Last week, in the frozen north of Norway, the seeds began to pour into the Global Seed Vault — the “doomsday vault,” some have called it. Five hundred feet of a super-secure cave in an Arctic mountainside is filling now with millions of seeds from all over the world.

As climate change and genetic engineering put new pressures on the traditional spectrum of natural seed, scientists want to preserve an archive, a bank, that could pull us out of a pinch.

Check out this episode – Seed, Genetic Engineering, and Our Future – of ‘On Point with Tom Ashbrook‘ on NPR from March 6th – where Claire Hope Cummings is his guest, discussing her new book Uncertain Peril – along with the new seed vault, sustainable farming and more.

Related: check out The Land Institute, and our post on Janine Benyus + Biomimicry.