A short distance from the North Pole, there is a Norwegian island called Spitsbergen. On this remote piece of dry land in the very boreal archipelago of Svalbard is the Global Seed Vault, the world’s underground seed store. Within the concrete walls of a warehouse built to withstand even a nuclear war are endangered seeds from around the world. Among them, until four years ago, there were 40 ancient black Peruvian corn grains that a student of agronomy from Cremona — only 16 years old — has now seen fit to make the cornerstone of his company: the agricultural startup of Carlo Maria Recchia.
That sounds easy enough, but Carlo Maria, selected by Coldiretti Giovani as one of Italy’s the most promising young farmers, had to insist to get those seeds, and not a little either. First, with his school, and then through the Ministry of Agriculture. “Then I spent two years multiplying the seeds so I could start to farm,” Carlo told The Food Makers. “Today I produce beer, biscuits, flour, and breadsticks and other products are coming.”
That’s my translation of a piece on StartUpItalia!. Which, yes, I’m afraid insists on the exclamation mark. And, yes, which I’m afraid is utter tosh.
Because there is just no way on earth that Carlo Maria got those black Peruvian maize seeds from Svalbard, Italian Ministry of Agriculture or no Italian Ministry of Agriculture. Only organizations that have deposited seeds in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault can withdraw them, and then only the ones they deposited. And only one organization has ever asked for its seeds back, just a few weeks ago. Making seeds of black Peruvian maize available to random farmers — no matter how young and promising — is just not what Svalbard does.
So I don’t know where Carlo Maria got his seeds. But I can guarantee that it wasn’t Svalbard. Genesys says there are 27 maize accessions from Peru with dark seeds, from the USDA collection. Maybe he got them from there, or from CIMMYT, and given that a lot of that material is safety duplicated in Svalbard, figured he would try to have a little of the stardust rub off on him.
Whatever. I wish him luck, the kid will probably go far. In politics if not farming.