Sowing the Life for Life

Sowing the Life for Life
A farmer is about to sow his mix-seed

Friday, February 25, 2011

Food Security and Conservation of Seed

International institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) have applied policies to eradicate world hunger which are dictated by the interests of MNCs and TNCs. International agreements such as WTO, other regional agreements like the Free Trade Agreement for the Americas (FTAA), or bilateral ones stipulating ‘free’ trade for agricultural products, enable these corporations to control the globalized food market in the name of development economy. On the contrary, they have increased peoples’ dependence on agricultural imports and intensified the industrialization of agriculture, thus endangering the earth’s genetic, cultural and environmental heritage, and putting the health of the world’s population at risk. Lastly, it has driven millions of women and men farmers to abandon their traditional agricultural practices, forcing them into exodus or migration.

India, the 2nd most populous country of the world, 70% of its population resides at rural areas mostly relying upon agriculture and agro-based livelihood practices. Despite India's impressive economic growth over recent decades, it still contains the largest concentration of poor people in the world. From mid-60s, “Green Revolution” was introduced in order to meet the food shortage in the country. The strategic packages had synthetic fertilizers & pesticides along with massive machinery and high response seed varieties of wheat and later rice, maize etc. Green Revolution strategy succeeded initially to increase yields of major food grains (rice, wheat & maize), but failed to improve productivity in arid or semi-arid rainfed (dryland and rainfed used interchangeably, though technical difference exists) areas with low fertility soil and erratic rainfall, where most of India’s poor live which cover about half of India’s land surface.

177 declared poor districts in the country are in the rainfed regions where crop production is exclusively dependent upon rainfall. Ecologically, rainfed areas are the most fragile. According to the Union ministry of Agriculture, 68% of the total net sown area of the country is under rainfed condition. Rainfed crops account for 48% of the total area under food crops and 68% under non-food crops. Nearly 50% of the total rural workforce and 60% of livestock are concentrated in the dry districts. Along with experienced failure of strategic intervention of Green Revolution, WTO came into existence during 90s and then market liberalization started. The area under food grains has shifted to non-food crop or economy crops. The emphasis has shifted to export crops e.g. flowers, spices, medicinal herbs etc. and contract farming arrangements are being encouraged. This leads to erosion of rich genetic diversity, associated indigenous technologies and knowledge systems. The high external input based farming strategy has put the farmers in debt trap. The concentration of land in the hands of few in this era of economic liberalization has created more marginal and landless farmers which has negative impact on agricultural productivity. Suicides among commercial crop growers have become commonplace in many regions of India. To make it even more worse in India even though the economy has grown steadily over the last two decades, but half of children are underweight and about 46% of children under the age of three suffer from malnutrition. &

International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) accounted the failure of industrial farming to address the problems of hunger, social inequity and environmental problems. The report , reflecting on a growing consensus among the global scientific community, stated clearly that small-scale farming and agro-ecological methods are the way out of the food crisis.

Orissa, the 8th largest State with respect to area and 11th largest in terms of population occupies 4.74% of India’s landmass and accounts for 3.58% (2001, Census of India) of the country’s population.

Agriculture is the mainstay of Orissa’s economy providing livelihood support to more than 80% of population. The State comprises 4.74% of India’s landmass with total cultivable land of 61.80 lakh hectares of which only 25.20 lakh hectares under cultivation and 41.41 lakh hectares (around 67%) is in rainfed areas. The State has all its districts coming under the rainfed regions. The distribution of rainfall is very uneven in terms of time and space. About 60% of the area receives an annual rainfall of no more than the normal of 1451.2 mm. The production potential of these areas is obviously quite limited. Rainfed areas also suffer from droughts almost in every year in the era of ‘climate changing’.

The agriculture sector contributes nearly 30% of the State’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employs over 70% of the workforce. Out of the total population, 87% live in rural area depending heavily (nearly 73%) on agriculture for employment and sustenance. Marginal and small holders account for 83.8%. 49.7% of the people are BPL (Below Poverty Line) against 26.1% at the national level.

However, in spite of the large population relying upon agriculture, the growth rate in this sector has been consistently low during the last four decades, hovering around 1% per annum. There has been a steady decline in the new investment plan (plan outlay) made by the state government for agriculture and rural development since the official liberalization and opening up of markets began in 1991-92. Moreover, the percentage outlay for the agriculture and allied sectors has increased during the 11th Plan, against 1.26% allocation during 10th Plan period, but still less in comparison to 9th Plan (3.75%).

In recent times the emphasis is laid on 4% growth in agriculture during the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-08 to 2011-12) Period. As a part of the strategy to achieve the stated target the recent Orissa State Agriculture policy 2008 (OSAP-2008), designed for the development of Agriculture Sector redefines the “development” in terms of economic development rather than sustainable food production. Thus stating a shift in approaches where food growing lands are increasingly converted to commercial crops driven by market forces. The area growing staple food crops (rice and millets) in the state has steadily been shrinking since 2003-04. However, the area under cash crops, e.g. cotton has been doubled during the same time line. The high external input based ‘Green Revolution’ strategy also continuous in OSAP-2008 which suggests increasing the Seed Replacement Rate (SRR ) and the State has achieved 12% SRR in paddy till 2007-08. The strategic approaches of Green Revolution have already shifted the multi-approach farming system with diverse crops to high external chemical input based mono-cropping system. This shift of food growing land to mono-food crop or to commercial crop has also shown adverse impact on the expenditure-saving and non-economic livelihood strategies of landless, marginal and small farmers such as food-fodder-firewood collection and gathering activities. This has severely affected the decline in the availability of the overall food sources and the food diversity. This rapid decline in farm productivity [food stuff (bio-mass) produced, gathered or collected from a unit land] has serious implications both for dry land farming as well as food security of the state. Today ‘seed replacement’ is being promoted as solution to hunger and nutrition deficiency. High yielding varieties (HYVs), hybrids has already been introduced in our food system and made skilled, self-driven farmers to highly depend upon external agencies. The farming community realizes the adverse effects of increased use of chemical inputs in the form of poor soil health, periodically high fertilizer demand, secondary pest manifestation, high water consumption and crop loss which put farmer in a never ending debt trap. A farmer generally mortgage or sell their land to repay the loan amount, in turn loses control over the land and food system which leads to either migration (indicating the increase of current fallow by 158% and the Net shown area reduced by 11% in last fifteen years, between 1992-93 to 2007-08 ) or suicide. A trend of debt bound farmer suicide cases has gradually emerged in the State; about 69 farmers ended lives in between June 2010-February 2011 alone.

The Orissa government has formulated an ‘organic farming policy’, which in fact only substitutes chemical inputs with non-chemical inputs, but is still focusing on a few “high value” market, export oriented crops. The absence of an established bio-safety regulatory authorities peer review over farm-input supply system has allowed the genetically modified (GM) cash crops (Bt Cotton) into the State with illegal market reforms. GM food crops (Bt egg plant, Bt rice, drought tolerant rice etc.) are in a row to enter in our lifeline which will only aggravate the situation as is experienced from the Bt cotton.

Decrease in farm biodiversity, inadequate food supply system, mono directional policy etc. are likely to make the livelihood systems extremely vulnerable and in turn assumes increase in trend of farmer suicide, conditions of indebtedness, hike in poverty level etc. India boosts with higher economic growth at SENSEX, but Suresh Tendulkar report on Poverty Estimation says that in Orissa, 57.2% of population lives under poverty, a 15% hike over the estimation. The poor in rural Orissa spend just Rs 407.78 per month and in urban areas their spending is Rs 497.31. According to a report published by National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), in 2005 titled “Situation Assessment Survey: Indebtedness of Farmer Households”, 47.8% of farmer households in Orissa are indebted of which approx 70% have less than a hectare of land. According to report released by the State government, only 34% of total population in the state gets two square meals. The report on Global Hunger Index 2008 states that 13 out of 31 districts in the state have been categorized as Severely Food Insecure and 5 come under the Extremely Food Insecure. This hunger and starvation situation of the State ranks it to 6th and 2nd highest position in MMR and IMR respectively . To count on more figures 45% of children under age five are stunted or too short for their age, 61% of women have anemia and two-thirds of expectant mother are anemic.

Degraded natural resources and unpredictable climatic conditions make both farming system and farming community further vulnerable. The situation gets complex with adoption of policy-driven cropping patterns and production practices which have already been realized as highly unstable and unsustainable. The decade long farming practice (since Green Revolution) has led to severe erosion of diverse genetic resources, rich indigenous knowledge & wisdom along with social support system.

Gradually it has been also realized by various groups that there is a need to move towards establishing area specific appropriate farming system approaches which would sustain and improve agriculture and farm based livelihoods, strengthening the farming communities to deal with risks and vulnerabilities. Sustainable Agriculture approaches reforming agro-ecosystem, natural ecosystem and social support system are now acknowledged by both grower and consumer community. Some of these strategic initiatives have remained restricted to small pockets while some could be scaled to a larger area. Conservation of indigenous resources through organic practice provides scope to re-form the control over food production system.

Although farmers greatly feel the need to re-grow the traditional varieties that were lost or depleted in order to sustain yield and revive culture. The suffered community feels the need to bring back lost biodiversity for sustaining livelihood system. Several groups across the country are trying to preserve these varieties through on farm conservation. It is becoming increasingly clear that to maintain biodiversity in farmers' fields, an alternative system of seed supply has to be created to provide them with sufficient quantities of local seed varieties.

Though indigenous varieties of crops such as paddy, millets, pulses, oil seeds, roots & tubers etc. are still preserved by a few farmers, but they are getting depleted at an alarming rate. To address these concerns, to reduce farmers’ external dependency and to increase their right over farming system, community led seed conservation, seed sharing network, integrated farming system approach are few suitable adaptive measures. In other words, agriculture can be democratized (of the farmer, by the farmer & for the farmer); bringing back control on the hands of the farmers from MNC vendors trap.

These approaches aim at identifying traditional seed varieties and conservation through organic practice managed by growers’ network. These will facilitate seed sharing, multiplication and reestablishing the farm biodiversity to increase the total food yield out of a unit of land. The diverse propagation materials will be conserved in these seed banks. At the end of the season the farmer then returns twice the quantity of seeds that he had taken from the seed bank. These seeds are then given to other farmers in the next season and this has a multiplying effect. This strategy will in turn strengthen the social support system; will enable the farmers not to crouch against the seed suppliers (govt., local dealers, companies etc.).