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Rather than going immediately to the Arctic seed vault, you would think that it would make more sense to have seed vaults a little more convenient - something like an L1 cache as compared to treating the Arctic Seed vault as main memory. (Or tape backup, if you will)

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According to the article, they do just such a thing! The 'L1 cache' as you call it for middle eastern dry climate crops was in Aleppo, Syria, which is no longer able to perform its function of multiplying and redistributing the seed.

"Rather than going immediately to the Arctic seed vault, you would think that it would make more sense to have seed vaults a little more convenient"

Reliability over convenience?

No, having multiple backups would also be more reliable.

It's still good to test the main backup - untested backups are not backups.

Which reminds me, I should test our backups again...

"Noone wants backup; They want restore."

Sure, but who is going to pay for the multiple backup sites?

The whole point of having an Artic seed vault is passive failsafe: "Even if the power were to fail, the vault would stay frozen and sealed for at least 200 years."

As a nice benefit, since it's passive failsafe, it's also cheap to maintain.

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