Commoditizing Agrobiodiversity and the Tensions in the Culinary Valorization of Indigenous Food in Southeast Asia

A constellation of global food trends emerged in recent decades around locality, distinction, and sustainability that has generated interest for indigenous food systems and traditional agri-food products. Prominently, this has drawn attention to heirloom crop and livestock species, raw fermentation, wild edible plants, and historical culinary practices—especially those associated with traditional food systems. From the perspective of cultural preservation or reproduction, this is a promising phenomenon that encourages protection and refinement of the nutritional, agricultural, and cultural heritage, but like all trends of commercialization and/or globalization, it also inheres common risks. In particular, ethnic minority groups, who are often the stewards of wild edible plant and botanical knowledge, are increasingly drawn into the global trends for distinction and singularity of rare foods, raising the prospects of over-harvesting or culinary gentrification. This research analyzes the experiences of eco-tourism home cooks, food social media stars, and celebrity chefs who are taking advantage of the indigenous frame to promote their cuisine, while also encountering the challenges of ethically valorizing traditional food systems. Avoiding colonialist and classist pitfalls associated with past interactions with rural groups is proving to be difficult even for domestic actors in Southeast Asian countries, as colonial narratives of culinary culture and taste often reduce rural expertise to rudimentary cooking frames, while reserve refinement for urban entrepreneurs and media stars. While know-how may be marginalized in favor of media-ready exhibitions, there remains a shared veneration of wild, seasonal and regional ingredients. Attaching agrobiodiverse ingredients to global trends in heritage and wild foods helps these ingredients, for better or worse, transcend, and often to leave behind, their historical rural stewards. This raises the question of whether biodiversity can meaningfully be elevated if the stewards of the lands and their knowledge are marginalized.