From Food Insecurity to Food Sovereignty
"Laxmamma is an amazing farmer. She knows every different type of soil in this region, exactly what kinds of crops are best adapted to grow on each, and when and how to plant them. We have learned so much from her." This comment was made by the Secretary of the Deccan Development Society (DDS), an Inter Pares counterpart in southern India. Laxmamma has no formal education, belongs to the Dalit caste (better known as “untouchables”), and has little land of her own. Together with twenty other poor women farmers, she belongs to the village sangham – a village-level women’s group. With the accompaniment of DDS they have taken back control of their land, their seeds, their food and, to a large degree, their future. This is a shining example of what many people refer to as food sovereignty.
DDS works in the Deccan region – semi-arid, susceptible to serious drought, and one of the poorest areas in India. This remarkable achievement in food sovereignty is part of DDS’s work with over five thousand women who belong to sanghams in 75 villages throughout the region. In the early 1990s, women farmers began to use intercropping and rotation to add beans, vegetables and fodder crops. With these and other organic techniques they were able to increase yields of their staple grain, millet, on their small plots. However, they did not have sufficient arable land to produce enough food for the entire year. So these women began a process to recover degraded land.
Responding to pressure from the sanghams and DDS, the government provided one-time loans to plough the soil and apply locally gathered manure to restore fertility. The loans were repaid in the form of grain to Community Grain Funds that are managed by the women. With this approach, women farmers have brought over 4,000 hectares of marginal, degraded land into production. The women of the sanghams now grow, store, and distribute enough food so that even during droughts they have sufficient supply, and do not require government assistance.
The women achieved this food security without new “high-tech” seeds, but with the same varieties that local farmers have developed over centuries, adapted to the highly variable local conditions. hese crop varieties do not require chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Using organic methods, farmers like Laxmamma remain unaffected by skyrocketing prices of chemicals.
In the Deccan region, women are the seedkeepers, and they preserve, lend, borrow and exchange the seeds of the crops they grow in their fields. They know that climate change will affect their agriculture but they feel prepared. Over generations they have developed seeds that are already adapted to a huge diversity of conditions and, Laxmamma adds, “we are happy to share them with others.” Beginning with genetically modified cotton and moving on to food crops, the Indian government and multinational agribusiness have aggressively promoted new and very expensive seeds. Through DDS’s participation in the coalition South Against Genetic Engineering (SAGE) – supported by Inter Pares – they reject the introduction of genetically modified crops and the resulting loss of control over their seeds.
Every year in February, the women of DDS beautifully decorate dozens of large bullock carts to create the “Biodiversity Caravan,” and then take the caravan to walk the dusty roads of the Deccan region. They visit villages throughout the state to share knowledge about seeds and farming techniques with other farmers, bringing a message of the importance of biodiversity and farmer control over land and agriculture. Through a series of films made by the women themselves, the message has reached an international audience in countries around the world.
In spite of the global food crisis, these activities continue to grow every year to include more farmers and more land. People in the villages where DDS is active have a good food supply, their nutrition has improved, the soil is more fertile and yields have increased. The improvements were not a result of biotechnology or chemical fertilizers. They are the result of supporting farmers in regaining control of their own agriculture, and on a local scale, achieving food sovereignty.
|
A CLOSER LOOK AT AGROFUELS The Agrofuels Rush
 www.cban.ca/resources/topics/agrofuels |
| Reviewed November 3, 2008 |  |
Publishing Policies |
