Paper short abstract:

In the Andes, potatoes can “decide” to grow big and tasty or shrivel up and leave. Imagine how the Quechua farmers felt about depositing their potatoes in the arctic Seed Vault. As one lamented: I feel broken here. Without a consideration of the vitality of germplasm, refuges can turn to exile.

Paper long abstract:

In ecological edges and cultural folds, multi-vocal, multi-sensory, and multispecies kinships have emerged as sanctuaries of practice and memory. Such counters constitute sensuous conservation and provoke us to question, and to act. How do out-of-the-way gardens and kitchens nurture and deploy memories central to identity and persistence?

In the Andes, potatoes can “decide” to grow big, beautiful, and tasty or shrivel up and leave. This intimate-animate landscape contains within it considerable ambiguity and ambivalence. Imagine how the Quechua farmers representing the Communities of the Potato Park felt about depositing their potatoes ---“infants” that they swaddle in blankets and sing to, wily ones that jump out of the ground to greet them, and errant ones that they scold before taking back in --- in the Global Seed Vault for safekeeping. In the film, Uysay (The Seed), a Quechua woman who was part of the delegation grieves: I bring you, endangered children/I leave my family to walk this journey/And now, arriving, I feel broken here.

Without a careful consideration of significance and vitality of the germplasm we wish to protect from endangerment, providing refuges can easily turn to exile. Sensuous conservation is sustained in fertile milieus and lush sanctuaries where seeds and knowledge are transmitted through inter-animation and commensality. Cultural and biological legacies are not lost but instead are renewed and recovered in “pockets of memory” (Nazarea 1998). We are not without guideposts because an eco-cultural memory, like a refrain, is buried in the seeds and the stories woven around them.