Maize and the Call of Place: Practicing Reciprocity through Local Crop Adaptation

In order to facilitate more sustainable ecological outcomes in food systems globally, locally appropriate practices are developing through the work of practitioners and communities in particular places. This dissertation focuses on local crop adaptation for low-input farming systems via open-pollinated plant breeding as one such locally appropriate practice, a practice which has been foundational to agriculture for thousands of years and also has the potential to result in more sustainable ecological outcomes for local and regional food systems initiatives in the present. Taking a place-based view of the ‘local,’ in this work, the dissertation implicitly embraces a relational definition of place, while seeking to better understand the motivations and goals of individuals who are practicing local crop adaptation for low-input systems. The three papers which comprise the dissertation work with local crop adaptation as a place-based practice, and focus on the relationships which constellate around and flow within local crop adaptation, and local food system initiatives more generally. The papers focus on open-pollinated corn, or maize (Zea mays) in the United States in particular, drawing on original in-depth qualitative interviews and emplaced research visits with local food system entrepreneurs and professional plant breeders, all of whom work with the local adaptation of open-pollinated maize. Local maize adaptation appears sequentially in these papers as 1) a socially embedded practice which connects practitioners across geographies through relationships with the practice itself, 2) an aesthetic and sensorial practice which motivates individual commitments to place-based agricultural sustainability, and 3) a multispecies creative practice and process which requires the navigating of messy and oftentimes agonistic place-based multispecies relationships. Across the three papers flows the theme of “call and response” – the ways in which a practitioner of local crop adaptation comes to develop responsiveness and (realize responsibilities) to maize, other species, and the land itself through the practice.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Geography

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Kansas

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Frederick, Andrew R.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Johnson, Jay T.

• local crop adaptation
• local food systems
• maize

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

https://www.proquest.com/LegacyDocView/DISSNUM/32239895

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:kuscholarworks.ku.edu:1808/37849