Minisymposium 5: 10,000 years of maize
Abs #
15004: Native maize farmers in the 21st century: local insights, global discussions
Traditionally based maize agriculture in the US and Mexico, practiced by predominantly ‘native’ farmers, have much in common: for example they are typically characterized by low resource household based production, operating outside of formal systems of plant and agricultural research and seed and grain markets. However these farmers represent opposite ends of maize production systems in their respective countries: in the US Hopi and Zuni farmers are among those sowing the less than 1% of US maize area with non hybrid, farm saved seed, while in Mexico small scale farms of native or mestizo households dominate the more than 80% of area sown to farm saved seed, with those numbers being even higher in predominantly indigenous areas such as the southern state of Oaxaca where over 93% of maize area is planted with farm saved, local maize. The Mexican case is more representative of global maize production where more than 50% of maize area is sown to such seeds. New interdisciplinary research is improving our understanding of the agronomic and genetic characteristics and sociocultural importance of these maize systems that have benefited little from formal scientific research. These local insights are valuable for contextualizing applied scientific research and informing global discussions including those concerning conservation of crop genetic resources, crop improvement for difficult and changing environments, and risk assessment regarding transgenes in these maize systems.
