Document(s) 37 de 38

Another thing that emerges from almost every contribution is the role of women. It is well-established that everywhere there are farming communities, the control of material has traditionally been with women because the skills are with women. Not only the skills and knowledge of biodiversity but also its storage, its use, its refinement. It is important for us to focus on this in an upfront way. All kinds of new national authorities are being established to talk about and regulate the question of biodiversity. We must very consciously promote the role of women in these national authorities because women are the repositories of skills, knowledge. For example, in national authorities that are established in our countries which involve controlling access to genetic resources, women must have more than a 50% presence. They must be included formally in a decision-making capacity.

OOSTERHOUT: On the topic of women farmers maintaining diversity, I think this ties up with the compensation issue which poses a very, very difficult question. Research and marketing have generally been targeted at men. What happens if we start promoting the marketing of these local crops, if they take a place along side the formal cash crops? Will women still be interested and involved?

HALIM: I would like to say something about Dr. Reddi's paper where he talked about farmers coming to the classrooms and teaching the students. At 'Sristi' we have also planned to invite farmers to the classroom as a token of respect to them and to teach students about biodiversity and how to conserve it.

REDDI: l would like to emphasize here that we are involving seasonedandrespectedfarmerswho have done outstanding work in their lifetime. It is out of deep respect for these farmers and also because we feel that scientists have to un-iearn and re-learn. I work in the College of Agriculture and inthe Extension Facultyand havearrangedforfarmersto giveodentation lecturestothefaculty members on alternative systems of agriculture. The senior scientists have started feeling, for the first time in the history of the college (27 years) that they can listen to farmers and that this sustainable system will work. As a second step, we have made arrangements for faculty members to visit farmers in different parts of Andhra Pradesh, Kamataka and Tamil Nadu. After their visits, they have approached deans and vice-chancellors about the possibility of changing the curricula — away from the heavy input, HYV emphasis.

STHAPIT: A query for Satheesh: in your plan at the Deccan Development Society to create an in situ conservation program at the village level, how have you planned for farmers to get direct benefits?

SATHEESH: Like Saskia's [Oosterhoutl presentation, yesterday [Zimbabwean Sorghum Landrace Study], we are also trying to piggyback on development. We are offering a small bait to farmers that, if they start growing traditional crops, the lands they had left fallow will come back to life. The word 'incentive' is also a bit of a misnomerbecause there is also a tremendous amount of nostalgia.

There is a yearning from farmers to have the landraces they have lost, especially among women from the lower castes. They have seen what is happening to their lives with the Public Distribution System (PDS) and with the mainstream agricultural markets. Today the PDS is selling something to them at maybe Rs 2/kg. But the situation could suddenly change and it may go up to Rs 5. And they want the kind of grains they used to eat, which sustained them in their work.

So while in the initial stages we are trying to give a nudge, there is also an atmosphere within the community which is extremely conducive to getting back the traditional crops. Over the last two to three years, people have seen what is happening to their lives and their lands, with sugarcane, with potato, with tumeric. lf you have gone over the brink, then to come back may take a bit of time. That little bit of time we are trying to offer.

KOTHARI: I have a question to Satheesh: it is a dilemma we have been facing in our own work.

One definition of self-sufficiency could be where all the farme's inputs come from his or her own fields or surroundings: they are just growing for their own personal consumption. So, it is a relatively closed system. Another is to say that the farmer is growing surplus or is producing for the market and is gaining enough through money to buy other products that he or she needs. In your paper, you proposed that farmers increase their level of self-sufficiency but, at the same time, you are proposing that the women get involved in the national and international seed business, though not with HYV seeds but with traditional seeds. You want them to get involved in these systems as you think there will be increasing demand, both nationally and internationally, for traditional seeds, which may well be the case.

What I am wondering is what happens, for instance, when they become increasingly dependent on supplying these markets eco-friendly seeds and the national or international markets suddenly decide they don't want them or the prices crash, or whatever?

Second, isn't there an in-built logic in far away markets of a certain kind of homogenization being required to make things simpler to transport, to sell, and so on, which may go against biodiversity being grown at local levels?

SATHEESH: What I said may have been misleading as I do not think we are ever looking at markets beyond our districts and certainly we share the same concerns as you regarding national and international marketing. It would be very suicidal for people like ours to attempt to get into those kind of markets. Our immediate market would be among the 60 sanghams of the Deccan Development Society. We are addressing around 5,000 families who spend about Rs 2 million every year for their food and probably another Rs 5-10 lakhs [0.5-1 million] for other needs like oil.

With the tiny surpluses they presently have, they are going to the town markets, and you know what the market process subjects them to. So when I speak of markets, I am speaking of alternative markets, not national or international, for alternative food systems. It is a dropping out of the mainstream market and creating their own markets within their own communities. If the farmers are able, at some point, to produce an important surplus, then they will have to make a decision about what they want to do — but we are not going to stipulate anything for them.

LOEVINSOHN: This is mostly directed to Farhad Mazhar, but touches on a number of presentations. He mentioned the suspicion people may have of genebanks because access to them and what they contain may be limited. These concerns are certainly there with genebanks which are located outside the community. But I think we should also recognize that genebanks or seedbanks that are situated locally, within the community, may not function that efficiently either, in terms of assuring acce'ss to all. There are differences and divisions within what we call communities, which are fissured by caste, class, sometimes language. One has to ask whether one institution would serve everybody.

MAZHAR: What I want to raise are concerns over certain categories we are using, which may be loaded. I am speaking about the conception of a'bank'. Farmers look critically at concepts which involve centralizing seeds. For example, you cannot just come to farmers and take seed as such. Generally, active farmers are even suspicious of NGOs as they collect and keep seedbanks under NGO control. What farmers really want is to have the seed wealth under the village machinery where farmers control it, can come and go and informally exchange seeds. They consider seed wealth as a living resource which they should exchange and collect without any procedural difficulties.

The formal system says that it serves as a kind of back-up system — but I really haven't had any experience to support this. It has not worked in the cases where villages have lost certain genes or access to varieties.

But I would like to raise a more fundamental issue about the relationship between biodiversity and markets — the two don't go together. You cannot have a corporate economy and biodiversity at the same time as you are bringing in a lot of foreign categories, like'compensation': you get something and you give something. Agrarian communities do not work all the time on the basis of the market concept. The concept of 'the gift' is extremely important, as is 'responsibility'. You have a responsibility of doing certain things for the community or for some other ethical reason — this obligation can be repressive in its own way. So I think will have to look critically at this concept of 'compensation' — on ethical grounds.

And a third issue is that farmers in Bangladesh will tell you that agriculture is an art of exclusion, because you exclude certain species. It is not necessarily a system which can contain biodiversity because you have to produce for human need. So you cannot just romanticize and say that agrarian economies are the best form of preserving society's genetic resources. Our Nayakrishi farmers would say that it is not their responsibility to look after the biodiversity of Bangladesh.

DAS: My first comment is that often conservation is considered a very esoteric anti-utilitarian activity, but the four papers we have heard clearly suggest that conserved biodiversity can be rooted in reality and that it can also improve the quality of life, especially for poorer people.

The role of the Public Distribution System (PDS) that Satheesh describes in Andhra Pradesh is very similarto the role it has been playing in ourarea [Aimora region, Uttar Pradesh]: it is wiping out local crops and replacing them with wheat and rice. The question I have is that farmers in our area feel that there is no way they can achieve food self-sufficiency with their local millet, so they have to use the PDS crops. Sateesh has an interesting example of how they are getting local food sufficiency with their community grain fund. Do you think this could be universally applied to all kinds of zones, like our area in the Himalayas where forests need to be kept and agricultural land is proportionally less?

SATEESH: In our area [Medak District of Andhra Pradesh], it is very possible to get large tracts of land, because they are increasing in fallow — getting out of agriculture. For instance, when we look at are under sorghum, land use is shrinking year after year, which means that land is available, you can grow a crop, but state policy is discouraging it.

Also I would like to ask why the PDS has to be geared only towards irrigated crops. Why not bring in other grains, such as millet, if that happens to be the choice of people in your area. No they have no choice: they buy either rice or wheat.

Document(s) 37 de 38