The LA Times reports that according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, "In the last century, as much as 75% of the genetic diversity – hundreds of thousands of plant varieties – has been lost.” High in the Artic lies a frozen town with the poetic name Longyearbyen. Here, in this remote town in Norway, locked away in the permafrost, scientists are building a Global Seed Vault to protect millions of crop seeds from around the world.

“This is a library of life,” said Cary Fowler, director of The Global Crop Diversity Trust, which will oversee the vault as part of an international foundation working to protect the world’s crop seeds. “We’ll be taking the knowledge embodied in these genes to fashion new solutions.”

“All agriculture in today’s world is interdependent,” concludes a 2005 report by the U.C. Davis Genetic Resources Conservation Program. “Crop diversity collections are the linchpin of this interdependence.”

Seed banks returned native rice to Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge, and introduced a coastal variety to salt-flooded fields in Malaysia after the 2004 tsunami. The previous year, scientists smuggled a “black box” of plants samples out of Iraq in advance of the invasion. There are over 1,400 seed banks around the world, including a federal gene bank in Colorado, where scientists store plants in liquid nitrogen at -213 degrees. But many gene banks are underfunded, or at risk from equipment failure or natural disaster.

The vault in Longyearbyen will remain naturally frozen, safe from rising sea-levels, earthquakes, and war. In a landscape where frozen darkness reigns much of the year, and pedestrians are required to carry rifles for protection from polar bears, there is a fierce respect, and loyalty to nature. And though the vault will store seeds from around the world for future generations, they are not accepting any genetically modified plants.

Merely preserving plants is not the answer to the world’s many food crises. But it has a symbolic importance, says the trust’s senior science coordinator. “The agreement to have all this material in one place sends an important message: We’re trying to work together to safeguard the world’s agriculture.”