Document(s) 35 de 38

Abstract: In low-input farming systems, women have traditionally been the managers of germplasm. As subsistence farmers, they value traditional crop varieties since these crops have harmonized over a long period of time with the environment and hence are easier to grow. Such landraces demand less resources and thus fall within the management capabilities of women. The gradual disappearance of these landraces makes a harsh impact on women.

The Deccan Development Society (DDS) works with sangams (voluntary associations) of poor village women, mostly dalit [low caste] agricultural laborers in 60 villages in the Medak District of Andhra Pradesh. The community genebank project initiated by the Society and targeted at these dalit women farmers envisages the following:

• To secure crop biodiversity in the area and ensure a safety net for women who are dependent on subsistence farming;

• To establish in-situ rural genebanks

• To empower the women to reclaim their unproductive lands;

• To enable the women's groups to develop the skills and management capacity to grow local landraces as seed crop and start village-level seedbanks;

• To develop a seed distribution network for the local crop varieties and ensure large-scale re-emergence of these varieties;

• To empower the women to develop into seed entrepreneurs and enter agribusiness.

Introduction

In low input farming systems, women have traditionally been the managers of germplasm. But the modern agricultural practices, which have pushed seeds into a market economy outside the village community, has displaced the women from their original roles.

Women belonging to the poorer sections of rural society and the dalits [low caste groups] are basically subsistence farmers. For them, traditional crop varieties are very important since these crops have harmonized over a long period of time with the environment and hence are easier to grow. Such landraces have been gradually disappearing making it harsh on women.

Traditional varieties demand less resources and therefore fall within the management capabilities of women.

Decrease in farm biodiversity has made the livelihood systems extremely vulnerable. In case of one single pest attack, the entire crop may disappear, creating in its wake hunger and famine. The hardest hit by this phenomenon are women, who have to constantly worry about food availability for their families.

Mono-cropping and promotion of hybrid varieties on a large scale has accelerated this process. Being susceptible to market conditions, these seeds are available only to the rich farmers. Even if made accessible, the poor will not be able to use them, because they demand a package of farming practices which can only be followed by the resource-rich farmers.

Acute shortage of local varieties of seeds which are hardy and need the least of resources adversely affects the prospects of sustainability for poorer farmers.

Within this context of general hopelessness, one tiny ray of hope exists. In the new dispensation, where large seed manufacturers will be main players in the arena, a new niche will be created in the market for the organically grown non-hybrid varieties. The health-food chains will create this demand. This will be a gap unfulfilled.

Causes for problems

The government-operated Public Distribution System (PDS) provides food security (supply of rice on ration cards) through its outlets. This has meant that the farmers need no longer produce local food crops to meet their food requirements. Consequently every year the acreage under dry crops shrinks and the production falls. This may soon result in the disappearances of hundreds of species.

Commercial agriculture has brought in its wake seed and input corporations and multinationals. They enter an arena which used to traditionally belong to women and have displaced them from their occupation.

DDS and the community genebank

The Society has catalyzed the formation of sanghams (voluntary associations) of poor village women, mostly agricultural laborers, in 60 villages. These women manage on their own most of their credit needs, and manage programs of community health, environment conservation and regeneration and education.

This group of women in 60 villages, who comprise the target groups/beneficiaries of the Community Genebank project, are mostly dalit [low caste]. By profession, they are mainly agriculturists and work as wage laborers for a major portion of their earnings. During the rest of the time, they cultivate the small patches of land owned by them, work as well-diggers and as labor in other construction works. As members of DDS sanghams, they are actively involved in collective cultivation of lands and have a high awareness of environment-friendly farming practices.

The Society pioneered and extended the concept of Permaculture among these groups over the last six years. Apart from the theoretical and technical issues that it advocates, the issue of ethical farming and regional self-sufficiency lies at the core of Permaculture. Years of experience of practicing it (and debating it) with women farmers have created a need for several initiatives that promote regional self-sufficiency.

Three main initiatives have been taken up by the Society to fulfill these objectives. They are: an Alternative Public Distribution System known as the Community Grain Fund; massive wasteland development; and the raising of traditional seeds and establishment of decentralized village-level seedbanks called the Community Gene Fund.

The Community Grain Fund operates on 3000 acres spread over 30 villages. The project involves reclaiming fallows through making them productive through the raising of sorghum. The investment made by the Society in rendering the land productive is repaid by the project-partner farmers in kind (a fixed quantity of sorghum every year for six years). This grain is stored in the village and for six months a year is sold to the poorest 100 families in the village at subsidized prices. The money accrued from the sales becomes a village fund for further investments in reclamation of fallows and also becomes a revolving Community Grain Fund. This ensures that the environmental hazards that fallows bring in their wake can be countered. In each village, at least 2000 additional wages are created every year¹; the grain availability is increased by 25 per cent; and fodder production goes up by 20 percent. The poor do not need to migrate out of the village to fight their hunger. The Community Grain Fund also ensures the principles of local production, local distribution and local consumption-- as opposed to the dominant PDS system which promotes centralized production and centralized distribution systems.

If the Community Grain Fund is meant to tackle the problem of foodgrains, the Community Gene Fund is designed to answer the problem of seeds. The project proposes to identify 30 acres of land per village and start raising traditional crops for seed purposes. The lands are selected by the village sanghams along the following criteria:

• The poverty of the woman who owns the land and her commitment to grow the traditional crop;
• The suitability of the land to grow the traditional crop as seed.

DDS runs a health program which is completely based on local healing systems and local herbal and plant medicines. The regular interaction with our health workers and local healers has given us a clear insight into the richness of folk nutritional systems and the problems of the mainstream medical establishment. Such discussions have also revealed the strengths of traditional food and nutrition. With the disappearance of these foods a host of problems has arisen.

As a consequence of the deficiency of traditional food, the issues of nutrition and seeds started to be elaborated in our discussions. After additional participatory research assessments (PRAs) with health workers, healers and women farmers, it became clear that some steps needed to be taken. The result was the Community Gene Fund project.

Our present project partner is GTZ.

Target Group

The second group which will benefit from the project are the other sangham women who, while not direct participants, will receive the seeds produced by the project beneficiaries and start a seed bank in their own sangham. Their number will approximately be 1500.

The secondary target will be the small and marginal farmers outside the sanghams, in and outside the 60 villages, who have no resources to grow irrigated crops and find it hard to get the seed varieties to grow on their small farms. This group will number about 20,000.

Why this group of marginalized dalit women?

• transcend their present status of being dependent on market forces;
• widen their security net by being producers of seeds and hence gain control on the most crucial element in the food chain;
• create their own fall-back system outside the mainstream market-- which has always acted hostile to them;
• create and operate their own markets thereby entering into the agribusiness as entrepreneurs and increase their agricultural incomes.

The process

• The dalit women in the DDS project area own small pieces of land, either gifted to their families by the erstwhile feudal system for services rendered or the later democratic government, as a part of the land ceiling and reassignment. Most of these lands have been left fallow by the women because they cannot afford the inputs to make the lands productive. To make the lands productive, the women have to initially plough the land an extra couple of times or employ a tractor. This needs an investment up to Rs. 500. Most of them can't afford this.

• Second, they have to sow in time. For this, they have either to own or hire a pair of plough bullocks. Most of them don't own a pair of bullocks. To hire one, they have to give ready cash-- which they don't have. Hence they try to request a plowshare to work on their land for a quarter share of the harvest, which most are unwilling to do on small pieces of land. They would rather take on larger tracts which makes the operation profitable. The second option open to poor women is to employ the plowmen on a deferred payment. This is agreeable to plowmen but they come to plough at the end of the season. Since that will be too late, the yields will be very low. This way the cycle of `uneconomicness' rolls on.

• The third operation is weeding. Though the persons who weed the fields are the dalit women themselves, the temptation of going to other fields to earn cash income is too great to miss. In the entire agricultural cycle, weeding is the only operation which earns them cash. Hence the women first finish weeding in other people's fields and at the end come to weed their own fields.

The Community Genebank project proposes to tackle this problem in two steps:

• Step one: Provide sufficient inputs, like plowing support, farmyard manure and weeding support for one agricultural season. This would improve the fertility of the land and increase the yield considerably.

• Step two: Convert these lands into seed farms thereby increasing the profitability.

Present income from their lands (per acre) Rs. 150-200

Income by making lands productive Rx. 900-2000

Expected income converting them into seed farms Rs.1500-3000

Finally, by bringing the women sanghams to control the entire seed operation, we will be giving a great fillip to the self-help nature of the groups. In the first phase of the project, the seed exchange will take place within the sanghams and will involve about 3000 women members of the sanghams as the beneficiaries. Gradually this group of seed exchangers will encompass the entire community in the 60 villages. The size of that 'community' will be nearly one lakh [100,000] persons.

Expected results

• Secure crop biodiversity in the area and ensure a safety net for women who are dependent on subsistence farming;
• Empower the women to reclaim their unproductive lands;
• Create an in-situ genebank;
• Enable the women's groups to develop the skills and management capacity necessary to grow local landraces as a seed crop and to establish village level seed banks;
• To develop a seed distribution network for the local crop varieties and ensure large-scale re-emergence of these varieties;
• Empower the women to develop into seed entrepreneurs and enter agribusiness.

Community Genebank and the women

• Since much of the low-input farming is managed by women, the seed situation hits the women in a particularly harsh manner. Earlier, all the seeds needed for their farming were produced by them at their own farms. But with the growth of commercial agriculture, and with the entry of the transnational seed companies round the corner, poor women will have to go to the market every time they need to buy seeds. Hence their age-old self-reliance faces possible extinction.

• By being actual controllers of seeds, women do not have to be at the mercy of the outside seed market, which supplies what the manufacturer has made available and not necessarily what the people want. This situation is very apparent in dryland agriculture. As a consequence of such market forces, the women are currently forced to buy, against their will, hybrids and other high-input-demanding seeds-- in contrast to their own native seeds, which demand low-inputs.

• By becoming seed producers, women can get more income out of their lands than before. For example, if a woman earns Rs. 1000 per acre producing a normal crop like sorghum on her land, and if she engages in seed production, which is a specialized activity, she will earn Rs. 1500 to Rs. 2000, an increase of between 50 to 100 per cent over her normal income.

• The era of commercial seed business will also give women a chance to enter the market. once they become good seed producers. We also visualize a new context in which organic (non-hybrid) agricultural products will be bought at a premium. This will certainly be to the advantage of the women who can become seed entrepreneurs.

Footnotes:

1. In each village, 100 acres of fallow or extremely marginal lands are brought into active production. On each of these acres, an average of 20 women are employed just for weeding. People are additionally employed for harvesting, plowing, etc. Even sticking to the minimum employment figures of 20 persons per acre, multiplied by 100 acres, we arrive at the 2000 person days of employment. (BACK)

2. 1 US dollar is equivalent to Rs.33. (BACK)

Document(s) 35 de 38