Ordinary and Extraordinary : Heritage plants and their farmers

This thesis explores how Swedish farmers, who have chosen to farm with heritage plant varieties, motivate their choices and how they as a result of their choices view themselves as farmers. This is investigated against present and future challenges regarding food security and the loss of agricultural biodiversity and biocultural heritage, which, in order to be faced, will require a wider range of plants in cultivation. To find out why farmers make certain choices is vital if we are to make necessary structural changes within the agricultural sector. The farmers’ motives are broad and they are, based on the concept of hybridity, presented and analysed through the categories memory, identity and reciprocity. These motives are also closely linked to how they view themselves as farmers. The findings are further interpreted through the concept of biocultural refugia, which is a means of studying how certain places can harbour different species while simultaneously being an area for sustainable food production. In this thesis biocultural refugia represents how the respondents are part of creating and maintaining diversity within plant cultivation and its surrounding practices. This diversity will be required in order for agriculture to handle current challenges in a sustainable way