![]() ![]() It takes maize (corn) as its central example, as it was changes in the landscapes of maize production, first in the United States and then across Latin America, which spurred an early international collaboration for the preservation of crop genetic diversity. This paper explores how knowledge of this dilemma - that is, the reliance of industrial agriculture on genetic diversity that it tends to destroy - shaped efforts to conserve biological diversity and simultaneously shaped the landscapes and genescapes of twentieth-century agriculture. Many breeders considered diverse landraces to be a valuable, and indeed essential, source of genetic material for their crop improvement efforts - and therefore an essential resource for the very system of agricultural production that appeared to threaten their continued existence. In the mid-twentieth century, American agriculturists began to fret about a growing threat to key economic crops: the loss or extinction of manifold local varieties, or landraces, resulting from the displacement of these in cultivation by recently introduced varieties that were better suited for industrial-style agriculture. Finally, we analyze a series of cases that allow us to show the type of seed banks we have proposed. From the functioning of seed banks and their objectives, we have identified three bank profiles: assistentialist, productivist and preservationist profiles. Afterwards, we study how seed banks are used. We analyze the knowledge involved in seed banks which turn them into more than just seeds reservoirs. First, we describe three stages which seed conservation has undergone until it became modern seed banks. As sources for that aim, in-depth interviews to seed banks referents, documents and other materials related to seed banks have been used. The aim of this study is to reconstruct the dynamics of operation of the different seed banks, developing a typology of them worth providing. However, little is known about the diversity of practices that are involved in them. In recent decades, seed banks have spread out worldwide as essential institutions for biodiversity preservation, like new Noah’s arks. ![]()
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