Seed Bank Response

I'd never even known about seed banks until reading this article - it almost seems like paranoia, the lengths that are being gone to to preserve seeds. When, where, how, and to what extent these seeds are being stored is insane - and yet it doesn't even begin to cover it. The Millennium Seed Bank in Norway is enormous and already contains tons of seeds, and yet it was predicted to have only collected about 10% of the seeds they intend to have at the end, which I found interesting at what a slow process it is. And while this may seem like a lot of work for nothing, to me it appears necessary. What would we do in the future if, by human error or natural disaster, we were to lose what few plants we still have today? According to this Ted Talk on the subject, there were 7,100 different named apple varieties in the 1800's, and, by now, 6,800 of those varieties have gone extinct and are forever lost. This is what we want to - need to - prevent in the future. Unfortunately, while "the Millennium Seed Bank Project aims to house all the 300,000 different plant species known to exist to ensure future biodiversity and protect a vital source of food and medicines", this may not be possible due the poor current state of the economy, which seems like it could truly be disastrous. Each seed costs about 2,000 pounds to store, and nearly 10,000,000 pounds are needed annually to run the place, but that seems like a small price to pay in order to guarentee a future with the same variety of plants that we have today. We need to continue on filling Seed Banks such as the Millennium Seed Bank to preserve and maintain the diversity that we're used to. As Cary Fowler mentions in his Ted Talk, by saving these seeds, we may just save ourselves.