Genebanks serve as both providers of valuable traits to breeding programs as well as repositories of diverse crop genetic material representing society’s agricultural heritage. Using a lab-in-the-field experiment, we investigate how smallholder rice farmers in Côte d’Ivoire value having access to both new, advanced rice varieties containing genebank materials as well as landraces or farmers’ varieties of African rice (Oryza glaberrima) maintained in the genebank of the Rice Biodiversity Center for Africa. We use a Becker-Degroot-Marschak (BDM) mechanism to elicit farmer willingness-to-pay for small amounts of seed of advanced rice varieties developed by AfricaRice as well as African rice landraces conserved in the AfricaRice genebank. In addition, we investigate whether farmers appreciate option and bequest values provided by the conservation of rice genetic diversity. We find that farmers generally value having access to African rice landraces at roughly the same level as for advanced rice varieties, and that most farmers are willing to pay something to maintain future option and bequest values associated with the conservation of rice varietal diversity. These findings demonstrate the value provided by the conservation of African rice landrace varieties in terms of safeguarding the ability of farmers to cultivate them in the future, and not just through the provision of inputs to the breeding process.