Paper short abstract:

Traditional and orphan crops are a vital buffer against environmental change. Fieldwork in the Sukoot region of Nubia showed currently minor cereals and pulses were previously major crops. These changes relate to new introductions, as well as to shifts in cultivation, processing and food practices.

Paper long abstract:

Agricultural practices have been rapidly changing in northern Sudan, mirroring global trends. This paper discusses changes within local cropping patterns and food systems in recent decades in Nubia, and perspectives from the recent and ancient past on the long-term cultivation and previous importance of several of today’s minor food crops. Whilst several of these minor crops have less market value, they are more low-input and heat tolerant than the current commercial crops. Much of the information about crops changes since the mid-20th century, and about beneficial traits, cultivation and processing was in the memories of elderly farmers and can now be considered endangered knowledge.

Paper short abstract:

Colonialism and the global free market have had dramatic effects on crop choice and food systems in Zambia, leading to a loss of food sovereignty and resilience to climate change. Does the reintegration of former staples and protection of wild ‘commons’ provide a sustainable solution?

Paper long abstract:

Within Africa, the ‘agricultural revolution’ in Zambia occurred comparatively recently, less than 2000 years ago. The expansion of farming societies led to the decline, assimilation, or marginalisation of hunter-gatherer lifeways. By the early 2nd millennium CE, pearl millet, finger millet, and in places cattle rearing, were key to supporting a burgeoning population. Ethnographic evidence highlights the importance of the miombo woodlands as part of a managed landscape, crucial for swidden crop rotations and the provisioning of food, medicine, and energy.

Zambia’s exposure to El Nino has led farmers to adopt diversification strategies. New crops such a banana and cassava were quickly adopted into the food system and adapted to local cuisine, and farmers have been known to diversify their crops and use intercropping to buffer against poor rains.

While the 2nd millennium CE saw competition over land and control over links to Indian Ocean Trade networks, the effects of colonialism has arguably seen a more profound effect on the political ecology of Zambia with regards to farming. Deforestation, the confiscation prime land, and the legacy of colonial policies such as the promotion of maize, has led to the steady erosion of food sovereignty over the past century. A rush of foreign investment in agricultural land in Zambia is accelerating the loss of food sovereignty, and with it the ecological knowledge associated with sustainability. This paper will discuss the changing political ecology of Zambia and propose the integration of sustainable practices to increase resilience, conserve ecological knowledge, and promote food sovereignty.

Paper short abstract:

The long-term chronology for cultivation practices and crop plants extends back c. 7000-6400 years in the Highlands of New Guinea. This historical narrative provides the context for understanding contemporary agricultural challenges, including loss of crop biodiversity and traditional knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

The chronology of agricultural innovation in the Highlands of New Guinea extends back at least 7000-6400 cal BP, and possibly much earlier. Here, the long-term chronology of agronomic practices is presented to indicate an expanding repertoire in forms of plant exploitation through time. The practical narrative is augmented by archaeobotanical traces of the plants cultivated at different points in time, which suggest repeated experimentation, adoption of introduced plants and re-adjustment to social needs through time.

Against this long-term historical backdrop of complexification, expansion and intensification, recent trends in Highlands’ agriculture can be viewed as a reduction in the range of crops grown, as well as in the varieties of individual crops, which mirrors a loss of oral knowledge and social practices associated with traditional cultivars. Such trends are not new, they occurred in the past, most notably following the widespread adoption of the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) within the last few hundred years. Yet, the rate of change has accelerated as Highland communities have faced new socio-economic challenges over the last several decades, which are set to become more acute into the future.

Paper short abstract:

We test the role of evolutionary, bioclimatic and sociocultural drivers in generating landscape patterns of enset landrace diversity, and parallels with cultural diversity patterns. Our findings underline the value of indigenous agrisystems for illuminating interactions between humanity and nature.

Paper long abstract:

Global patterns of agrobiodiversity differ from wild biodiversity, therefore it is unclear whether they are generated by similar processes. Understanding these processes is key to mapping and maintaining agrobiodiversity hotspots, and supporting our transition to sustainable global food systems. Here, we survey drivers of enset genetic and vernacular landrace diversity in the Ethiopian Highlands. Enset (Ensete ventricosum) is a giant clonally propagated monocarpic herb, closely related to bananas, that provides a starch staple for 20 million people. Despite a broad wild distribution, it has a remarkably restricted region of cultivation, yet smallholder farmers cultivate hundreds of distinct landraces across diverse climatic and agroecological systems, with up to 20 on a single farm. Combining vernacular and genetic diversity data from across hundreds of farms within a mixed-effects modelling framework, we investigate the relative importance of evolutionary, bioclimatic and sociocultural drivers in generating observed patterns of enset landrace diversity at multiple scales. The resulting enset diversity map is a key tool to guide agrobiodiversity conservation and germplasm management, monitor erosion of intra-specific diversity, and catalyse development of neglected regional staple. These results, and their parallels with regional patterns of cultural diversity, shed new light on the domestication of enset and underline the value of indigenous agrisystems for illuminating long term interactions between humanity and nature that generates the agrobiodiversity upon which we depend.

Paper short abstract:

Archaeobotany provides a long-term perspective on crop choices, crops that have been lost, largely forgotten, as well as past periods of agricultural diversification and de-diversification.

Paper long abstract:

The lost of crop diversity has been a recurrent feature of the agricultural long-term and has been punctuated by periods of increased crop diverisification. Archaeobotany has given us access to crop domestication and disappearances in prehistory, from north American Iva annua, to lost varieties of barley and foxtail millet in Sudan. It has also highlighted crops that were much more prominent and widespread in the past that have been largely forgotten, from Timopheev's wheat to Indian brown top millet. This raises questions about what the contributing factors are as to whether crops persist and expand or decline and disappear. As first step towards thinking about this we might consider what the chronological patterns in terms of agricultural diverisification and de-diversification. We will consider long-term crop diversity profiles for the Near East (~10,000 years), Nubia (~5000 years) and Southern India (~4000 years) to explore potential correlates to diversity trends.

Paper short abstract:

With the objective of understanding agricultural system histories, trajectories, crops, landscapes, and heritage, a study was conducted in selected kebeles (lower level adminstration) of Oromiya and Amhara Regional States in central Ethiopia.

Paper long abstract:

Four kebeles were covered in the study. These include; Menagesha kolobo kebele, Wochecha kebele at a locality called Huluko Park in Oromiya Regional State, the Village of Shengo, in Wof Washa Kebele, Tarma Ber Woreda and Semen Shewa zone, Mahal Wonz kebele, Ankeber Woreda, in North Shewa zone of Amhara Regional State. Individual and group interviews were conducted selecting experienced farmers, gender inclusive, in the study areas. Some findings include that hoe and Oxen plough agriculture are still used as methods of tilling the land with little change since pre-historic times. Implements used for cultivation and processing of crops as well as for cooking are locally made and traditional. Crop varieties have changed over the last 30 years in the study areas. Traditional manures are progressively being replaced by modern fertilizers. Climate change, deforestation and erosion have also impacted crop cultivation in the regions.

Key words:- crops, landscapes, traditional agriculture, crop processing, Ethiopia