Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

ENVIRONMENT:  Back to Traditional Farming to Beat Climate Change
By Anil Netto*
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48783

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).