Living, dwindling, losing, finding: Status and changes in agrobiodiversity of Cotacachi

The ninth chapter of the book examines the modern and historic relationship between indigenous and European mechanisms for production. Historically, native production methods have been viewed as primitive and backward. As such, local crops have only been produced by limited numbers of indigenous smallholders to make room for large scale production of commercial crops. Moreover, knowledge of how to cultivate these indigenous crops is steadily decreasing as more people turn to modern methods of production and traditional farmers age without teaching their children to grow the native species. As a result, Cotacachi has seen significant decline in agrobiodiversity. This chapter explores this tension through examining a wide variety of indigenous crops.