Tevis "Garrett" Graddy is a fourth year doctoral student in Geography at UK, conducting research on agricultural biodiversity, in situ conservation, and grassroots initiatives to circulate and cultivate explicitly "heirloom"/"native" landrace plant varieties in Appalachia and the Andes.

Related interests are: the political ecology/environmental justice of seeds, emergent local or subsistent agricultural economies, and the domestic art and science of semi-subsistent food (re)production. These subjects encompass a reconsideration of what constitutes rural "development" as well as a consideration of the theologies, cosmologies, or ecological epistemologies motivating the saving of old seed and the knowledges therein.

Accordingly, the dissertation has come to focus in particular on the de-valuing, re-valuing, and evaluation of the 'traditional'/'local' ecological knowledges of saving seed.
This research looks at two networks of seed savers, centered around the respective, educational hubs of the Sustainable Mountain Agricultural Center of Berea, KY (www.heirlooms.org) and the Potato Park of Pisaq, Peru (www.andes.org.pe). Such a multi-site study aims to locate parallels and divergences between Appalachian and Andean seed-saving practices and discourses, so as to contribute to a burgeoning inter-local conversation regarding the root causes of agricultural biodiversity loss ( www.totorkawa.blogspot.com).

Advisors: Sue Roberts, Tad Mutersbaugh. Committee: Anna Secor, Sarah Lyon (Anthropology). WIth thanks to: Betsy Taylor (Geography, VTech), Wolfgang Natter (Geography, VTech), Mark Williams (Agriculture, UK), Keiko Tanaka (Rural Sociology, UK).