It is the year 2003 in Andhra Pradesh, India. A group of more than 50 peasant women were gathered in a thatch roofed hall in Didgi village, engaged in a video interface with a group of senior agricultural scientists.

Sammamma, who owns three acres of rainfed farmland and grows more than 18 varieties of crops, stood up and started explaining why she values biodiversity in her farming practices. Quickly a scientist on the other side of the video camera stopped her and said “No, no, please do not worry about biodiversity. It is we, the scientists, who should think of biodiversity, and we will recommend a seed for you to use.”

Still too often scientists believe that agricultural science and knowledge are exclusively their domain while peasant farmers, especially the women, are not to be included at all when discussing farming approaches. However, the women in the Deccan region have proved them wrong in so many ways.

Biodiverse farming systems

The peasant women in Didgi village have developed highly biodiverse farming systems with common characteristics: they all farm on non-irrigated, not very fertile, fields of less than two acres; they are all non-chemical farmers; they all grow 12-23 varieties of crops on their small plots; and none of them need to purchase any of their food from markets.

The women of the Deccan region are the seed-keepers. They not only conserve seeds, but also decide on the mix and quantity of seeds to be planted at planting time. This is a win-win system: the women’s way of farming supports biodiversity, and biodiversity supports their way of farming.

Why is biodiversity so important for these women? Why are they not content with growing just one or two commercial crops as advised by the Department of Agriculture? They have a clear preference for food crops such as Yellow Sorghum, which are totally discarded and discouraged by agricultural scientists as it only attracts a low price on the market. For dalit women Yellow Sorghum provides nutritious food and good fodder. It grows in dry soil, can be used in fencing and thatching and has many other qualities. All these factors, in addition, can be completely controlled by the women in spite of their low income levels. The reverence that peasant women show for such “orphaned crops” illustrates their special vision on food and farming.

Reshaping food policy

In India, a select few species are promoted and supported as food crops by governmental institutions. A wide range of millet varieties, which traditionally have nourished many rural communities, are not among them. In 2013, for the first time in our history, the government recognised millet varieties as national food security grains by including them in the brand new National Food Security Act. After a decade long struggle by dalit peasant women, the Deccan Development Society and the Millet Network of India, millets are now firmly entrenched in India’s public food system. For us and for the women this was a great moment for rejoicing. They used radio and made short films to share their toils and successes. With grit and determination they have overcome their social, economic and gender marginalisation and reshaped national policy. Also, in 2013 as proponents of millet we were able to take the message of millets back to their African birthplace by initiating the Africa-India Millet Network and creating a new solidarity between the two continents.

More than food

For women from vulnerable communities, sticking to peasant values and biodiversity in farming can mean the difference between life and death. Whereas farmer suicides have been widespread among Indian farmers who were crippled by debt as a result of their expensive and risky commodity and chemical based farming systems, there has not been a single suicide among peasant women farmers who continue to use low cost biodiverse farming principles.

Agrobiodiversity is a strong part of these communities’ traditions, but it is also the only logical way for them to farm. They clearly understand that a biodiverse system is the best security they have against climate vagaries. Moreover, the crops they grow are indicative of their food culture, and the relationships between foods in the kitchen reflect relationships in the field.

For instance, food made from sorghum is accompanied by food made from pigeon peas, and in the field sorghum and pigeon peas grow as companion crops. This unique “farm-to-kitchen” model is what has kept agrobiodiversity alive on their farms for centuries. Since women are the most important torchbearers of this food tradition, they are also the carriers of the agrobiodiversity tradition.

Biodiverse farms not only nurture physical life, but also moral, ecological and spiritual life. People in this region celebrate biodiversity through several religious festivals where heroes symbolise and bless biodiversity. Englagatte Punnam, for instance, is celebrated when the winter crops mature, by tying diverse crops on the door of every home – as if the farmers are declaring, “look at the diversity in my field!” Women treasure these crops more than monetary wealth. Consequently, seeds are neither bought nor sold, but always exchanged.

Proud to share

The Deccan Development Society (DDS), a grassroots NGO working with peasant women from socially and economically marginalised dalit communities, has facilitated the sharing of farmer knowledge for 25 years.

Women from this region, especially those from lower socioeconomic classes, have travelled abroad at least 100 times – from Peru to Cambodia – to share their experience and perspectives on farming with farmers, scientists and policy makers. They have met receptive audiences, both among male and female peasants and in international conference rooms.

In 2003 they addressed the World Organic Congress in Victoria, Canada, where various people in the audience said they felt humbled by the women’s experiences.
Brimming with confidence, these women have started celebrating the Mobile Biodiversity Festival. Every year since 1998, they have travelled to over 50 villages during one month, discussing and celebrating ecological agriculture, control over seeds and organic markets in a way that expresses the deep relationships between farmers and soil, agriculture and environment. They have reached over 150,000 farmers in the region, showing them the richness of the traditional seeds and crops from the area.

The Indian government has recognised these Biodiversity Festivals as the most important community cultural campaign on the issue.

Worldwide recognition

The Deccan peasant women, who were so easily dismissed by the scientists in 2003, are now receiving national and international recognition for their work on biodiversity. Anjamma for instance, a 55-year-old peasant woman who has never gone to school and cannot read and write, is now a member of the expert panel on agrobiodiversity in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Government officers, scientists, civil society activists and media regularly come to the region to look at the women’s farms and seeds. Their stories regularly appear in newspapers and on television channels.

Today, the region comprising of about 50,000 hectares of land is about to be recognised as an Agricultural Biodiversity Heritage Site by the Indian National Biodiversity Board – the first in the country. The international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) developed the concept to honour sites where biodiversity is practiced. The Heritage label gives the area and its biodiversity the same level of protection as national parks and offers special status, privileges and incentives to the farmers and their communities. The label conveys a strong message that the Indian government supports marginalised family farmers and recognises their contribution to protecting biodiversity. When asked what the Heritage label means to them, the peasant woman Mahbatpur Swaroopa answers, “We are totally disinterested in any monetary benefits. It is the recognition that we cherish.”

The power of women

The attention for their farms and perspectives has added tremendously to the women’s self esteem. Paramma, a farmer-seed keeper in Khasimput village, once demonstrated this confidence as she confronted government officials who had come to visit her: “Every month you get your salaries and fill your pockets with currency notes. But come to my home. I have filled it with seeds. Can you match me?”

Given their marginalisation in other spheres of life, the women feel that their practice and conservation of agrobiodiversity has bestowed them with a new stature in the country, in their communities and in their homes. Most of the peasant women in this area say that more often than not, they are consulted and play a key role in making choices for their family farm.

Cheelamamidi Laxmamma cultivates her three-acre farm with dozens of food crops along with her husband. When her husband was counselled that he should become progressive and plant some hybrid crops on the land, he – completely against the grain of his social culture – first wanted to consult his wife. When he did, she burst out: “Have you gone mad? Why do we need hybrid seeds and a monoculture? Are we not happy with what we are growing?” And he gave in. Sharp and alert women such as Laxmamma enjoy far more respect from their husbands for the recognition they have gained in the community and beyond.

P.V. Satheesh
P.V. Satheesh is one of the founders of DDS and its General Secretary.
For more information visit www.ddsindia.com or e-mail: satheeshperiyapatna@gmail.com

A tireless promoter of natural farming and living

In memoriam, Dr. G. Nammalwar (1939-2013)

Dr G. Nammalwar, a great friend of farmers, passed away in Tamil Nadu, India, on December 30th, 2013. Dr Nammalwar worked for the cause of family farmers all his life, and immensely contributed to popularising the concepts of ecological farming and natural living.

In 1963, he began working as a scientist for a regional Agricultural Research Station. He felt strongly that research should be re-oriented, but his colleagues at the institute paid little attention to his ideas. Frustrated, he left the institute in 1969. Dr Nammalwar realised that in order to achieve optimal yields, farmers should rely as little as possible on external inputs.

Influenced by Paulo Freire and Vinoba Bhave, he tirelessly promoted self-reliance through education since the 1970s. Over many years he actively engaged in many policy debates. He was an excellent communicator – with children, farmers, comrades, and a growing constituency of rural and urban citizens who had become aware of his work through his numerous publications. His passing away is a great loss to farmers in Tamil Nadu and to many others involved in ecological farming and the fight against destruction of the natural environment.

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Year: 2009; venue: Copenhagen. The Climate Summit is going on. One of the distinguished speakers invited by the United Nations to address the plenary is Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of the North American state of California. Many of the participants (including myself) got a bit confused when he started speaking about his contribution to mitigating global warming, and he mentioned that (a) he has started heating his Olympic sized swimming pool with solar power instead of electric power, and (b) he converted his fleet of SUVs into “hybrids”. Perhaps even more surprising was that the entire Assembly gave him a standing ovation.

Apart from the ridiculousness of inviting Mr Schwarzenegger to address the plenary, when no farmer or indigenous person was invited to speak, worse was the fact that no-one ever thought of questioning why a family of two uses an enormous swimming pool and so much energy (renewable or otherwise) for heating its 2,500,000 litres of water.

No-one questioned why he needs to drive a fleet [half a dozen or more] of cars… It is this interpretation of what is “green and good” that baffles those who work with people who cannot even afford a bus fare, let alone a stable of cars. And to my mind the contribution they make in mitigating climate change and cooling, or feeding, our planet it, is far larger. It is the same apprehension I carry when the idea of a “green economy” is discussed, and which becomes especially relevant when thinking of the millions of people who live in very difficult conditions – and when we think that economists are supposed to help them overcome poverty.

Definitions

But how do we define poverty? I remember the schoolboy who, when asked to write about poverty, mentioned that “I am poor, so I know about it. My driver is also poor. My cook is even poorer. My gardener is also poor.” If the idea of a “green economy” is linked to the poverty of millions of persons, will we be forced to live with another farce such as that of Mr Schwarzenegger? Most definitions of poverty have a monetised interpretation.

A typical example is that of the Indian Planning Commission, which put the poverty threshold at Rs. 27 per capita. This kind of calculation is always done on the basis of one’s contribution to national GDP. But GDP is in itself another hoax. As Devender Sharma says, if a tree is standing, it does not contribute to GDP. But the moment it is cut and made into tradeable timber, it adds to GDP.

So what contributes to what? In another UN conference, this time focusing on the concept of Gross National Happiness, the former Prime Minister of Bhutan, Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley, said that ,i>“We have to think of human well-being in broader terms. Material well-being is only one component. That doesn’t ensure that you’re at peace with your environment and in harmony with each other… The GDP-led development model that compels boundless growth on a planet with limited resources no longer makes economic sense. It is the cause of our irresponsible, immoral and selfdestructive actions.” Thinley added that “The purpose of development must be to create enabling conditions through public policy for the pursuit of the ultimate goal of happiness by all citizens.”

“GNP (Gross National Product) by itself does not promote happiness,” said Jeffrey Sachs, a prominent development economist at Columbia University in New York, and also author of the World Happiness Report. “The U.S. has had a three fold increase of GNP per capita since 1960, but the happiness needle hasn’t budged. Other countries have pursued other policies and achieved much greater gains of happiness, even at much lower levels of per capita income.” In other words, we should not let the new concept of a “green economy” just be confined to “business-as-usual”.

A view from DDs

The Deccan Development Society, a grassroots organisation with which I have been associated with for the last 25 years, works in the Medak district of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, right at the centre of semi-arid India. DDS works with about 5,000 very small-scale women farmers who primarily belong to the socially excluded groups. These are people who suffer multiple forms of marginalisation.

In the urban-rural divide, as rural people, they are marginalised. Being poor, in the economic divide they are marginalised. Being dalits, in the social divide they are marginalised. And as women they face severe marginalisation in the gender divide. Working with this group has been a challenge.

A quarter of a century ago, our initial aim was simply put as “poverty alleviation”. But as we started listening and looking carefully at the people we were working with, our own idea of what constitutes poverty changed. This transformation has led us to now look at poverty from a much broader perspective, moving away from monetary perspective towards a sovereignty perspective; from a “rights” perspective to an “autonomy” perspective. This has led us towards promoting autonomous and community-controlled food production systems; autonomous healthcare systems; autonomous markets; and an autonomous media.

How are these initiatives related to poverty? That is where I would like to revert back to the definition of poverty. In a rural area, if a woman from a dalit community is able to take care of her food needs and of her health needs in a satisfactory manner, and if she is able to be a member of an autonomous market set up by her group, and if she is able to air her views in a public space through the community radio station, and make her own films through initiatives like the Community Video Collective, should she be called a woman in poverty just because her monetary income is less than the classical US$ 2 per day? If she moved to earning US$ 3 per day but depended completely on an external market for her food, nutrition or healthcare, and had no media space to air her views and opinions, would that woman be considered as having escaped poverty?

It is this analysis which makes me say that the small-scale farmers with whom we work have escaped poverty. In terms of food production and consumption, these are small-scale farmers with an average holding of about 2 acres. They have adopted biodiverse farming systems and are able to produce all the cereals, legumes and oilseeds they require for an entire year’s consumption. Nowadays,

• the daily per capita consumption of an average DDS family stands at 500 g of cereals and 50 grams of pulses. According to the latest Economic Survey of India, these families are eating 20% more cereals and nearly 40% more of pulses than the rest of India.
• in terms of money spent, nearly 85% of these households spend less than Rs.100 per person per month on food (compared to the average Rs. 400 spent per capita by rural households in the state of Andhra Pradesh), since most of them are producing their own food. Thus, for every household of five, DDS families are saving Rs.1500. They also sell nearly 70% of the pulses produced on their farms and 60% of the fodder, earning an additional income.
• all DDS communities have established their own Public Distribution System. They grow nutritious millets which are culturally and agro-ecologically adapted to local conditions. Through this system, they not only take care of small and marginal farming families, but also of the landless people in their communities. A few years ago, they did a hunger mapping of their villages and identified the less fortunate among them, and started community food kitchens for them. From food receivers, they became food providers.

It can also be said that their agriculture does not rely on expensive fertilizers and pesticides. They use farmyard manure, biofertilizers produced at the household level and other family-made botanical formulations for plant care and plant growth. All the seeds are their own, saved year after year.

Having no expenses at all in terms of seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, they save an average of Rs. 2,000 per acre per season. They use no external energy, produce no greenhouse gases, and keep a clean energy balance sheet.

In terms of their healthcare systems, each community has its own health worker, usually a volunteer. This person normally cures all minor illnesses in her community; and anyone can approach her. She charges nothing for the services she offers. She makes only herbal medicines. In the last decade, DDS health workers have saved their community of 50 villages, up to Rs. 7.5 million every year. In addition, communities have established 29 medicinal commons, with each commons having more than 50 plant species, all with a medicinal quality. Anyone in the community can access these commons and the plants to make their own formulations. No money is charged for them.

DDS communities also run their own market, the Market of the Walkouts. This is a co-operative market headed by a committee of 11 women. It makes all its decisions democratically, including those regarding the prices paid to the farmers who supply produce to them. Every member of this market is privileged to receive 10% more than the external market rate for every produce she sells to her market. She also gets a 10% discount for everything she purchases. Every year, the co-operative distributes dividends!

Nearly 80% of the DDS women are engaged in some form of “eco-enterprise”, at the heart of which are the animals they raise. Each family has a goat or a buffalo, a bullock and at least half a dozen poultry (or a combination of all these). Their earnings through milk and meat averages close to Rs. 2,500 per month. In addition, cattle are also a great source of manure. Most families produce biofertilizers (an average of 1.5 tonnes per year, sold at nearly Rs. 6 per kg). The cattle produce nearly 6 tonnes of farmyard manure: a saving of up to Rs. 1500 per year. Finally, since 1990, DDS communities have planted over a million trees in about 35 locations raising neighbourhood forests (or “community commons”). These forests have more than 80 plant species in each, from which families can get fodder, fruits, fuelwood and timber.

A valid alternative

I am mentioning all these factors in order to underline the fact that DDS has chosen to go beyond the classical “income generation” model, striving to work in harmony with the ecological perceptions of a community. This has helped this district to become an agro-ecological oasis in the region, and it is now recognised as an Agrobiodiversity Heritage Site by the National Biodiversity Authority. In this process, our work has not just enhanced the food and nutritional security of these communities, but has also enabled them to live a life of dignity and honour, understanding and trusting the ecological role they are playing.

While I cannot recall any major crippling challenges, there are several reasons behind our success, starting with the fact that DDS kept a very low profile right from the beginning. DDS followed the agenda set by the women and never tried to set its own agenda.

DDS never tried to “represent” the people it was working with. People represented themselves. Therefore, the struggles were fought by the community and won on their own strengths. What could have worked against the DDS was that it did not engage with the rich and powerful sections of the communities. But by the time these groups realised that the strength that the women were acquiring could work against them it was already too late. The women had empowered themselves.

To conclude, I would like to say that work has shown that it is possible to improve the well-being rural communities and overcome poverty without adopting monetised goals. As Nagamma, a 70 year old community elder from the village of Tekur says, the alleviation of poverty in rural areas “has to be like a river. Other organisations are like monsoon streams who burst onto the scene flow forcefully and disappear within weeks. We flow full and calm, bringing life all around us.” Should this not be the goal of a truly “green economy”?

Text: P.V. Satheesh

P.V. Satheesh is the Director of the Deccan Development Society, Andhra Pradesh, India.
E-mail: satheeshperiyapatna@gmail.com

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