Embedded and Embodied Agrobiodiversity Conservation

Abstract (English)

In response to the limitations and ecological impacts of the monoculture- and chemical-intensive agri-food system, in-farm or in-situ conservation initiatives have proliferated in recent decades, particularly in countries of the Global South, where many of the genetic resources used in commercial crops originated (Kloppenburg, 2004). One such place is the Chiloé Archipelago in southern Chile, located within one of the world’s 35 Global Biodiversity Hotspots (Myers et al., 2000; CEPF, 2024) and recognized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO, 2011; Caviedes et al., 2024) as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System. This designation underscores both the socio-ecological value of Chiloé’s traditional farming systems and its significance as the genetic cradle of most commercial potato varieties consumed worldwide. These characteristics have motivated the development of state- and FAO-supported in-situ conservation projects focused on local crop varieties, with particular attention to the more than 300 native potato cultivars found in the archipelago.
My research examines how in-situ agrobiodiversity conservation is being implemented within this complex context, where international organizations, state agencies, and peasant agricultural organizations converge—each with distinct institutional structures, resources, worldviews, and practices. Specifically, I explore how prevailing development discourses (Escobar, 1995), as articulated by the FAO and the Chilean state, intersect with the situated practices and knowledge systems of local farmers. I am particularly interested in investigating not only the contradictions and tensions that arise from these encounters, but also the creative outcomes they generate.
This paper presents some of the findings from ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in Chiloé during January and February 2025. Through shared meals, walks, garden visits, and long conversations over mate, I was able to engage with both the farmers’ appreciation for the recognition and financial support provided by these projects, and their frustrations with the responsibilities and practices they are expected to adopt. Frequently, the support offered by these initiatives clashes with the farmers’ daily routines and material needs, leading to a reconfiguration of their "traditional" knowledge and practices shaped by the programs’ conditions and incentives. These reconfigurations do not always align with the projects’ original intentions; rather, they often emerge from the farmers’ creative responses. These responses reflect an ongoing negotiation between their need for capital and their deep-rooted socio-ecological commitments and ethics, producing localized expressions of global agendas such as food security and biodiversity conservation. What emerges is a locally embedded and embodied form of biocultural diversity—an agrifood system through which farmers seek to nourish and heal both their territories (including all beings that inhabit them) and their own bodies.
Thus, this paper offers an ethnographic analysis of the negotiations, contradictions, and creative responses that are embedded and embodied in the Chilote agrifood world.