The ReSEED Project celebrates in November 2021 the third anniversary of a research path taken in a long-term and transdisciplinary perspective. Starting from the first one, you can ask: how far the project goes back to define this investigation as a long-term one?

The precise number of years/decades/centuries is not what necessarily determines it but how a particular process can be tracked over time. If one looks at short periods, it is like having a photograph. Starting in the 1920s in France, the so-called Les Annales school used the idea of long-term analysis in opposition to the history of the single events: instead, they pointed out the need to look for the permanent structures of the past or the very slow changes. Long-term investigation allows seeing a motion picture that can lead to a better understanding of the “present picture”.

It is also about crossing boundaries of the conventional subdivisions of the human eras. It means to fit the time span of the research to the object to be studied and not to the pre-defined frames, for example, of the Ancient, Middle Ages, Modern or Contemporary periods.

Excavation of an ancient Roman city, Egitânia, in present-day Idanha-a-Velha (Portugal) in July 2021. Archaeological data about what was planted or consumed in the Ancient Age may be revealing for our studies of agriculture and food in the last centuries.

A long-term perspective is significant to give suitable answers to questions whose factors depend on long-term variables. It can be understood as a complementary (and also necessary) approach to the short-term investigation.  In the case of the ReSEED project, landscape, ecological, social, economic, genetic or agronomic changes are at the core of the research. They take place slowly over time, thus having a wide look back is key for several reasons. First, it improves the comprehension of how these changes led to present cultivation practices and food habits, the current landscapes, and agrobiodiversity. Second, it may help to recognize what has been lost and what can still be preserved. Moreover, understanding processes of ecological, genetic and social changes – and their interconnections – can be helpful to propose more successful policies aiming at achieving sustainable development.

The project’s chronology is intertwined with the agriculture trajectory. Agricultural changes in general, and biotechnological innovations in particular, related to the selection, improvement, and adaptation of cultivated seeds, have a history of a few millennia. It involves a conception and transmission of theoretical and, above all, empirical knowledge: that is useful to look at as long-term heritages. Furthermore, as we are realising, the Iberian Peninsula has been crossed by dynamics and events whose causes and consequences can only be fully understood when seen over a long period.

The statue, in Cádiz (Spain), says that Lucio Junio Moderato Columela is the “Prince of agriculture writers”. Columela was born in the first years of the 1st century A.D where today the city of Cádiz is located. His writings have influenced agricultural studies up to recent centuries: the analysis of ancient books can be very relevant as well to the ReSEED research.

Not only long-term: transdisciplinarity is needed

The achievements of the ReSEED Project depend not only on the long-term perspectives but also on the merging of natural and social sciences: ecological, genetic and social dynamics are both interconnected. You cannot fully understand the history of agrarian changes without having fair knowledge of economics, botany, biology, genomics, archaeology, and other disciplines. The study of the selection and crossbreeding of the seeds has demands that go beyond the historiographic analytical tools. It is important to count on other disciplines’ knowledge and their methods.

The possibilities of crossing centuries using transdisciplinarity have also been explored through the participation of the ReSEED team in new projects promoted by different institutions. In recent months, some have taken off and others have been approved. Our research is benefiting from several data and discussions: crossing the ancient DNA of the grape seeds with the vine varieties that continue to distinguish Iberian wines; collecting soil samples to identify what was cultivated in previous centuries; characterization of infrastructure for storage and processing of agricultural products.

The ReSEED team is also currently part of the recently-created research group named “Changing landscapes. Long-term LAB” in the Centre of Interdisciplinary Studies (University of Coimbra). It has a transdisciplinary basis and focuses on the study of the impact of human action on landscapes in a long-term perspective.

Studying landscapes implies the interconnection of essential elements such as community, territory, natural resources, identity, or heritage. As the analysis of these elements requires inter and transdisciplinary approaches, the research group focuses on experimental research, allowing theoretically and empirically robust (re)interpretations of the past. It aims to combine different disciplines that have not worked together as much as necessary.

Technical visit to the National Plant Breeding Station in Elvas (Portugal) in May 2021: the exchange of experiences between the agronomists and the project researchers was essential to understand the processes of breeding and seed selection and how the methods used by farmers decades ago have been adapted.

The investigation group reflects the ReSEED vocation to collaborate with other areas of knowledge and to integrate their outputs or methodologies in its analysis. It is no coincidence that several members of the new group are archaeologists. Archaeology is one of the sciences that have been analysing seeds in the past, going beyond the limits of its objects of study and forcing itself to collaborate with genetics and botany to go deep on the interpretation of such remains. 

These opportunities to collaborate with researchers from different sciences are very useful for our next steps. After one year of delays, ReSEED is preparing the field-work phase: three case studies will be carried out in the Iberian Peninsula. When connecting to organizations and people within rural contexts, a two-way exchange is established. Researchers get closer to the real concerns of people on the ground, beyond paper and theory, crossing the academic-community distance.  It is an important layer of transdisciplinarity: an investigation also connected to the real agricultural contexts, the present, and its challenges, the reason why we look back and merge with different disciplines. We have always in mind one of the project’s initial questions: can past knowledge help find solutions to current challenges related to food security, agrobiodiversity, and inequality?