Peanut diversity management by the Kaiabi (Tupi Guarani) indigenous people, Brazilian Amazon.

摘要

This dissertation examines how indigenous peoples in the Amazon use, create, manage, and recover crop diversity using peanut management among the Kaiabi Indians as a case study. Beyond biological and economic explanations, historical, social and cultural values affect the use and conservation of crop resources. Sacred lessons from spiritual domains inform agricultural practices and influence agrodiversity management, including selection of new varieties. Shamans may exhort ordinary people to uphold such lessons. At the same time, cross-cultural interactions and changes internal to indigenous societies push transformations in knowledge about crop diversity and in the repertoire of varieties cultivated in the fields. Responses to these forces of permanence and change are local-, and culture-specific, and may incorporate the promotion of historical events related to cultural revival, including the recovery of crop diversity.;This research applied both quantitative and qualitative methods to explore these issues. Results show that currently Kaiabi elders and female individuals hold greater knowledge about the names for peanut varieties and crop diversity, but some female youth also showed similar levels of knowledge. Agrodiversity management is performed through the interaction of expanded and nuclear families. Therefore, not all nuclear families cultivate peanut, and knowledge varies within families. Among those cultivating peanut, few families held the most crop diversity while the majority of farmers kept only a small number of varieties. The findings of this research also suggest that individuals who still select new peanut varieties based on spiritual lessons were able to maintain knowledge about agrodiversity. Moreover, their families cultivate more diversified fields. A village where the shaman guides the initiative to recover crop diversity presented a greater number of newly created peanut varieties. This village was the most important source of seeds of both traditional and new varieties to other families and places, too.;Ideally, crop diversity should be maintained at different places, because of the risk involved in concentrating most varieties in a few fields. Therefore, an external backup system is needed to more efficiently protect crop varieties. However, essential components of the indigenous seed management system such as spiritual values, social organization, and the knowledge associated with managing crop diversity cannot be captured by ex situ approaches. Hence, a combination of in situ and ex situ approaches would be most suitable to promote the conservation of agrodiversity. However, due to their historical exploitation by non-indigenous interests and current issues about germplasm ownership, indigenous peoples raise resistance to the collection of their crop varieties. To conserve crop diversity and maintain a productive physical environment for indigenous peoples, it is essential to promote appropriate policies. Such policies should enhance the chances of upholding indigenous socio-cultural settings and the landscape in which agrodiversity is generated, managed, and evolves through time. Also, it is necessary to include fair mechanisms for sharing the benefits arising from the use of indigenous crop diversity and the associated knowledge in modern agriculture. This way, native peoples can better balance their tradition with influences coming from a globalized world.