ABSTRACT
A seed bank is an organization used to store and preserve plant seeds, in particular varieties that are rare, have fallen out of commercial use, or may have unique desirable genetic characteristics. This common definition already shows normative conflicts that need philosophical analysis. First of all, it touches the ontological question whether a seed in long term storage can still be regarded as the miniature or sleeping stage of a plant. Moreover, it questions the natural nexus of plants’ generation and proliferation. To interrupt and diachronize this nexus is one of the main features of seed banks, which leads back to the beginnings of agriculture as such, thereby contradicting ideas of a plant’s ‘wildness’ or its existence in ‘wilderness’. Furthermore, the article summarizes the normative aims of seed banks, from banking future breeding options to conserving the ‘common heritage of mankind’. In sum, it challenges approaches of plant ethics which refer to the individual plant and to wild(er)ness. On the contrary, it highlights the agricultural and technological shaping of plants as biofacts – technonatural entities that, nevertheless, deserve ethical consideration.
