Conceived as a project by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Neglected crops: 1492 from a different perspective was copublished with the Botanical Garden of Córdoba, Spain. This cooperation came about as a result of the "Etnobotánica 92" congress, convened in September 1992 by the Botanical Garden and the City of Córdoba. The contents and aims of the congress were fully consistent with the sentiment behind the planned publication which would thus serve as an initial protocol for discussion at a symposium on neglected crops, oriented towards defining priorities, designing new projects for researching and improving these crops and planning strategies to finance them.
The aim of the book is to analyse the present situation and the prospects for improving certain traditional crops that were more important in other times and have now either been completely forgotten or relegated to a marginal role. After discussing the repercussions that 1492 had on natural resources and ways of life, both in America and Spain, the discovery of America and successive eras are studied, not as historic events that gave rise to a great genetic and cultural flow but, on the contrary, as possible immediate or delayed causes of certain crops being neglected.
The concept of a neglected or "marginalized" species in agricultural terms needs to be made clear. It basically refers to cultivated crops and therefore excludes those species which, in spite of their possible ethnobotanical or economic interest, are taken directly from their wild populations. They are crops which, at other times and under other conditions, were of greater importance in traditional agriculture and in the diets of indigenous peoples and other local communities. It does not necessarily imply promising crops. This is because they have already been cultivated and because the aim of their reinstatement is not to convert them into crops for intensive cultivation or export. Marginalized crops are those whose use and productivity need to be considerably increased as a means of raising the living conditions and improving the diet of ethnic groups and populations accustomed to living in economic systems that have engaged little interchange.
Four main sections of this book basically deal with Latin America, where three areas of anthropological action are identified, corresponding to the three main centres of phytogenetic diversity and origin of agricultural experiments: Mesoamerica, the Andean region and the Amazon. In keeping with the general approach of "Etnobotánica 92" - organized to analyse the consequences of 500 years of genetic and ethnobotanical exchanges between the two sides of the Atlantic - it seemed logical to include a final section on the marginalization of crops in Spain and its possible connection with 1492.