Baladi Seeds in the oPt: Populations as Objects of Preservation and Units of Analysis

Abstract

AbstractThis essay argues that shortcomings in our approaches to global agriculture and its data infrastructures are attributable in part to a constricted application of population concepts derived from biological sciences in the context of international development. Using Palestine as a case study, this chapter examines the category of baladi seeds as a community-generated characterization of population, and one which arguably defies reduction to data. Drawing on quantitative research on farmer participation in informal seed production for wheat in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) and oral histories of farmers in the West Bank, this chapter analyzes the relation between participatory plant breeding initiatives, heritage narratives, and international agricultural research in rendering baladi seeds legible for archiving. It considers the multiple technological practices through which these institutions characterize and manage access to cultivated seeds, and how they differently approach problems of standardization, scalability, and variability. Through case studies of national and local seed saving initiatives, it asks, in turn, whether baladi seeds can be reduced to data, how they might be reduced to data, and whether they should be reduced to data.