Back to Traditional Farming to Beat Climate Change

[GLT]

ENVIRONMENT: Back to Traditional Farming to Beat Climate Change
By Anil Netto*
A farmers’ empowerment program in the Philippines enables farm folk to
breed traditional seed varieties that can survive dry spells. /
Credit:MASIPAG
A farmers’ empowerment program in the Philippines enables farm folk to
breed traditional seed varieties that can survive dry spells.

Credit:MASIPAG

PENANG, Malaysia, Oct 9 (IPS/IFEJ) - When organisers of an
international conference on climate change and the food crisis first
scheduled the event here for late September, little did they realise
the event would be sandwiched by two typhoons buffeting the region.
Ironically, the first typhoon, ‘Ketsana’, delayed the arrival of
conference delegates from the Philippines.

A week after Ketsana struck the Philippines on Sep. 26 and then
Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, it was the turn of Typhoon Parma to wreak
havoc in the Philippines on Oct. 3. Now downgraded to a tropical
storm, ‘Parma’ is still lingering over the region and initially
entangled with another Pacific super typhoon, ‘Melor’, which then
headed towards Japan.

Ketsana left a devastating trail after it dumped the equivalent of one
month's rainfall over Manila within six hours. Although Parma largely
spared the country, it flooded large tracts of rice fields in northern
Philippines and destroyed crops ready for harvest.

The typhoons in the region brought into sharp relief the issue of
climate change as farmers struggle to cope with changing weather
patterns. It is not just the sudden storms and heavy rainfalls that
are disrupting farming but also the blurring of the seasons.

"If it rains, it rains heavily. In the past, there was less rainfall
in September and October, but now there are heavy rains and strong
winds," says Che Ani Mat Zain, a rice farmer in Kedah in northern
Malaysia.

"Our yield is fine if the weather is okay, but not if it is
unpredictable," he observes, adding that December and January used to
be fairly dry months in Kedah, but now farmers experience more rain.

That is a pattern of disorientation that is being felt across the
region. "The dry season and wet seasons are now blurred," concurs Dr
Charito Medina, national coordinator for the Farmer-Scientist
Partnership for Development (or ‘MASIPAG’, its Filipino acronym), a
Philippine-based organisation bringing together 642 farmer
organisations, representing 35,000 farmers, 60 non- governmental
organisations and 15 scientists.

"Farmers can't rely on a dependable rainfall. For planting you need
the soil to be wet, so that when you sow seeds, it will germinate," he
noted at the sidelines of the conference organised by the Pesticide
Action Network's Asia Pacific office on Sep. 27 to 29 in Penang.

Droughts and rainy periods seem to be longer and more intense now.
"Typhoons are becoming stronger and more frequent, and strong winds
may damage crops, which could cause 100 percent damage," he told IPS
days before Typhoon Parma struck.

Unpredictable rainfall can disrupt the rice-planting season. If the
rain stops for two weeks, there is crop failure and farmers have to
replant. But they may not have any more seeds and may need to buy more
from agricultural suppliers, which they may not be able to afford,
points out Medina.

In Indonesia, Erpan Faryadie, secretary-general of the Alliance of
Agrarian Reform Movement (or AGRA), a national peasants' organisation
representing 40,000 landless peasants, farmers and agricultural
workers, sees a similar dismal pattern.

Droughts and floods have become more noticeable in the last decade,
after swathes of Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi were heavily
deforested and converted to monoculture farming. More floods have been
seen in these provinces, which rarely happened before, notes Faryadie.

The situation in Java, which accounts for more than half of national
rice production and where forests were lost much earlier, is more
pronounced. During the rainy season, rice fields and agricultural
lands in north Java are sometimes flooded. "The Green Revolution rice
strains couldn’t withstand the flooding, and the farmers couldn't get
their harvests after the flooding," he says.

The Green Revolution, a program begun in 1960s to avert a global food
crisis, is based on the use of high-yielding seed varieties using
modern inputs of fertilizers and pesticides.

"The biggest problem was the destruction of traditional farming, which
was enough for farmers’ subsistence and national sufficiency if they
used traditional varieties," he laments, pointing out that some of the
traditional rice seeds are more resistant to drought and heavy rains,
with stalks still standing after floods.

The blurring of seasons has also hit farmers in the mountains of the
Central Himalayas, where the predictable climate previously ensured
food security. But summer this year produced record temperatures, as
the Henwal stream dried up over a two-kilometre stretch for the first
time in living memory. The droughts persisted even during the monsoon
season, disrupting the planting cycle.

Meanwhile, the Gangroti Glacier, the source of the Ganga River in
Uttarkashi district of Garhwal Himalaya, continues to retreat by 15 to
20 metres a year. Some farmers are now trying to adapt to climate
change by taking another look at traditional seeds and farming
practices.

MASIPAG in the Philippines adopts a "farmers’ empowerment" approach:
it encourages farmers to collect, breed and select such traditional
varieties of seeds to produce organic food.

Farmers carry out experiments themselves, with up to 50 varieties
planted side-by-side in trial farms, measuring 600 to 800 square
metres. Traditional seed varieties are selected as they are the most
adaptable, the products of selection over time. These are then
collected and improved through breeding and selection.

Some traditional varieties can survive dry spells better; others are
more resistant to pest and diseases, which are themselves influenced
by climate change. For instance, greater humidity and moisture result
in more microorganisms, which can cause diseases, whereas a prolonged
dry season could lead to more insect pests.

Each organisation comprising the farmers’ network then selects the top
10 varieties for the locality under organic conditions — with zero
chemical inputs — and these are distributed by the members among
themselves.

"(These trials determine) the survival of the fittest (among
traditional varieties)," says Medina. "In contrast, conventional
agriculture creates the ideal environment by using expensive chemical
inputs."

MASIPAG also promotes a diversified and integrated farming system.
Farmers are encouraged to plant other crops such as tubers, which are
more resistant to environmental changes because the edible portion
lies below the surface of the soil. Cassava, sweet potato and cooking
banana are also planted as "survival crops to fill the stomach".
Biomass is composted for use as organic fertilizers.

Native chickens are reared, and these are regarded as "ATMs in the
backyard": if there is a typhoon, chickens can be sold in the market
to raise emergency funds to buy supplies. "You can withdraw (from
these ‘ATMs’ when you need it," quips Medina. Similarly, goats and
cows, which convert weed into food and produce manure for the farm,
can be sold during emergencies.

Such initiatives are precisely what may be needed. A new report
published by GRAIN , an international group working to support
community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems, shows that
more sustainable agriculture can put much of the excess carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere back into the soil.

Evidence in the report shows that industrial agriculture, and the
global food system of which it is part, has sent large amounts of this
carbon from the soil into the atmosphere, the group said in a press
release.

And calculations reveal that policies supporting small farmer-centred
agriculture, which also focuses on restoring soil fertility, would
play a big role in resolving the worsening climate crisis. "In 50
years the soils could capture about 450 billion tonnes of carbon
dioxide, which is more than two thirds of the current excess in the
atmosphere," says the report.

But that is only if agricultural sovereignty is returned to millions
of small farmers and farming communities, and policies are formulated
to support their livelihoods.

"The evidence is irrefutable. If we can change the way we farm and the
way we produce and distribute food, then we have a powerful solution
for combating the climate crisis. There are no technical hurdles to
achieving these results, it is only a matter of political will, says
GRAIN coordinator Henk Hobbelink.

*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development
by IPS – Inter Press Service and IFEJ – International Federation of
Environmental Journalists, for the Alliance of Communicators for
Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org).

(END/2009)