A Vault for Seeds

25 May 2020

Tim Farin | KfW

While the world is talking of a crisis in international cooperation, the Crop Trust and its partners in countries around the world are creating a global system to secure our future food supply. To achieve this goal, the Crop Trust is building an endowment fund, which relies on international support. In Germany, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Development Bank (KfW) have provided over EUR 100 million so far, more than half in the form of grants from federal budget funds and EUR 50 million as a concessional loan from KfW.

When speaking to Michael Wehinger from KfW, talks of money are quickly overshadowed by emotion. The department head who is responsible for the Crop Trust joined the recent seed deposit ceremony at Svalbard in February. "This is very impressive and automatically raises thoughts about how climate change will affect us all." The picture may be different in German supermarkets, where consumers are oversupplied with fresh produce from fields and plantations from all over the world. "But if we look closer, we see very few species, regardless of which plant," argues Wehinger. "This is a cause for concern."

Read the full article (in German)

Categories: Seeds for Resilience, Svalbard Global Seed Vault