Article about beej bachao andolen

[Umendra Dutt]

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http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20080201508109100.htm

BIODIVERSITY

Seeds' soldier

DIONNE BUNSHA
in the Garhwal Himalayas, Uttarakhand

Vijay Jardhari is on a mission to create a bank of indigenous seeds to share with other farmers.

DIONNE BUNSHA

Vijay Jardhari, one of the founders of the Beej Bachao Andolan.

WE are on the edge of a mountain 1,500 metres high in the Garhwal Himalayas in Uttarakhand. Vijay Jardhari is picking beans in his backyard. Almost magically, from every pod a differently coloured seed jumps into my hand – red, yellow, brown, black, white, spotted, speckled. The variety is endless. In a matter of minutes, my hand is filled with a rainbow of beans.

Jardhari is a wizard with seeds. He has collected over 600 varieties. For more than 25 years, it has been his mission to create a bank of indigenous seeds to share with other farmers. Jardhari has trekked through the Garhwal mountains right up to the India-Nepal border, searching for seeds and sharing them with people along the way. The Beej Bachao Andolan (Save Seeds Movement), founded by Jardhari, has unearthed more than 350 varieties of rice, 200 of rajma beans and 30 of wheat, and several varieties of locally grown grains, vegetables, herbs and spices. It is now a movement that is challenging chemical farming and genetically modified (GM) seeds by proving that home-grown, indigenous agriculture can be sustainable and more productive.

With a Zen-like calm, the bearded Gandhian explains how it all began. "When I started farming in the 1980s, the time of the Green Revolution, the government was distributing subsidised high-yield variety [HYV] seeds and chemical fertilizers. I bought them for my field and sowed them with great excitement. In the first year, I had a good yield. But then it started declining. I realised that the fertilizer was poisoning our soil," Jardhari remembers.

"My father and other village elders told me that they used to sow several varieties of seeds, which were far better [than the HYV seeds]. So, I started going from village to village in search of these seeds," says Jardhari. "Initially, I barely found a few strains of rice, but as time went by, I discovered treasures – varieties of millets and grains I had never known about. I started producing the seeds and giving them to other farmers."

ASHISH KOTHARI

A mosaic of seed varieties.

At a time when the craze for commercial farming was peaking, Jardhari was warning people about its dangers. The government was pushing farmers to grow soya bean as a cash crop. Jardhari tried to convince people to get back to the basics, that is, go totally organic. "The Green Revolution was a con. We tried to persuade people to revive the traditional Barnaja [12 grain] cropping system. If soya bean farming had replaced this system, our culture and diet would have been destroyed," Jardhari said. The Barnaja method supports 40 different crops. "We would have lost several kinds of nutritious foods. Not only is Barnaja farming important for our food security, it also keeps our soil fertile and feeds our cattle."

The Green Revolution made people depend on one crop. The seeds were suitable only for irrigated areas but were freely distributed in dry-land farming areas such as the Garhwal. The hybrid crop gave less fodder, so women had to work harder to collect more grass for the cattle. Now, India is seeing the most extreme consequences of the Green Revolution: cotton farmers hooked on to GM crops and pesticides and totally dependent on their cash crops are killing themselves in supposedly "prosperous" States such as Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab. Jardhari woke up to its dangers decades ago. It has been scientifically proven by the agricultural scientist Vir Singh that the yield of the local rice grown in Jardhari's village, Jardhargaon, is higher than that of HYV rice.

In the Barnaja system, 12 crops or more are grown on the same farm. Each crop has a different life cycle and supports the other's growth. For instance, rajma bean is a creeper that grows on the ramdana (amaranth) stalk.

"Now, the Barnaja system is practised in almost every village in Uttarakhand. It has built farmers' solidarity. People are exchanging seeds and techniques," says Jardhari.

DIONNE BUNSHA

Harvesting rice in Jardhargaon.

On his shelves are rows of straw boxes in which he carefully stores the seeds, preserving them in neem and ash. Jardhari has carefully researched the origin and scientific name of each of the seeds and is slowly building a canvas of the Garhwal's biodiversity. In the last few years, scores of scientists and researchers have landed on his doorstep to study the Beej Bachao Andolan and its work. Others have tried to fake affiliation to his movement to get funding. But he continues unfazed.

A child of the tree-hugging Chipko movement, Jardhari has been deeply connected with environmental struggles since his youth. After travelling around as a Chipko activist, Jardhari returned home to find that the forest in Jardhargaon was bare. "There was a shortage of fodder and firewood. So we got people together and formed a Van Suraksha Samiti [Forest Protection Committee], with women at the forefront," says Jardhari. "The village committee banned the hacking of any green wood. We had strict rules for cutting deadwood to make sure everyone in the village got some. We stopped entry into the village's common forest area so that fodder could grow back. There were guards employed to enforce these rules."

It worked like magic. Jardhargaon's forest is now lush and diverse with oak, pine and rhododendron trees. Villagers say that wild boars, deer, tigers, leopards and bears have come back to the forest. A scientific study by the G.B. Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development, Almora, Uttarakhand, found that in terms of quality and diversity, the forests of Jardhargaon are better than those in most regions, including those managed by the government. It is now a success story cited in several conservation journals.

Yet, there are miles to go for Jardhari. He is still battling against the widespread marketing of GM seeds and pesticides, still trying to help get organic farming gain acceptability, and still fighting to keep the forest safe from commercial contractors. And, he is also worried about global warming and its effect on water supply in the Himalayas.

In a long conversation, Jardhari explained in detail the subtle changes he has observed in the climate and ecology of the Himalayas. His knowledge of the terrain is vast.

"We call the oak tree the one that invites the monsoon," he says. "It's our most important tree. All the springs are found in oak forests. Its leaves retain moisture and so there are fewer fires in oak forests," explains Jardhari. "But for the last two or three years, the oak trees have not shed their leaves because of the lack of water, so they have not grown and remain stunted. If the oak goes, the Himalayas go."

Jardhari is determined to keep the Himalayas alive. More than preserve biodiversity, he has managed to change people's mindsets – from the way they use forests to the way they farm their food. "When we initially began, it was hard to convince people to grow coarse grains even though they are so nutritious. They thought that it was old-fashioned. If guests came visiting, they would get embarrassed and would hide the grains," Jardhari remembers. "Today, our villagers send millets to their sons working in the cities. They have realised its worth. The tide has turned."

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Umendra Dutt
Executive Director
KHETI VIRASAT MISSION
Bishnandi Bazar
JAITU-151202
District-Faridkot,Punjab
Phones:01635-503415
09872682161
umendradutt.blogspot.com

God is omni present in entire nature and hurting nature is violence against the God

[Adarsh Pal Vig]

Dear All

It's Time To Drink Toilet Water

Recycling sewage is safe and efficient, so why aren't we doing it?

By Eilene Zimmerman

Officials in Orange County, Calif., will attend opening ceremonies today for the world's largest water-purification project, among the first "toilet-to-tap" systems in America. The Groundwater Replenishment System is designed to take sewage water straight from bathrooms in places like Costa Mesa, Fullerton, and Newport Beach and—after an initial cleansing treatment—send it through $490 million worth of pipes, filters, and tanks for purification. The water then flows into lakes in nearby Anaheim, where it seeps through clay, sand, and rock into aquifers in the groundwater basin. Months later, it will travel back into the homes of half a million Orange County residents, through their kitchen taps and showerheads.

It's a smart idea, one of the most reliable and affordable hedges against water shortages, and it's not new. For decades, cities throughout the United States have used recycled wastewater for nonpotable needs, like agriculture and landscaping; because the technology already exists, the move to potable uses seems a no-brainer. But the Orange County project is the exception. Studies show that the public hasn't yet warmed to the notion of indirect potable reuse (IPR)—or "toilet-to-tap, " as its opponents would have it. Surveys like one taken last year in San Diego show that a majority of us don't want to drink water that once had poop in it, even if it's been cleaned and purified. A public outcry against toilet-to-tap in 2000 forced the city of Los Angeles to shut down a $55 million project that would have provided enough water for 120,000 homes. Similar reluctance among San Diego residents led Mayor Jerry Sanders to veto the city council's approval in November of a pilot program to use recycled water to supplement that city's drinking water. (A similar plan failed once before in 1999.)

But San Diego is in the midst of a severe water crisis. The city imports 90 percent of its water, much of that from the Colorado River, which is drying up. The recent legal decision to protect the ecosystem of the San Joaquin Delta in Northern California—San Diego's second-leading water source—will reduce the amount coming from there as well. Add to that rising population and an ongoing drought, and the situation looks pretty bleak: 3 million people in a region that has enough water, right now, for 10 percent of them.

We don't have enough water where we need it; if we don't learn to deal with drinking toilet water, we're going to be mighty thirsty. Only 2.5 percent of the water on Earth is freshwater, and less than 1 percent of that is usable and renewable. The Ogallala Aquifer—North America's largest, stretching from Texas to South Dakota—is steadily being depleted. And Americans are insatiable water consumers—our water footprint has been estimated to be twice the global average (PDF).

The ocean provides another source of potable water. Large-scale treatment of seawater already occurs in the Middle East, Africa, and in Tampa Bay, Fla. Construction of the largest desalination plant in the western hemisphere is supposed to begin this year in Carlsbad, Calif., which would convert 300 million gallons of seawater into 50 million gallons of drinking water each day. Taking the salt out of ocean water sounds like a good idea, but it's economically and environmentally far more expensive than sewage-water recycling. Orange County water officials estimate desalinated water costs between $800 and $2,000 per acre-foot to produce, while its recycled water runs about $525 per acre-foot. Desalination also uses more energy (and thus produces more greenhouse gas emissions), kills tiny marine organisms that get sucked up into the processing plant, and produces a brine byproduct laced with chemicals that goes back into the ocean.

What desalination doesn't have, though, is the "yuck" factor of recycled sewage water. But seawater, like other sources of nonrecycled water, is at least as yucky as whatever comes through a toilet-to-tap program. When you know how dirty all this water is before treatment, recycling raw sewage doesn't seem like a bad option. Hundreds of millions of tons of sewage are dumped into rivers and oceans, and in that waste are bacteria, hormones, and pharmaceuticals. Runoff from rainwater, watering lawns, or emptying pools is the worst, sending metals, pesticides, and pathogens into lakes, rivers, and the ocean. The water you find near the end of a river system like the Colorado or the Mississippi (which feeds big cities like San Diego and New Orleans) has been in and out of municipal sewers several times.

Whatever winds up in lakes and rivers used for drinking is cleaned and disinfected along with the rest of our water supply. Still, a recent analysis of San Diego's drinking water found several contaminants, including ibuprofen, the bug repellent DEET, and the anti-anxiety drug meprobamate. No treatment system will ever be 100-percent reliable, and skeptics who worry that pathogens in sewage water will make it past treatment and into our drinking water should worry about all drinking water, not just the water in a toilet-to-tap program. The fact is, supertreated wastewater is clean enough to drink right after treatment. It's been used safely this way (in a process known as direct potable reuse) for years in the African nation of Namibia. The EPA has conducted research in Denver and San Diego on the safety of direct potable reuse and found recycled water is often of better quality than existing drinking water. And although putting water into the ground, rivers, or lakes provides some additional filtering and more opportunities for monitoring quality, the benefits of doing it that way are largely psychological. In its 2004 report (PDF) on the topic, the EPA concluded that Americans perceive this water to be "laundered" as it moves through the ground or other bodies of water, even though in some instances, according to the report, "quality may actually be degraded as it passes through the environment. "

Despite the public's concerns, a few U.S. cities have already started to use recycled wastewater to augment drinking water. In El Paso, Texas, indirect potable reuse supplies 40 percent of the city's drinking water; in Fairfax, Va., it supplies 5 percent. Unless we discover a new source of clean, potable water, we're going to have to consider projects like these to make wastewater a reusable resource. The upfront costs for getting a system in place and educating the public may be steep, but it would save us the expense—both economic and environmental— of finding another river or lake from which we can divert water.

 

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