The Svalbard seed bank, set like a concrete monolith in the minus 4 degree Celsius permafrost of a mountain on a remote island in the Svalbard archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole, shouldn't determine the fate of our agricultural future. Though the remote bank has collected 860,000 seed samples from around the world, with the latest withdrawal being made from war-torn Syria, what are the true intentions behind a bank said to, "preserve as much of the world's crop diversity as possible," while seed supplies around the world are being monopolized by a few corporations, and indigenous, thousand-year old seeds are being wiped out by genetically modified versions? Svalbard's investors, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto, Syngenta, and other biotech interests tout this 'seed saving' monolith while simultaneously ravaging seed diversity, along with state laws throughout the US, and elsewhere on the globe, that prevent small