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Seed Sharing in Amazonian Indigenous Rain Forest Communities: a Social Network Analysis in three Achuar Villages, Peru

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Abstract

Farmer-to-farmer seed transfers are important for plant domestication, the dissemination of improved crops and in building and maintaining agricultural diversity. Seed sharing may be conceptualized as networks through which planting material flows and landraces are disseminated and conserved. To date, research on seed sharing networks has focused on sociograms and network measures to describe their structure and key actors within them; their bivariate or multivariate correlates have been studied using conventional statistics. We conducted a study of home garden agrobiodiversity and seed networks in three Achuar communities along the upper Corrientes River in Peru. We examine the distribution of home garden crop species within and across communities and apply multivariate techniques within Social Network Analysis (SNA) to analyse the formation and structure of seed networks and to identify key actors in seed sharing. Of particular interest is the relationship among crop diversity, farmer expertise, kinship, and seed sharing behavior. Our results point to the importance of kinship relations, community size, and the ‘knowledge-plant transfer’ nexus in shaping seed networks.

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Notes

  1. For example, crops such as barley (Abay et al. 2011; Jensen et al. 2013), millet (Allinne et al. 2008), sorghum (Barnaud et al. 2008; McGuire 2008; Labeyrie et al. 2015), wheat (Bishaw et al. 2010; Thomas et al. 2012), rice (Subedi et al. 2003), potatoes (Zimmerer 2003), quinoa (Fuentes et al. 2012) and manioc (Dyer et al. 2011; Delêtre et al. 2011; Fu et al. 2014).

  2. An important social institution throughout Latin America, compadrazgo literally means co-parenthood and is typically related to the Catholic practice of infant baptism. Importantly and beyond religious commitments and secular practices, compadrazgo represents an important relation between the godparents and the parent of the child (Killick 2008).

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Acknowledgments

This study was conducted with the financial assistance of the Fonds pour la Formation de Chercheurs et l’Aide à la Recherche (FCAR), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the University of Toronto and McGill University. The managers, field staff, and medical team of Pluspetrol deserve warm thanks for their logistic and medical support in the field. Our deepest gratitude to Jaime Salazar, Reynerio Macahuachi, and the residents of Pucacuro, Valencia and Santa Rosa, whose trust, hospitality, and unfailing patience made this study possible. Dylan Shaul provided invaluable research assistance with UCINET and GEPHI at the University of Toronto. We thank J. Pablo Arroyo-Mora for creating the map of the study area. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2013 Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Los Angeles. This paper benefited from comments and suggestions from the audience. Finally, we also thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

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  1. Department of Geography and School of the Environment, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G3, Canada

    Christian Abizaid

  2. Department of Geography, McGill University, Montreal, QC, H3A0B9, Canada

    Oliver T. Coomes

  3. Independent Scholar, Lyon, 01150, France

    Mathilde Perrault-Archambault

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  1. Christian Abizaid
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Correspondence to Christian Abizaid.

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This study was funded by the Fonds pour la Formation de Chercheurs et l’Aide à la Recherche (FCAR), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), McGill University and the University of Toronto.

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Abizaid, C., Coomes, O.T. & Perrault-Archambault, M. Seed Sharing in Amazonian Indigenous Rain Forest Communities: a Social Network Analysis in three Achuar Villages, Peru. Hum Ecol 44, 577–594 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-016-9852-7

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