Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Philippa Ryan
(Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)
Mark Nesbitt (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)
Dorian Fuller (University College London)
Jose Julian Garay-Vazquez (University College London)
Krystyna Swiderska (International Institute for Environment and Development)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Monday 25 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Globally, many traditional farming systems are rapidly changing. An interdisciplinary approach is essential in conserving crop diversity and food heritage, by considering crops within their local cultural, ecological, and historical context, and from cultivation to cooking and consumption.
Long Abstract:
We invite contributions that discuss the conservation of agricultural and food heritage, for example addressing - the role of traditional and indigenous crops and cultivation practices in resilience; approaches to conserving endangered crops, other neglected species and associated knowledge; links between local crops, foods, cultural practices and values; changes within indigenous and traditional crop and foodsystems in recent decades; and perspectives from the historical or archaeological record on the long-term regional history and benefits of 'orphan' crops and traditional cultivation practices.
Agricultural heritage as a concept can encompass crop diversity and uses, the wider agricultural landscape and culturally specific cultivation and crop processing practices, related material culture and intangible heritage. Agricultural and food heritage are further connected by the crop varieties that provide the raw resources for cuisine. All these elements are situated and sustained within Indigenous peoples' knowledge systems, cultural and spiritual values, and holistic worldviews, or 'biocultural heritage'. Key issues include the need to better understand how these components relate to each other, and how this can help their conservation. For example, how do new crop introductions alter agricultural practices and foodways? how can approaches bring together botanical and environmental sciences, humanities, and local perspectives? What is the impact of globalisation on local agri- and food-systems, and how can a better understanding of local contexts can address global challenges?
Key words - environmental and botanical sciences and humanities, ethnobotany and archaeobotany, orphan crops, food
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 25 October, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Traditional agronomic practice in Elgeyo Marakwet, Kenya, is characterised by processes of ongoing creative transformation. In this paper we argue for the conservation of innovation where smallholders are empowered to more readily design and regenerate their own agricultural systems.
Paper long abstract:
Innovation, iterative experimentation and creative agronomic practice are fundamental characteristics of the agricultural systems in Elgeyo-Marakwet County, Northwest Kenya. The inherent ability for people across the region to adapt to ever unfolding environmental, demographic and socio-economic situations has historically resulted in a dynamic, flexible and resilient system of food production. Traditional agronomic practice in this context is thus not something that can be conserved as a moment in time, but rather is itself a process of ongoing transformation. Yet, as the climate and biodiversity emergency continues to escalate at an unprecedented scale, and agricultural interventions continue to prioritise high input farming and cash cropping, windows for this tradition of innovation are slowly being eroded.
Drawing upon recent work at the Institute for Global Prosperity, UCL, this paper aims to explore these interrelated dynamics in order to foreground smallholder creativity and experimentation both as aspects of tradition and as key to diverse prosperous agricultural futures. In doing so, we explore how, whilst it is important to document and conserve diverse landrace crops for the preservation of agricultural diversity and resilience, it is imperative to comprehend how such foodstuffs are integrated into ever shifting processes of living agronomic knowledge and practice. Consequently, agricultural conservation needs to be conceptualised temporally. In this sense, we argue for the conservation of processes of innovation where smallholders are empowered to autonomously design and regenerate their own agricultural systems making use of traditional and indigenous crops and practices.
Paper short abstract:
Estuary root gardens in coastal British Columbia are both key to traditional food systems and offered little protection. In order to better understand past management practices at these sites and guide restoration efforts, an approach that merges local knowledge, archaeology and ecology is needed.
Paper long abstract:
Estuarine root gardens are coastal areas where First Nations people on the Northwest Coast of North America cultivated nutritionally, culturally and economically important root foods, such as Pacific silverweed (Pacifica anserina ssp. Pacifica), springbank clover (Trifolium wormskioldii) and riceroot lily (Fritillaria camschatcensis). These plants, and the carefully engineered and managed ecosystems that supported them, represent generations of traditional ecological knowledge dedicated to maintaining an important element of a sustainable food system. In the time since colonization began on the coast, these gardens have become impacted by intersecting factors, including climate change, industrial development, and land theft. Loss of management, driven by the removal of indigenous peoples from their territories and communities, have further impacted inter-generational knowledge about the location of root garden sites and culturally specific management practices. Further, the sites that do remain are given little protection under current legislation in British Columbia. However, an intersectional approach to the study of these sites, one that merges local knowledge, archaeology, and ecology, can help renew relationships with these sites - and, potentially, help us locate others that are no longer known. In this talk, two specific root garden sites, one in Songhees First Nation territory and one in 'Namgis territory, will be used to illustrate the range and the resilience of these food systems, and how combining these lines of evidence may help us better understand past management and guide future eco-cultural restoration efforts.
Paper short abstract:
Combining reconstructions of temporal variations in the olive phenological stages and spatial variations of its cultivation patterns in Sicily, a window opens on the long-term management of this tree, a Cultural Keystone Species for the local biological diversity and cultural identity.
Paper long abstract:
Thanks to its unique position in the Mediterranean, Sicily is home to important ecological reservoirs, a special case for their long-term entanglements with humans.
The island has been a cross-road and colonisation target by diverse ethnic and cultural groups for millennia. The persistence of certain biocultural refugia, as the olive tree (Olea Europea var. sativa), is the non-discursive result of a long-term negotiation process between the ecological knowledge of locals and the ecological practices introduced by new settlers at different points in time, and between them and the natural environment.
With time, the olive has become a Cultural Keystone Species, and its cultivation has more and more played a crucial role for biodiversity conservation, the livelihood of rural communities and their deep enrooted cultural identity. Under critical pressure due to global market forces and climatic changes today, these long-lasting agrosystems may nonetheless offer insights on how to tackle adaptation challenges and manage agrobiodiversity sustainably in the future.
Our contribution looks at the management of these complex agro-ecological systems along centennial time-scales through a transdisciplinary approach which combines local ecological memory and landscape archaeology. By integrating reconstructions of temporal variations in the olive phenological stages (extracted from the ecological calendars of the different cultures crossing the island) and the spatial variations of their local cultivation patterns for maintenance and use (Ferrara et al. 2020, Ferrara and Wästfelt 2021), we open a window to better understand the conservation practices that locals have adjusted along with environmental and climatic changes over the centuries.
Paper short abstract:
The Cornish Revivalists' early twentieth century efforts to recover and maintain "all those ancient things that make the spirit of Cornwall” highlight the motivating yet complex forces of cultural identity and nostalgia - as well as the challenge of authenticity - in revitalising lost crops.
Paper long abstract:
In exploring the story of 'pillas', it is impossible to ignore the Cornish Revivalists. Pillas is a naked-grained diploid oat once cultivated across the British Isles, becoming largely restricted to Cornwall by the 1700s-1800s. Cornish Revivalism - which took off in the early twentieth century as part of a wider assertion of Celticity - sought to instil pride in Cornish identity, in part through the nostalgic work of the Old Cornwall Societies, which aimed to recover and maintain "all those ancient things that make the spirit of Cornwall”; particularly the Cornish language. Although its local cultivation had ceased during the mid-1800s, several revivalists expressed an interest in pillas, and one acquired seed of ‘Avoine nue grosse’ from a French catalogue believing it to be the same naked oat; subsequently cultivating, exhibiting, and sharing it.
Although Cornish Revivalism has been vital to sustaining ethnobotanical engagement with pillas across generations, it now seems that this seed was misidentified, and was in fact the commoner hexaploid naked oat. Consequently, this case stresses the challenge of authenticity in the revitalisation of lost crops - as well as highlighting cultural identity and nostalgia as motivating albeit complex forces - echoing questions raised over ‘Middle’ versus ‘Late’ texts as the basis for revived a Cornish language. Remarkably - thanks to its reputation as a collectors’ curiosity - the diploid naked oat has survived ex-situ, offering the chance to apply these lessons to a renewed attempt at in-situ revitalisation.
Paper short abstract:
The production and consumption of rice constituting the core element of peasant’s subsistence is linked with their socio-religious duties as mechanisms of survival. The complex domestic world view of rice is studied as a commodity representative of food crises and food security for the future.
Paper long abstract:
The paper focuses on the production and consumption of rice constituting the core element of peasant’s subsistence intimately linked with their socio-religious duties as mechanisms of survival. A study on the semiotics of rice in the context of the Bengal famine (1943-44), food supplies, the campaign to ‘grow more food’ (1942 onwards) embodied in textual and oral traditions draws upon a strand of historiography that explains the cultural biography of commodities as a yardstick for consumption changes (Appadurai 1996). The paper dislocates the semantics of rice from the literature of distress to understanding crop decisions within the economic unit of a household. This argument is broadened in the public realm, where rice as a value-laden agricultural commodity was used in the political campaign against hunger and repurposed for ethical consumption. The domestic world views of the primary producer contributing to human well-being are articulated in the complexities of rice consumption, as a commodity representative of the food crisis and food security for the future. Rice represents the idea of well-being in Bengal that is expressed not only in material terms but also in terms of the symbols that govern sharing of food. Apart from fulfilling basic needs, rice meets the instrumental needs of placating gods, funerary rites and is widely used in other rituals. It is, therefore, tied to the social grammar of consumption, where value judgements are based on the basic needs of someone and his ability to fulfil the needs of others.