"Globally important agricultural heritage transmitters? Not my son" - Shiitake farmers speak about experiences with heritagization and their loss in rural China

Abstract

A growing number of traditional agricultural systems around the world have been designated Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS), as they are exemplars of the accumulated wisdom of human communities and their close relationship with the local ecology. Heritage inscription is a strategy used to conserve and increase awareness of this inheritance. For centuries, traditional farmers have developed diverse and locally adapted agricultural systems, managing them with ingenious practices that often result in both community food security and the conservation of agrobiodiversity. This strategy of minimizing risk stabilizes yields, promotes dietary diversity, and maximizes returns using low levels of technology and limited resources. However, in China, most of the younger generation from the agricultural heritage site has no intention to return to the farm, even after their home town has been listed as GIAHS. Drawing on actor-network theory and based on the experience of shiitake farmers in Qingyuan, Zhejiang who specialize in traditional shiitake farming, this study demonstrates how the authorized heritage discourse, dominated by the science-aesthetic expertise, affects the process and impact of heritagization. My study shows that most of the agricultural transmitters have been excluded from the heritage actor-network. On one hand, the heritage inscription process of shiitake farming in Qingyuan has created a new form of identity and economic, culture and moral capital for the scientists, government officers, cultural elite, and shiitake processing and trading merchants. On the other hand, the shiitake agricultural heritage transmitters (farmers) have been structurally and socially discriminated against in the urbanization, industrialization and heritagization process, leading to destabilization of the heritage network and thus putting the heritage sustainability at risk.