Capital Seeds and Hybrid Landscapes

Abstract

Seeds contain much more than genetic information, as they are constantly reconfigured according to continual interactions between various actors. Non-corporate farmers, economists, engineers, agronomists, governmental officials, and agricultural industries engage in networks of knowledge, agricultural technologies, and seed exchange, transforming seeds, embodying them with new practices, and thus shaping new landscapes and new identities. The study of corn (Zea mays L.) in Portugal, its arrival since the fifteenth century, its spread and naturalization, as well as the process of its industrialization in the second half of the twentieth century, allows us to discuss the landscape as a palimpsest where identities have their roots.