Saving Our Seed

Agriculture has long stood as one of the most monumental developments in human history. The manipulation of our surrounding environment to meet our needs gave us the security of a next meal and led to the development of large settled communities. The human population boomed and our throne on this planet was secured.
The development of corn began around 7000 years ago in Central America. Natives cultivated the wild grass, Teosinte, and selectively replanted those with more favorable traits. Local cultivation in this area began around 700 AD. and led to the development of Cahokia, the largest pre-Columbian civilization north of Mexico. The crop that fed Cahokia’s large population eventually took over the landscape, exhausted the soil, and the people of Cahokia mysteriously vanished around 1200 AD.
The last century has been the marker of yet another Green Revolution. Advances in farming equipment, practices, and genetics have since produced greater crop yield but less crop diversity. Heterogeneity has always been nature’s insurance plan on the survival of its species but humans have since been responsible for the elimination of a quarter of the world’s 400 thousand plant species. Laissez-faire has come to replace natural selection in the formation of this new ecosystem as the human race continues to prune the planet and weed out varieties of plants unnecessary for human consumption.
“Saving Our Seed” references the codependency between man and the environment he has created. Drawing on the biblical metaphor of Noah’s Arc and the Great Flood, this contemporary arc selfishly takes on board only what humans require. The arc acts as a greenhouse and a seed bank filled with the potential of new life though it waits in its confined and fragile space for an intelligent being to unleash it. It asks the question; when all life is dependent upon genetic diversity for its survival, what happens when humans are not there to supply it?

• Creative Divergent: Zach Balousek
• From: Edwardsville, IL

Submitted to Winter 2011 Showcase