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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Back to Traditional Farming to Beat Climate Change
  • Date: Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:09:34 -0600


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).




  • [Livingontheland] Back to Traditional Farming to Beat Climate Change, Tradingpost, 10/09/2009

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