Notas para una aproximación antropológica a los bancos de semillas locales

Advances in genetic biotechnology and neoliberal market policies have opened new spaces for the big multinational firms’ interests, such as seeds. A process of appropriation, valuation, legislation and representation is taking place around these “interior territories”. At the same time, locally different answers are given and different initiatives are taken all around the world for genetic and cultural biodiversity and knowledge preservation, in the form of local seed banks. One of these initiatives, impelled by Galtzagorriak voluntaries group and EHNE agrarian syndicate, is carried out in the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve under the specific legislation of the Reserve’s Use and Management Plan. Social and cultural anthropology gives us different points of view for the analysis of the multiple sides of this environmental problem in its social, cultural, political and representational aspects. These notes are an outline of a theoretical approach to these phenomena.