The Race to Preserve The World's Oldest Weed Strains

Great Moments in Weed History

David Bienenstock

Tv & Film, Comedy, History

4.8 • 659 Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2021

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In remote areas of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Southeast Asia, indigenous farmers cultivate cannabis on small plots that date back centuries. Maintaining their precious landrace strains has been an uphill battle in an age of rapid industrialization, but now the effort to preserve this living cultural and botanical history has gone global. The Indian Landrace Exchange is a a grassroots, locally-led, globally crowdsourced effort to support these traditional cannabis-growing communities while preserving some of the oldest cannabis strains on Earth before they're lost forever. In this episode, Abdullah and Bean speak with @irrazinig—co-founder of the Indian Landrace Exchange—about growing up surrounded by post-colonial cannabis, making a fateful trek to "the Humboldt County of India," and forming a mutually beneficial bridge between indigenous communities and the world of legal weed. SUPPORT "GREAT MOMENTS IN WEED HISTORY" ON PATREON Sign up for our Great Moments in Weed History Patreon for special bonuses and fun surprises PLEASE VISIT OUR SPONSORS! This episode is brought to you by Tweedle Farms, Northwest Oregon's premier, family owned hemp farm, specializing in farm-to-table, terpene rich, high CBD hemp flower, concentrates, vapes, edibles and topicals. Use promo code “greatmoments” for 20% off your next order shipped anywhere in the United States.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, how's it going, folks? It's Abdullah and Bean. And welcome back for another episode of
0:06.0	Great Moments in Weed History. We have a very special guest on the podcast today. One of the
0:12.6	founders of an organization called Indian Land Race Exchange, which works to preserve ancient land race
0:20.1	genetics and communities.
0:22.3	And if you follow them on Instagram, just type in Indian Land Race Exchange and you'll find it.
0:27.3	You'll see all kinds of beautiful pictures of cannabis plants and cannabis concentrates,
0:33.2	hash that's made in traditional methods.
0:35.3	And it is absolutely beautiful.
0:38.0	Indian Land Race Exchange really reminds us that the birthplace of cannabis culture is
0:44.1	South Asia and Central Asia.
0:46.1	This is where cannabis first originated and how it first became intermingled with human
0:51.6	cultures.
0:52.0	So we're really thankful to people like our guest,
0:56.0	Irazin, who is engaged in preserving this history. Isn't that right being? Oh, yeah. You mentioned
1:01.3	those beautiful, beautiful pictures on the Instagram, but I think what we both discovered is the
1:06.7	story of this organization is even more beautiful or as beautiful as those photos. I did a piece on
1:13.7	them for Leafley, just a shout out to Leafly for supporting my journalism. And I want to read a
1:18.7	little piece of it to set up this episode for everybody because it talks about how there's been
1:23.7	attempts to locate, preserve, and proliferate these ancient strains, but most such
1:29.8	efforts have been led by geographical and cultural outsiders, oftentimes driven more by profits
1:36.4	than by preservation.
1:38.4	But over the past five years, this grassroots, locally-led, globally crowdsourced effort has emerged to help to fend and support
	...

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