Schriften zu Genetischen Ressourcen - Genres

M. CHAUVET
Crops appear as fundamental cultural and historical markers. I was recently asked why
DE CANDOLLE’s work was still so popular more than a century after its publication. The
reason lies there: by bringing crop science into its cultural and historical context, DE
CANDOLLE recognized crops as partners of the evolution of our societies. Geneticists
now complain that they are often perceived as playing God and creating monsters. Perhaps
what the public means by that is that plants are not mere raw biological material,
but also an integral part of our cultural heritage. If we want to communicate with consumers
and citizens, we have to integrate both approaches.
Political and ethical output
When compiling information on the history of crops, I progressively discovered that most
books were incredibly chauvinist. As a European, it was quite easy for me to observe
this attitude when reading books written in the United States, which implicitly consider
that history really begins with the introduction of the species into United States, whereas
for me, these events are quite late avatars in a long sequence, except of course for
American crops such as Phaseolus beans, maize and pumpkins. The problem is that
Europeans usually do the same, starting from only a couple of centuries earlier. Most
popular histories of the potato begin with the ‘discovery’ of the potato by Spanish conquerors,
and French writers dedicate half of their texts to the role of Parmentier, who
was indeed a great agronomist, but played a limited role in the spread of potato, in
spite of the legend that was built later by Republican militants.
Chauvinism is not a particularity of Westerners. Most peoples on earth give themselves
an outstanding role in the evolution of crop plants. With the ongoing globalisation and
the cultural conflicts we are facing now, reivindications have arisen through the Convention
on Biological Diversity and the new Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources. Diplomats
from the South argue that crops have been stolen or pirated, and that their countries
have to be ‘compensated’ for that unequal exchange. This atmosphere of mistrust will
probably last for a long time.
One thing we can do at least is documenting how the different peoples on earth have
domesticated, selected and used plants, and how through millennia of dispersal and
evolution, we have now at our disposal such a genetic and cultural diversity. Making
available to a broad public such kinds of syntheses may help to show that we are all
interdependent, and that we have to behave as good custodians of this common heritage.
All the peoples may be proud of their contribution.
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