Session:
Biodiversity conservation: preventing flora and fauna from extinction
Abstract:
“Local (agro)biodiversity and food as social and cultural capital – beyond the labelling and marketing strategies”
(1) Dessislava Dimitrova, (1) Teodora Ivanova, (2) Radostina Doneva
1 Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
2 Association for Breeding and Preserving of the East Balkan Swine
Bulgarian agriculture today has a diabolic structure – a handful of big landowners, mainly grain-producing private holdings and numerous small, extensive, semi-subsistent mixed farms. The depopulation of Bulgarian rural areas in the last decades has accelerated, hence (traditional) agricultural livelihoods and local food production have been abandoned on a national scale, with the number of agricultural holdings under 2 ha reduced by nearly 10 times in the last 20 years. Private farmers cannot effectively sustain local plant and animal genetic resources that, in the past, contributed to the national food sovereignty and positive traditional image of rural areas.
The loss of animal and plant genetic resources results in loss of traditional knowledge related to them, as well as food diversity that has been part of the cultural identity of local communities. Additionally, contagious animal diseases have caused reduction and destruction of animal farms.
Most severely hit were the farms for East Balkan Swine, an ancient native breed the population of which decreased from ca. 5000 animals by 2018 to less than 300 at the moment. Despite the awareness of the disease and efforts to comply with biosecurity measures, the lack of state recovery plans and restrictive regulations have severely hampered Bulgarian farmers. We discuss possible opportunities and obstacles to small-scale farmers and food producers whose production and sustainable farming practices depend on genetic resources under threat.
Acknowledgements: This study is funded by the Bulgarian National Science Fund in the frame
of the KΠ-06-H066/11 “Traditional food practices—a basis for diversification of the food market and social innovation in rural areas” project.
About Dr. Dessislava Dimitrova
Dessislava Dimitrova is a senior scientist at the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She is a botanist with over 30 years of experience in systematics, taxonomy, and plant conservation.
Over the last 20 years of her career she focused on ethnobotany of wild and cultivated edible plants, assessment of local plant genetic resources and the related traditional knowledge.
Since 2004 she is the Bulgaria and Balkans coordinator for the international organisation Slow Food. This motivated her to expand her expertise on ethnobiology in general, and for over 10 years her attention has been attracted by the case of the East Balkan Swine. Together with Radostina Doneva, the leader of the breeding organisation for this breed, they elaborated the application for a PDO about the fresh meat from East Balkan Swine.
Regretfully, the African Swine Fever hit severely the herds of the breed and today their efforts are focused on the revitalisation of the breed and support of the breeders.