, corn, and
wheat-provide most of humanity with its mainstay foods. Three others –
soy, cotton, and canola – get more than their fair share of attention
because of their industrial uses. Other plants are important sources of
sustenance for many people in the world, especially potatoes, cassava,
and taro, as well as barley and sorghum. That’s the short list of
plants that we rely on for our basic needs, and all of them, as well as
tobacco, sugar, coffee, sunflowers, and most fruits and vegetables,
have been patented or genetically modified.

Seeds are
the common heritage of all humanity, and yet they are being stolen
right from underneath our noses. If someone came into your kitchen and
took all the food off the shelves and out of the refrigerator, you’d
notice. If someone came onto your farm and stole the seeds you were
about to plant, you’d notice. But the theft of the world’s genetic
heritage has not been so overt. It’s been done by changing the
biological and legal character of plants, so that while the food and
seeds remain where they were, ownership of them has shifted.

While
all this has been going on, there have been plenty of welcome
countertrends. A dynamic new food and farming movement is rising up all
over the world, bringing local food and farming back to life and
restoring agriculture to its ecological roots. This is where the hope
lies. It can be found in the natural world, in the promise of the seed,
and in the hands of the farmers and the native planters who tend the
earth with the wealth of nature in mind. Organic farmers, chefs, urban
and rural youth, artists, and activists are all working in their own
ways, and sometimes together, to change the way we produce and consume
food. New sustainable strategies and green technologies are being
created. There are many proven ways to produce food and energy that
protect both human health and the life of our soil and water while
providing for our prosperity. These new agrarians are restoring respect
for the skills of the human hand and the ingenuity of the natural
world. They’re putting the culture back into agriculture.

The
story of agriculture is often told as the story of man’s domination of
nature. Now a new story is being told. The new story of agriculture
combines the guidance of the old creation myths with the insights of
science. We are learning the language of generosity from nature and of
tolerance from our experiences in returning to local economies. As we
go about searching for ways to return meaning and morality to our
lives, and possibly, dare I hope, to the political system, the
decisions we make now, and the wisdom that we choose to guide us, will
make all the difference. What’s at stake is nothing less than the
nature of the future.

The Doomsday Vault is only one way
of preparing for an uncertain future. Someday we may be glad it was
built. My hope is that we will create a future for ourselves in which
it will never be needed. Right now we can let others decide our fate
and continue living in a fundamentalist “Frankenstate” where the
corporate gene giants feed us artificial food and drugs produced with
their genetically modified patented plants and lull us into complacency
with their choice of electronic conveniences and entertainment. Or we
can summon the courage to resist the worst of all that and begin
restoring ourselves to our rightful places, as members of both human
and biological communities and caretakers of our commonwealth.

We
are facing a planetary emergency, as Al Gore says, but our “collective
nervous system” still has trouble recognizing the threats to our
survival. As an environmental journalist, I see this all the time. I
often feel it myself. I wrote this book because I love seeds and
because I have found that telling the stories of the people and places
behind these issues can help us face them and the complex challenges
they present. Industry spends millions telling its story and defending
its products, and it stands poised to convert our upcoming ecological
crisis into a commercial opportunity. I’m not offering a prescription
for the future, just an invitation to consider our options carefully.
The answers we need will come when we begin the conversation that
starts with telling and listening to each other’s stories.

I
have brought all my life experiences, as a mother, a farmer, an
environmental lawyer, an advocate for traditional native land rights,
and a journalist, to weave together a meaningful context for the
subject of genetic engineering and the future of seeds. All of my work
has been guided by one central value: respect for the integrity of the
natural world. This is what I have learned: if we can, even for a
moment, pause and stop looking at the world through the lens of
technology, then suddenly the beauty and wonder of nature reappear.
Then we remember who we are and where we are, and the healing begins.

 

From Uncertain Peril,

by
Claire Hope Cummings (Copyright © 2008 by Claire Hope Cummings.)
Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston. Visit Beacon’s website
at www.beacon.org and Beacon’s Blog at www.beaconbroadside.com