CHANGE THE WORLD KIDS R E G E N E R A T I Vandana Shiva: Protect Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge O Seeds that Feed the World N Seed Banks for Good or Evil Issue: Seeds Summer/Fall 2013 FREE! www.changetheworldkids.org Promoting lifelong health through patient-centered dental care 457-2922 www.woodstockdentistry.com Para La Tierra September 6-8, 2013 A weekend of events on behalf of the three-wattled bell- bird, the rain forest songbirds of Vermont, and our future. Family fun, and a delicious feast to celebrate the biodiver- sity of our local farms and the rain forest, and our conserva- tion work in the Bosque para Siempre biological corridor. Watch our website for details! Or email us, and well keep you up-to-date. Summer / Fall 2013 Issue 9 Regeneration Seeds — Contents — 4 Defi nition: Seeds 5 Behold Biodiversity Champions 7 Protect Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge: No to GMO Bananas 10 A Timeline of Monsanto and the Genetically Engineered Seed 12 Challenge Yourself 13 Survival Strategies 14 Seeds of Change 16 Born to Travel: Seeds on the Move 18 Seed Banks: For Good or Evil 20 Amazing Facts 20 DIY: Plantable Paper 21 Seeds that Feed the World 22 Bosque Para Siempre 2013 24 Recipes changetheworldkids.org 1 A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words. 2 Regeneration Change the World Kids Who We Are REGENERATION is the magazine of Change the World Kids. The mission is to promote an ecologically and socially responsible lifestyle, and to encourage local and global environmental activism for future generations. Change the World Kids is a group of youth in middle and high school dedicated to making the world a better place through humanitarian and environmental projects. We are an independent, diverse, teen-run non-pro t organization. Our work enables us to learn life-skills and offers challenges that have changed our lives, our families, and our communities. Change the World Kids Over the past fourteen years we have provided tens 1046 Atwood Lane of thousands of hours of volunteer service, locally Woodstock, VT and globally. For example, we help individuals in 05091 need by stacking wood, weatherizing homes, making (802) 457-2622 emergency meals, digging ditches for solar power, installing clotheslines, working with special needs Chief Editor: children, helping people with serious illnesses get back on their feet, baking cookies while keeping someone Katherine Tucker company, repairing substandard housing, doing yard work, providing free baby-sitting, offering community dinners, and more. We work for free. Staff: Anna Ramsey Through our project Bosque para Siempre, we are conserving and replanting a migratory rain forest corridor in Costa Rica, critical to the survival of indigenous species and neo-tropical migrants Finn Mcfarland from the United States and Canada. Towards this effort, we have raised over $215,000, and planted Kristin Ramsey 1,065 trees in one day! Internationally we have a number of humanitarian initiatives. The largest is Peter Wilson Teens Connecting Continents, helping children in Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Spruce Bohen Congo, and Columbia to overcome the challenges of poverty, violence, and disease by building Teale Bohen youth programs; providing quality education, supporting health initiatives, and promoting hope in Violet Spann rural and urban communities. We are gardeners, techies, musicians, state champions at sports and academics, honor students, valuable employees, published writers, artists, class of cers, scouts, theater players, and more. Design Editor: We have a wide variety of interests, talents, and Elizabeth Kamb personalities, and go to different schools, but we share a dream. Art Director: REGENERATION is published two times a year and distributed as a free magazine. Nika Meyers Contact us to request reprint permission: send SASE for guidelines, submissions, and inquiries. REGENERATION is printed by Stillwater Graphics Inc. on recycled paper using eco-friendly rubber-based inks. www.changetheworldkids.org REGENERATION [email protected] changetheworldkids.org 3 Defi nition: Seeds The gems of biodiversity, seeds contain the essence of botanical life, often in a tiny package. From these grow 2850 year old sequoias over 200 feet tall and waterborne algae only a cell long. They are the basis of the marvelous biodiversity of our planet. Without them, humankind cannot survive. Why? Two essential reasons: We breathe. We need to eat. Seeds are in every biome, in every habitat, on earth. They nestle in forests, fens, and elds. They are in Arctic ice, on the edges of volcanic craters, and in salty seas. Adaptations to insure dispersal and survival have created a diversity of shapes and textures. Their accoutrements include wings and wisps of uff. Their colors span the spectrum. Their goal? To perpetuate their species. As seeds grow into plants, most photosynthesize, creating the oxygen essential for life on earth. In the process, they absorb carbon dioxide, removing carbon from our atmosphere and sequestering it. For much of the human population, seeds are the basis often almost the entirety of the cultures diet. Grains are ground into our, boiled into porridge, or steamed to soft or crunchy kernels. The course of history changed as traders sought spicy seeds- cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg, pepper. The manipulation of seed genes by scientists and corporations is taking us to unexplored and somewhat murky horizons. Seeds are big business. Some seeds are commodities, traded on markets that power our global economy. Major chemical corporations are forging new paths, creating new genetically modi ed organisms. What might this mean for future seed diversity and for humanity? Growers seek to conserve traditional seed, some unique and particularly adapted to an area. Seed banks are not new, but their sophistication is innovative and potentially dangerous. Seeds are the creativity of our ideas, the source of life, the key to our sustenance, and the biological foundation of our planets magni cent cycle of life. 4 Regeneration Behold Biodiversity Champions Cut open an orange. Its circumference is a protec- the bellbirds digestive system removes the seeds skin, and tive peel. The esh of the fruit, segregated and juicy, is full of provides the seed with a fecal wrapping that supplies instant nutrition. Deep inside the fruit live the seeds. fertilizer in which it can grow. One bellbird can eat up to 30 With most hard-skinned fruits, we humans casually fruits a day, and therefore, the birds are very ef cient seed toss seeds away; but lacking persnickety tastes and opposable dispersers, consuming and distributing avocado seeds in large thumbs, animals tend to ingest the seeds. Plants and animals quantities. have an inextricably interdependent relationship. At the heart Studies of seed dispersal of fruit bearing trees in the of this relationship is seed dispersal. Monteverde area by Daniel Wenny of the Illinois Natural In the rainforest, birds are the most common seed History Survey con rm that bellbirds are by far the most dispersers, and this is a critical job. Fruit eating birds are effective dispersers of Lauraceae seeds. One reason is that called frugivores. Different species of birds are attracted to the birds return again and again to their favorite perches, different fruits in the way that some people like spinach and which are nearly always located in trees right on the edge of others do not. Species of trees depend on the help of cer- tree-fall gaps or other clearings. As bellbirds are perched, so- tain birds to spread their seeds. cializing and going to the bathroom, the seeds fall with their Consider the story of the three-wattled bellbird and individual wrapping of fertilizer to the forest oor in spots the Lauraceae trees. The three-wattled bellbird breeds and where the sun shines, thus creating exactly the right condi- raises its young in the Monteverde cloud tions for germination. and rain forest region of Costa Rica. These So far, the story is all good; but birds are attracted to this area because during the last chapter of the 20th century of the abundance of Lauraceae trees and there enters a bad twist to the plot. While the wild avocados they bear. Roughly 30% the bellbirds are happily breeding and of the canopy cover in the Monteverde raising young from March until late June or Region is made up of trees belonging to early July in Monteverde, and then migrat- the Lauraceae family. ing to the lowland or montane forests, This storys leading characters are humans wielding chainsaws and driving the three-wattled bellbirds, the setting is large crawling equipment are cutting and the high altitude rainforest, and the main dragging thousands of trees from the once props are Lauraceae fruits (think of 1-2 inch avocados). The pristine forest. It is estimated that up to 75% of the forests male bellbird is spectacular with three wattles that he tosses are now gone. to attract the ladies; the female is camou aged and secretive, Down come roosts and food supplies. The bellbirds so much so that no nesting bellbird has been found. Whats begin to starve, and scientists categorize them as a vulner- not secret is that these birds are masters of spreading able species. One estimate in the 1980s concluded that for Lauraceae through hundreds of hectares of forest, insuring every 100 bellbirds, only 16 remained. Without the three- the survival of the tree species and of the many birds and wattled bellbirds, the biodiversity of the rain forest begins animals that depend upon it. to alter as the Lauraceae trees lose an important partner When a three-wattled bellbird eats an avocado, in their reproductive cycle. In a cruel and vicious spiral as it digests the seed, and then later disposes of the seed in deforestation proliferates, more and more birds and animals its feces.