Agrobiodiversity on the Ground: Ethnicity and Indigenous Knowledge between Discourse and Practice

Indigenous knowledge plays a crucial role in agrobiodiversity conservation, both globally and in China. However, integrating local ecological knowledge into national and international conservation frameworks raises epistemic and governance challenges. Taking the conservation and breeding of traditional crop varieties in a Naxi village in Southwest China as a case study, this paper examines how ethnicity and indigenous knowledge are framed and enacted across national policy, NGO advocacy, and local farming practice. Results show that national agrobiodiversity conservation strategies value traditional knowledge but do not recognize the cultural specificity of individual ethnic groups, whereas NGO narratives are explicitly anchored in indigenous human–nature relations. Locally, however, farmers' engagement with agrobiodiversity appears to be driven less by ethnicity itself than by place attachment, a sense of belonging, and sensory and health-related values. By analyzing these dynamics, the paper highlights contrasting ways of seeing and practicing agrobiodiversity and ethnicity at different discursive and material levels.