Potentializing Native Breeds: Conserving Genetic Cattle Diversity in the Netherlands

Abstract

Genebanks, established to counter the decline of biodiversity, preserve for potential use what is threatened with loss. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at the animal department of the Center for Genetic Resources, the Netherlands of Wageningen University & Research, I explore what it means in practice to conserve diversity, with a focus on conserving the genetic diversity of cattle. Drawing on literature on potentiality from STS and anthropology, I analyze how the conservation of cattle genetic diversity is potentialized based on two logics. The first logic is grounded in the politics of extinction and loss. Genetic material is frozen as “fire insurance” against the risk of declining breed populations and extinction. The second logic centers on the value of native and rare breeds whose characteristics are conserved to anticipate and produce ecologically sustainable futures. Genetic diversity is seen as a “painter's palette” or “toolbox” to breed “future-proof” cattle. By analyzing these logics, I contribute to understanding potentiality not merely as a latent quality of frozen life, but as actively shaped within the infrastructural and political conditions of genebanks, thereby shaping how bovine life is valued and which agricultural futures are made possible.