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Abstract
Interest is increasing worldwide in on-farm conservation as a component of a strategy to
conserve crop genetic resources. On-farm conservation may require outside support to
small-scale farmers in areas of crop domestication and diversity. This paper argues that crop
infraspecific diversity maintained by farming households in these areas results from the
interplay between demand and supply for this diversity (i.e., its loss may be demand- or
supply-related). In the first instance, interventions should be aimed at increasing the value
of crop diversity for farmers or decreasing the farm-level opportunity costs of maintaining
diversity. In the second instance, interventions should decrease the transaction costs of
accessing crop diversity. It may be difficult, however, to distinguish in empirical research,
whether the constraints to diversity are demand- or supply-related. Therefore the process of
supporting on-farm conservation should be kept as open as possible and both demand and
supply interventions should be available.