WHEN THE WAR CAME



The Decemberists

(inspired by Hunger)

Excerpted lyrics:



We made our oath to Vavilov

We'd not betray the Solanum

The acres of asteraceae

To our own pangs of starvation

When the war came

When the war came



And the war came with a curse and a caterwaul

And the war came with all the poise of a cannonball

And they're picking out our eyes by coal and candlelight

When the war came, the war came hard



With all the grain of Babylon Excerpted lyrics:We made our oath to VavilovWe'd not betray the SolanumThe acres of asteraceaeTo our own pangs of starvationWhen the war cameWhen the war cameAnd the war came with a curse and a caterwaulAnd the war came with all the poise of a cannonballAnd they're picking out our eyes by coal and candlelightWhen the war came, the war came hardWith all the grain of Babylon

In 2003 Seed magazine asked me to write an article about a previous threat to the Vavilov Institute: Vladimir Putin (whose grandmother grew so thin during the siege that she was mistakenly stacked with corpses) wanted to evict the Institute from its building, which he wanted for presidential vacation quarters. Scientists around the world signed petitions, and journalists wrote stories. The plan was delayed, and the Institute still has its home. While I was researching the story, though, some scientists told me off the record that some of the collections had already been lost or compromised--the victim not of famished residents or Nazi air raids but of economic hard times and political indifference. Cold storage can preserve seeds but not always their viability; seeds are meant to be grown out and recollected. Plants are meant to live in gardens, tough out winters, benefit from genetic exchange with wild neighbors.

Toward the end of the siege of Leningrad, after Nikolai Vavilov himself had perished in one of Stalin's prisons of some combination of malnourishment and maltreatment, biologists at the Institute that would eventually bear his name risked intense shelling outside the city to grow out some of the seeds in their care in experimental stations and fields. In doing so they increased the food supply while replenishing and reinvigorating their seed bank.

That's one tragic aspect of the impending destruction of Pavlovsk Experimental Station; the station houses seeds not as potential but as actual life. The trees and plants cannot just be moved, and certainly not in the ridiculous few months on offer. Ninety percent of the berries, currants, and other food plants grown at Pavlovsk exist nowhere else. They will simply be gone, together with whatever genetic advantages they offer an agricultural system made fragile by monocropping and a dangerous approach to distribution. Also lost will be their particular colors, textures, flavors. Genetic diversity is crucial to human survival and food is a central part of our history and heritage, but aesthetics matter too. In the place of an apple famed for its winter heartiness and a berry prized for its perfect sweetness will sit a commercial real estate development, the money earned off the bulldozed land going to those who successfully claimed in court that the Pavlovsk collection does not exist because it was never officially registered. Soon they will be accurate in more than legalistic terms: it won't exist.