Gary Nabhan was in Russia last week to receive the Vavilov Memorial Medal at the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics in Moscow. He is only the second foreign scientist to receive this honour. In addition to delivering a lecture on Origins, Dispersal and Conservation of Domesticated Plants and Animals in Moscow and, later, St Petersburg, Gary found time to share his reflections after years of retracing Vavilov through the centres of food diversity, while writing the book Where Our Food Comes From, and after spending time with the staff of the Vavilov General Genetics Institute in Moscow and of the N.I. Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry (VIR) in St Petersburg.
Gary Nabhan in Russia to receive the Vavilov Memorial Medal
I sit overlooking Saint Isaac’s Square, a few hundred meters from where Nikolay Vavilov managed the first and perhaps the most massive effort in human history to document and conserve the world’s food biodiversity. I have had the rare opportunity of seeing the seedbank in the basement of Vavilov’s institute, and of leafing through the herbarium sheets, where one can see the master’s hand on collections of plants from the deserts, the steppes and the rainforests. And I have seen the photos there of those who perished while protecting the seeds for the benefit of all of humankind
I have also spoken with his surviving descendants: his only living son, Yuri, and with VIR’s director, Nikolay Dzyubenko, who continues to manage the tremendous scientific effort begun many decades ago. They remain committed to Nikolay Vavilov’s vision, but why? Political and economic support for such conservation has waxed and waned over the years, and there are always new challenges and frustrations.
Oddly, it seems that a certain emotional, philosophical and perhaps spiritual commitment to this work has seldom waned among its participants. One quickly realizes that these people are not necessarily in it for the money, the social approval of professional peers, nor the fame, if any!
Instead, they find something inherently and immensely satisfying about saving the remaining living riches of the world’s agricultural landscapes and cultures: the seeds, fruits and roots which feed us. They are working for a higher purposes, for the good of humanity, and if the work is done properly, the good of the earth itself.
If any scientist wished to be inspired to a higher cause, perhaps no one was more equipped to do so than Nikolay Vavilov. He was breathtakingly handsome and elegant yet field-worthy; he was visionary, yet articulate and a lover of detail; he was charismatic, tireless and intense, yet approachable. He would listen to farmer, muleskinner, camel drover and evolutionary biologist, and absorb their stories.
And yet, what ultimately inspires us today to continue with such efforts is not Vavilov’s ghost from the past, but the promise of a more equitable and nourishing food community for the future. We hope that our children and their children beyond them will eat well without damaging the very soil and soul of the earth itself.
And we know that in the recent past, some forms of agriculture have done such damage. Since Vavilov’s time, we have lost three-quarters of the former genetic base of our crops and livestock, squandering the diversity of flavours and fragrances by assuming that fossil fuel and fossil groundwater could be consumed without end to produce more food. Today, agriculture is responsible for generating half of the human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases to grow our food and fibre. We can do better. We can wean ourselves from our addictions to fossil fuel and groundwater, but only if we renew our commitment to wisely steward the natural resources and the cultural wisdom that has accumulated in our agricultural landscapes over the last ten millennia.
With rapid global climate change upon us, we need a greater diversity of seeds, breeds, fruits and roots out in our fields, adapting to the dynamic conditions there, more than ever before. Food diversity is no longer a luxury; its careful use and stewardship are once again a necessity if we are to feed future generations so that they can not survive but thrive. Vavilov pointed the way; we must not dwell so much on him as a signpost, but move to where he was pointing.
Congratulations to Gary, and our thanks for this missive.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
How wonderful that Gary was the second foreigner to receive the Vavilov metal. Bill Mollison was the first and I had the honor to travel throughout the Former Soviet Union (FSU) with him the year following.
I was shocked the following year when I heard that Royal Dutch Shell was interested in buying the Vavilov collection and that the Russians were not opposed. The news was unbelievable to me and I spent the rest of my time in the FSU trying to rouse my students into fighting for their patrimony, to tho get them to recognize Vavilov as the international hero that he was.
The collection seems to have escaped the auctioneers hammer for now but the coporate giants are still very interested in owning life in the form of the germplasm of seeds around the world, and little is being done to discourage them form their rapaciousness.
I salute Gary Nabhan and the people of the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics who named him recipient.
Thanks Scott. I had not known about Shell’s interest in buying the Vavilov collection, and there doesn’t seem to be anything via Google; is that story documented somewhere?
You raise an extremely interesting point when you talk about trying to rouse students in the former Soviet Union to fight for “their patrimony”. If you mean the recognition of Vavilov as a hero, then I totally agree with you. If you mean that the seeds he collected are part of “their patrimony” that opens a whole can of worms about ownership, stewardship, access and benefit sharing, and the like.
Can you clarify?