[Scpg] [permaculture] (fwd) Turning the world upside down: Genetic security in native seed-baskets

[Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson]

Hi everyone
        just a short note, this is the area that was describe in the 
Permaculture Video called Global Gardener with Bill Mollison
							wes
Date:         Mon, 1 Jul 2002 10:26:19 +0200
  Reply-To:     wiegand at lufa-speyer.de
  Sender:       Sustainable Agriculture Network Discussion Group
                <SANET-MG at LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU>
  From:         Klaus Wiegand <wiegand at LUFA-SPEYER.DE>
  Organization: LUFA Speyer
  Subject:      Turning the world upside down

  the article below, from the india together website, focuses on
  Lakshmi and the work of the Deccan Development Society (DDS) -
  an organisation which, as the article says, "is turning ecologically-
  smart, people-centred agriculture into living reality, and
  demonstrating daily that high-technology, capital-intensive farming
  is unnecessary and inappropriate for hundreds of millions of the
  world's poorest people."  maybe a bit long to read, but a quite nice
  example for SUSTAINability
---
  http://www.indiatogether.org/agriculture/dds/upsidedown.htm

  Turning the world upside down

  Genetic security in native seed-baskets

  May 2002: As a dalit, Lakshmi is at the very bottom of India's
  hierarchy of castes. It wasn't long ago that people from Lakshmi's
  background were seen by many as fit for only the most menial jobs
  and not even worthy of a name. But one of the most influential
  agricultural scientists in the country, M. S. Swaminathan, a
  pioneer of hybrid rice and regarded as the father of the 'Green
  Revolution', will soon be beating a path to her door in the tiny
  village of Humnapur in Andhra Pradesh.

  When [the author] visited her, Lakshmi set out on her modest front
  porch a cornucopia that may hold nothing less than a key to the
  future of farming if it is to be just and sustainable. From simple
  woven baskets and clay pots she brought out more than eighty
  varieties of seeds - part of one of the richest and most diverse
  agricultural heritages in the world.

  When he drops by, Professor Swaminathan will see that this
  'community gene bank' is part of a larger picture: Lakshmi
  manages the seeds for her sangham - a voluntary association of
  poor women. And her sangham is one of seventy five, each
  comprising around a sixty families, in the Deccan Development
  Society (DDS) - an organisation which is turning ecologically-
  smart, people-centred agriculture into living reality, and
  demonstrating daily that high-technology, capital-intensive farming
  is unnecessary and inappropriate for hundreds of millions of the
  world's poorest people.

  Along with the community gene banks, which they stock and
  control, the women of DDS have established their own food
  security systems, with grain stores in each village that they control
  and manage themselves.  To support their efforts, a local farm
  science centre brings together and organises traditional knowledge
  and helps develop fertilisers and pesticides from natural sources
  such as the neem tree.

  DDS has also built a 'green school' where dalit children, who
  otherwise face a life of little more than bonded labour, learn
  practical, income-generating skills as well as academic subjects
  that allow them to enter 'mainstream' society should they want to
  do so. And DDS is training women in radio and video production so
  that they can tell their stories to the wider world. Some of these
  new video makers are travelling as far as Peru to share their
  knowledge of ecological agriculture, or 'permaculture', and to learn
  from others.

  "The fact that dalit women, who are poor, illiterate and
  marginalised, can manage such complex projects is the strongest
  political statement of the decade" says P V Satheesh, the Director
  of DDS.

  At first sight, there could be few less promising environments for a
  sustainable agricultural revolution. These villages - in the Medak
  district of state of Andhra Pradesh, close to where it meets the
  borders of both Maharashtra and Karnataka - are on the Deccan, a
  raised plateau that rolls for hundreds of kilometres across southern
  India. Rainfall is sparse and uncertain. Most of the soil is poor -
  often only a few centimetres of dust and pulverized laterite rock
  which, in the dry season, gives the ground a rusty red colour.
  Similar dryland terrain covers some two thirds of India. So the
  success of DDS's work holds lessons for vast areas of the country,
  as well as for many other parts of the world.

  The Deccan is a harsh, unforgiving land, but with care it can be
  made to bloom. As recently as thirty years ago more than seventy
  different crop varieties were grown in some farmer's fields. Half a
  century ago, mangos from this region were so prized that the
  Nazeem of Hyderabad, hereditary ruler in the district, sent armed
  guards to protect the caravan of bullock carts that brought the
fruits
  to his palace.

  As a small boy, Jayappa showed a gift for learning. Twice his uncle
  had to drag him away from a local mission school: the family
  needed even the tiny amount of cash that a young child could bring
  working for landlords, and education was a luxury they thought
  they could not afford. When Jayappa was eleven his father died and
  a local large landowner illegally seized the family's tiny parcel of
  land. At seventeen Jayappa borrowed some money, took the
  landlord to court and won, but spent nine years in wage labour to
  pay off the debt.

  For another twenty years, Jayappa worked in different parts of
  Andhra Pradesh [Medak District] much of the time for landlords
  embracing high-tech agriculture, always for pitiful wages. "We, the
  wage labourers, saw the land being killed while we remained poor"
  he says.  Then, in the 1980s Jayappa heard about the fledgling
  DDS: groups of the very poorest coming together, pooling their
  small savings, gradually achieving greater autonomy, and adopting
  environmentally friendly farming techniques.

  Returning to his home village, Jayappa set up a sangham with DDS
  help.  He started with other men but found that too many of them
  wanted loans from the community chest for extravagant and
  unrealistic purposes.  Conflict threatened to tear the sangham
  apart. The solution, he says, was to turn to the women. They
  tended to make more modest and sensible decisions.

  Beginning with savings of as little as 5 rupees a month (approx.
  0.25 euros or £0.08) the women's sanghams in Algol and other
  DDS villages have gradually brought back into cultivation extremely
  marginal lands which before could barely yield more than 40-50kg
  per acre. Now, the rejuvenated lands yield 200-300 kg of sorghum,
  50kg of pigeon pea, 50kg of assorted pulses and amaranth, fibre
  crops, and enough fodder for two head of cattle per acre.

  Together, the DDS has generated the equivalent of thousands of
  new jobs over a decade, and earnings per acre increased up to 12
  times. And all this, while eliminating the use of chemicals and
  increasing the biodiversity in the fields.

  Initially, plants such as sunhemp are used to improve the soil.
  Large quantities of cow manure are also added to increase soil
  fertility.  Simple earthen banks and rock dams help retain soil
  moisture. Water retention benefits not only the small holders
  themselves, who are often on the higher and poorer ground, but
  also their neighbours downstream, who find their wells fuller
  for a greater part of the year as a result.

  Crops are used in combination to maintain soil health.
  Typically, these will include varieties of sorghum (known
  locally as jawar), a drought-tolerant crop which extracts
  nutrients, and leguminous crops like pigeon pea, which add
  nitrogen to the soil.

  Walking across one of these fields one commonly sees a mix of a
  dozen or more species of food plants. Manemma, a sangham
  member in the village of Gangwar, has 22 different varieties growing
  on three acres. These include five varieties of jawar, black gram,
  green gram and horse gram, finger millet, pearl millet and two
  varieties of foxtail millet, sesame, three varieties of pigeon pea,
cow
  pea, field bean and bindhi. There are also wild vegetables, which
  have been eliminated or made toxic on chemical intensive farms.
  Some wild plants are highly nutritious and are important for local
  food security throughout the year. Indian spinach, for example, is
  one of the richest sources of Vitamin A precursor in the plant
  kingdom.

  "None of this is our invention" says Suresh, chief scientist at KVK,
  the local farm science centre. "Almost all of what we teach are
  things that some local farmers have been doing in some form for
  centuries. All we have done is to put the knowledge together in
  easy to use form, and helped disseminate it more widely".

  What is new is the way that the centre has collected and
  systematised best practice in indigenous knowledge. A good
  example is a non-pesticide management (NPM) system which
  KVK disseminates using a 'mandala' display of seeds and
  treatments. This lays out actions and interactions in time and
  space which the farmer needs to manage in order to protect their
  crops through the year without the use of artificial pesticides. It
  may sound complicated, but the mandala portrays complex
  information and relationships in a way that is easy for to literate
  and non-literate alike to understand. Along with community gene
  banks like Lakshmi's, DDS rates its most important achievement
  as the creation of village-based, community-owned and managed,
  public distribution systems (PDS). These stock essential food
  grains produced by the sangham members, ready for distribution at
  affordable prices during lean times of year.

  The need arose because the government-owned PDS system has
  been a near disaster: it encouraged the purchase and consumption
  of rice imported into areas like the Medak district where it had
  never been a part of the staple diet. "Eating rice became
  fashionable" says Satheesh.  "Communities which had thrived on a
  highly nutritious diet based on sorghum and millet switched over to
  a staple that was alien to them. Their immune systems were
  compromised and they were laid bare to diseases".

  "Culture and food are inseparable" he adds. "Denial of indigenous
  food is a political act, and we must become conscious of it". With
  a community controlled PDS, traditional foods that were once
  almost forgotten have become again common in many households.
  Prices sometimes differ considerably from those in the regular
  markets. For example coarse millets that fetch very little outside in
  the 'mainstream', are given a high value in the women's markets.

  Even though the rains are poor this year, the women's sangham in
  Eedulpally village will be able to feed their family three times a
day
  without going into debt. But there is more to PDS than just having
  enough food to stay alive - it is a matter of human dignity. "We
  used to be very lonely" says Sundaramma, a leader of the
  sangham. "We would work all day and then we would be alone in
  our houses in the evening. Now we meet, work, talk and sing
  together. We share our burdens. Previously we didn't even know
  what a bank was. Now we are talking with men and with people in
  higher castes. We have become ushar (alert, intelligent).

  When they started the sangham in Eedulpally, the women could
  not even afford a second good sari. Now they no longer have to
  stay indoors while their clothes are drying after a wash, and, in
  addition to the food bank, the women of Eedulpally have been able
  to create a balwadi - a shady place for young children of sangham
  members to be cared for instead of having to sit out in the blazing
  sun all day while their mothers work in the fields.

  Over in the village of Basantpur the sangham has created a
  medicinal garden that can meet many of the essential health needs
  of the community.  On just 5 acres (2 hectares) of rocky ground
  flourish 45 or more species of shrubs and trees. Santoshamma, a
  sangham member who looks after the garden, proudly displays
  some of its contents: gooseberries, grown for their high content of
  vitamin C; neem, whose leaves are used to treat scabies and for
  ailments affecting newborns and young mothers.  Extracts from
  three plants in one part of the garden are combined to make an
  Ayurvedic treatment effective against coughs, stomach pain and
  various skin diseases, while pomegranate is used for loose bowel
  motions and for dysentery. Bandagurja is applied to a snake bite,
  and will keep someone alive for long enough to get them to hospital
  even if they have been bitten by a king cobra - one of the world's
  most deadly snakes.

  Mahatma Gandhi called dalits the 'people of God'. The women's
  relationship to the land is about more than producing food: it is a
  religious commitment, expressed in daily acts and in festivals
  throughout the farming year. In Medak district, every season is
  interpreted as a state of the mother earth goddess. "When the
  streams and rivers flow full: Mother is bellyful and flows in
content"
  they say.  "When land is replete with diverse crops: mother is
  heavily pregnant.  When the ear-heads are forming: mother is in
  birth pangs. When seed formation is taking place: mother is
  breastfeeding her children".

  One of the greatest challenges is to equip the rising generation of
  children with the confidence and skills to defend their culture and
  also be capable of dealing with the modern world. To this end, DDS
  founded a 'green school' or Pacha saale in 1993 to give a second
  chance to local dalit who either never had the chance to go for
  government schools or had to drop out because of poverty and
  other pressures.

  Every aspect of the school - from its physical structure to its
  curriculum - reflects a philosophy of self-reliance and environmental
  protection. It hive-like buildings were made with local rock and
  without precious resources like wood and cement. They cost less
  than half the average of new buildings in the area, and are cool
  even on the hottest day.

  "We are questioning the construction of knowledge" says
  Satheesh, Director of DDS "The normal assumption is that it flows
  down from those with higher education. Here we see much of that
  reversed".

  Another crucial battle for DDS is with, and for, the media. In Andhra
  Pradesh, like in most of India, television and radio tend to reflect
  official policy in favour of 'high-tech' agriculture. In response,
DDS
  has trained some sangham members in radio and video production
  skills so that they can make their own programmes. "With video
  we can express ourselves" says one determined young women,
  known to everybody as 'General'. "When outsiders make films
  about us, they don't understand what we're saying. You film us
  selectively. We know our own stories".

  The women of DDS have shown they can produce more and
  healthier food from the land with fewer inputs than the methods
  touted by so-called modernisers. They have reversed the
  degradation of natural resources, increased their resilience to
  adverse events, and created, strong supportive local groups. Others
  are following their example without prompting, and they have won
  respect from scientists, economists and other professional elites.

  So what will Lakshmi tell Professor Swaminathan?

  "When we ate hybrids ['green revolution' crops] we found they
  made our skin itch terribly. The cattle did not relish the fodder
from
  these crops, and did not thrive. Hybrid sorghum extracted too
  many nutrients from the soil, leaving it dead. With GE [genetically
  engineered] crops we would have to purchase many different
  inputs. The technology would come with many uncertainties and
  with hidden costs. This year the rain is scarce. But even without
  good rain we are still hopeful of a crop because our varieties can
  withstand drought, and, thanks to all the manure we add, the soil is
  full of life. Whenever rain comes, life will return, and some of our
  crops will pull through because we have such variety".

  "I have no interest in or need for genetic engineering because
  in my hands I have all these seeds, which I can also share with
  others.  These seeds give us good, nutritious food and excellent
  fodder for our animals. We know them very well. We know our land
  very well."

  Caspar Henderson
  May 2002

--

Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfl at intrex.net
http://www.permaculture-online.com
http://market-farming.com
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