Seed World Europe Editorial Director Marcel Bruins just finished reading De plantenjager uit Leningrad (The Plant Hunter from Leningrad) by Louise O. Fresco, and it left me unsettled — in the best possible way. It’s rare for a book about seeds to make you rethink the world we live in, but this one did.
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What Vavilov taught me about truth, science, and the danger of convenient lies.
I just finished reading De plantenjager uit Leningrad (The Plant Hunter from Leningrad) by Louise O. Fresco. It left me unsettled in the best possible way. It’s not often that a book about seeds makes you rethink the world we live in — but this one did.
The story follows Nikolai Vavilov, a visionary Russian scientist who dedicated his life to ending hunger. His method? Seeds. Not just planting them, but understanding them — tracing their origins, mapping their genetic diversity, and building what became the world’s largest seed bank. He believed that by unlocking the secrets of crop plants, we could breed resilience into our food systems: protection against drought, disease, and changing climates. His work was revolutionary. And, tragically, it was also dangerous.
In Stalin’s Soviet Union, science had to serve ideology. Enter Trofim Lysenko: a self-styled agronomist who rejected genetics and offered fantastical claims of yield increases through sheer environmental influence and willpower. No data, no peer review — just promises. And those promises were politically convenient. Stalin backed Lysenko. Vavilov, who challenged his theories with evidence and reason, was arrested and left to die in prison.
I closed the book with a deep sadness for Vavilov — and a creeping sense of recognition. Because we like to think we’ve moved past those times. That science today speaks freely, and that decision-makers act based on facts. But the truth is messier.
Again and again, I see examples where evidence-based science loses to emotion, ideology, or political expediency. Just look at vaccines. During the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials found themselves fighting not just a virus, but a flood of misinformation.
Politicians made decisions based on polling data or Twitter trends, sometimes sidelining expert advice. Science became a battleground — not over what was true, but over what was popular.
Take GMOs: despite decades of research and broad scientific consensus that genetically modified crops are safe and often environmentally beneficial, they remain politically radioactive in certain parts of Europe.
Public fear, stoked by simplistic messaging, often drowns out nuanced, peer-reviewed science.
Or glyphosate. The vast majority of toxicological assessments from regulatory bodies around the world — including the European Food Safety Authority and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — have found that when used properly, glyphosate is not carcinogenic. Yet its political fate is constantly in limbo, decided more by petitions and headlines than by data.
Then there are neonics. Blanket bans have been imposed despite scientists warning that such measures could backfire, leading to the use of older, more harmful chemicals. The political reaction was swift and emotionally satisfying, but not always grounded in the full picture the science provided.
Even gene editing — like CRISPR — has been caught in this emotional crossfire. It holds tremendous promise for sustainable agriculture, especially in a changing climate. Yet regulations often treat it with the same suspicion as older transgenic methods, not because of scientific risk, but because of public unease.
What strikes me most in all this is the similarity to Vavilov’s world — not in brutality, but in the quiet sidelining of scientific voices. The pressure to deliver emotionally satisfying answers. The temptation to embrace narratives over nuance. And the cost of ignoring hard evidence in favour of what feels right or polls well.
We don’t need to live in a dictatorship for Lysenkoism to return. It creeps in whenever science becomes optional, or inconvenient. That’s why Vavilov’s story matters today. He believed that knowledge, tested and challenged and built upon, could solve real problems. He died believing in that principle.
Fresco’s book made me realize how fragile that principle is. It’s not enough for science to exist — it must be heard, respected, and acted upon. That’s a responsibility we all share: citizens, journalists, and especially politicians.
We must demand decisions that are based on facts, not feelings; on peer-reviewed research, not public mood. Science isn’t infallible, but it is self-correcting. Politics, at its worst, is not. And when we choose emotion over evidence, it’s not just truth that suffers — it’s our future.
So yes, ‘De plantenjager uit Leningrad’ is a biography. But for me, it was also a mirror. A reminder. And a call to protect science — not just in the lab, but in the public square.
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