Endangered Maize

"Many people worry that we're losing genetic diversity in the foods we eat. Over the past century, crop varieties standardized for industrial agriculture have increasingly dominated farm fields. Concerned about what this transition means for the future of food, scientists, farmers, and eaters have sought to protect crop plants they consider endangered. They have organized high-tech genebanks and heritage seed swaps. They have combed fields for ancient landraces and sought farmers growing Indigenous varieties. Behind this widespread concern for the loss of plant diversity lies another extinction narrative about the survival of farmers themselves, a story that is often obscured by urgent calls to collect and preserve. Endangered Maize draws on the rich history of corn in Mexico and the United States to trace the motivations behind these hidden extinction stories and show how they shaped the conservation strategies adopted by scientists, states, and citizens. In Endangered Maize, historian Helen Anne Curry investigates more than a hundred years of agriculture and conservation practices to understand the tasks that farmers and researchers have considered essential to maintaining crop diversity. Through the contours of efforts to preserve diversity in one of the world's most important crops, Curry reveals how conservationists forged their methods around expectations of social, political, and economic transformations that would eliminate diverse communities and cultures. In this fascinating study of how cultural narratives shape science, Curry argues for new understandings of endangerment and alternative strategies to protect and preserve crop diversity"--

"Many people worry that we're losing genetic diversity in the foods we eat. Over the past century, crop varieties standardized for industrial agriculture have increasingly dominated farm fields. Concerned about what this transition means for the future of food, scientists, farmers, and eaters have sought to protect crop plants they consider endangered. They have organized high-tech genebanks and heritage seed swaps. They have combed fields for ancient landraces and sought farmers growing Indigenous varieties. Behind this widespread concern for the loss of plant diversity lies another extinction narrative about the survival of farmers themselves, a story that is often obscured by urgent calls to collect and preserve. Endangered Maize draws on the rich history of corn in Mexico and the United States to trace the motivations behind these hidden extinction stories and show how they shaped the conservation strategies adopted by scientists, states, and citizens. In Endangered Maize, historian Helen Anne Curry investigates more than a hundred years of agriculture and conservation practices to understand the tasks that farmers and researchers have considered essential to maintaining crop diversity. Through the contours of efforts to preserve diversity in one of the world's most important crops, Curry reveals how conservationists forged their methods around expectations of social, political, and economic transformations that would eliminate diverse communities and cultures. In this fascinating study of how cultural narratives shape science, Curry argues for new understandings of endangerment and alternative strategies to protect and preserve crop diversity"--

Around the world, farmers' livelihoods and food security have eroded in the past 20 years. Increasing reliance on markets and modern technology has not generated universal farm affluence. Neoliberalism has brought about rural depopulation in the northern hemisphere, rising rural poverty in the southern, and environmental problems all around the farming world. Farmgate prices have stagnated since the 1980s, while market-driven growth has encouraged production of agricultural exports and increasing use of chemical inputs. Trade liberalization is often biased against southern and small farmers, while the power of transnational corporations in agricultural trade and farm technology has grown by leaps and bounds. The corporate-driven GM-food revolution has had little positive effect on farm livelihoods or food security. The book calls for farm policies founded on farmer-led food security and a democratization of the global institutions that have had such detrimental effects.

The world trade of plants and plant products is gradually increasing in both quantity and variety. Also, as more and more citizens are nowadays travelling to distant destinations, there is an increased risk of unintentionally importing harmful organisms and invasive species. Governments respond to increased phytosanitary risks by imposing trade-restricting measures. However, they are under increasing pressure of the private sector and the World Trade Organization to justify costly and trade-restricting phytosanitary policies. On the other side, current phytosanitary policies are required to account for impacts on the environment. This book presents a number of recent scientific developments regarding the economic analysis of impacts that harmful organisms have on agriculture and the environment, and of measures to control these organisms. It also contains a number of new approaches that integrate economic and epidemiological modelling and economic approaches for measuring these impacts.