Elkana: Reviving the Caucasus's Lost Wheat

Founded in 1994, Elkana is a farmer union that promotes organic and agroecological farming across Georgia, with a seed-bank demonstration farm on the high Samtskhe-Javakheti plateau in the Lesser Caucasus that conserves 188 varieties across 14 species of indigenous Georgian wheat once nearly erased by Soviet-era monoculture policy. The farm functions as a living gene bank, letting local and highland farmers grow out these landraces for grain that is both climate-adapted to Georgia's mountain valleys and increasingly sought after commercially. Elkana has grown from 9 founding farmers to a network of more than 2,000 farmers, cooperatives and rural enterprises nationwide, and helped shape Georgia's National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans.