ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relationship between accounts of agrobiodiversity loss and interventions into the conservation, use, and control of crop germplasm. In recent decades, a great deal of research has sought to empirically assess changes in agrobiodiversity during the twentieth century. Here we argue that efforts to explain and theorize the erosion of crop diversity—while often tracking real instances of diversity loss or emergence—also possess a narrative power. Like other accounts of environmental change, accounts of agrobiodiversity loss define which relationships, processes, and events are relevant and significant to understanding changes in crop diversity. By empowering some explanations and disempowering others, accounts of agrobiodiversity loss often describe real socioecological processes at the same time that they communicate additional stories about social and environmental change. Here we consider how this narrative dimension of agrobiodiversity loss intersects with efforts to regulate crop diversity. Particularly, we consider how the narrative capacity of accounts of agrobiodiversity loss has shaped initiatives to conserve crop diversity through both in situ and ex situ measures at the same time that it has prompted calls to regulate the innovation of crop diversity through intellectual property.
