Valuing Folk Crop Varieties for Agroecology and Food Security
26th October 2009
The superiority of modern crop varieties is so taken for granted that older cultivars and landraces are typically relegated to the status of seedbank acquisitions. This model of active commercial breeding and seedbanks as reserves is simple and also simplistic. One flaw is that when modern cultivars fail seedbanks are not necessarily able to step in. Their stocks may be genetically degraded, non-viable, or simply insufficient. A further flaw is that seeds are much more than capsules of genetic diversity, their appreciation often requires farming, culinary and medicinal knowledge which is lacking in most seedbank collections. This situational aspect of genetic conservation is widely ignored and explains much of why in situ conservation is underappreciated. And when a hurricane struck the Sunderbans of West Bengal earlier this year it wasn’t government seedbanks or commercial breeders who stepped in to help. The author, Debal Deb, is the founder of Vrihi, a non-profit seedbank and a conservation farm.
