As a young African with a farming background, like many out there, I cannot underestimate the contributions of agroecology to the sustainability of our fragile ecosystems. It is undeniable that African land is being destroyed by short sighted industrial monocultures. And it’s evident that agroecology works to preserve the important resources and communities that are destroyed by industrial agriculture.

Agroecology is gaining interest amongst many small scale farmers in Africa and especially in Uganda where they still mostly control agriculture and food production. They are finding in agroecology elements of traditional African systems, reversing the trend towards monocropping and feeding themselves during lean seasons. Production does not encroach upon the health of their families, communities or natural resources. Unlike the ‘production gospel’ that only benefits seed monopolies and agrochemical dealers, agroecology does not promote profit at the expense of the environment or other people. It is unfortunate that some young producers are swept into believing the propaganda of quick returns from their farms. They turn a blind eye to healthy production techniques and ignore calls for sustainability.

I appeal to all fellow young African farmers, agronomists and food activists to resist the seed of greed sown by multinational profit oriented agro-input dealers that force us to believe that the excessive consumption, waste and extreme destruction of resources we have today is normal and fair. Agroecology offers different ways of farming and eating that safeguard our future and that of those who will come after us.

Edward Mukiibi (ediemukiibi@gmail.com) is the national coordinator of Slow Food in Uganda and the Vice President of Slow Food International.

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Millet cultivation started to fall out of favour in India during the green revolution when input intensive farming systems dominated by wheat, rice and maize were systematically promoted. During the past decades, the public distribution system, a scheme where the Indian government provides rice and wheat at subsidised rates to low income households, has further discouraged the use of millets. But, from the ground up, farmers, NGOs and scientists have started a millet revival that has even reached national policy. Several farming communities have succeeded in reviving their lost tradition of cultivating millets and two years ago millet was added to the public distribution system. A relatively new experience amongst the indigenous Gond and Baiga farmers in Mandla and Dindori districts in Madhya Pradesh gives insight into how the millet revival is unfolding across India.

Climate resilience

Traditionally minor millets were the major staple for farmers in Mandla and Dindori districts. They were cultivated and consumed in abundance – central to the rain fed farming systems, an important source of sustenance, and featuring in traditional songs. These cereals can produce a reliable harvest under the harsh conditions of this region that is characterised by rocky, thin topsoil and limited irrigation facilities. Since the 1970s, millet cultivation has been pushed into ever more marginal areas to make way for rice and maize. Paddy was once grown in more limited quantities and was considered a delicacy. Now, farmers in this region tend to focus their effort on wage labor and cultivation of paddy and maize. In the monsoon season, paddy is grown in the lowest elevations where moisture is greatest, maize is cultivated on gentle slopes, while kodo (Paspalum scrobiculatum) and kutki millets (Panicum sumatrense) are grown only in the steepest and highest areas.
Storefront of the Mandla Tribal Farmer Producer Company selling high quality millet seed to local farmers.

But, Gond and Baiga farmers recognise that their traditional millets are more reliable under increasingly drought-prone conditions. “Our crops depend on whatever falls from the sky. Paddy requires more water but kutki will grow even in the absence of heavy rainfall,” said a farmer from Mandla district. In 2015, eastern Madhya Pradesh received just 30 % of the usual amount of rainfall which led to crop failures and serious rural distress. The steady progression of climate change means that cultivating climate-hardy millet is an ever more important strategy.

Constraints

Despite their benefits, low productivity, weak market opportunity, difficult processing, and low consumer interest are constraints to continue millet cultivation. These constraints for millet use are not unique to Madhya Pradesh however, and they can be overcome. In Kolli Hills, Tamil Nadu, 15 years of collaboration between farmers, the M.S. Swaminathan Foundation and Bioversity International has resulted in a so called ‘holistic value chain approach’ which addresses issues of production, processing and consumption at the same time.

An approach which addresses production, processing, and consumption  at the same time

Action for Social Advancement (ASA), an NGO based in Central India, with a longstanding relationship with farmers in Mandla and Dindori districts, is applying this holistic approach in Madhya Pradesh to address challenges for millet use as part of a global initiative to promote climate hardy and nutritious underutilised species. The initiative is supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the European Union and the CGIAR Research Programme on Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security.

Success in Kolli Hills

In Kolli Hills from 2014-2016, an estimated 56 tonnes of millet was produced by 759 local farm families across 45 settlements. It was used for home consumption, stored as seed, or sold. The backbone of Kolli Hill’s success is the Agrobiodiversity Conservers’ Federation (KHABCoFED), a registered society involved in managing minor millets from the farm to fork. The current membership stands at 1,511 members from 47 self-help groups and 62 farmers’ clubs that specialise in different roles – from production, processing, value-adding to distribution. The initiative was built over time; it started in 1997 with 10 self-help groups and was institutionalised in 2009.

Their success with collective processing, value-adding and marketing have proven that millets can play an important role in rural livelihoods again. Mechanised mills have reduced the drudgery of processing millet grains. Women used to spend up to an hour manually processing one kilogram of grain and now it takes just five minutes. Food fairs, innovative recipes and successful marketing of value-added millet products have increased the amount of millet consumed across the region. And, the 15 farmer-run seed banks containing 21 landraces from five millet species are enabling farmers to conserve local seeds and nurture their seed exchange practices.

A lesson in collective organisation

The way farmers in Kolli Hills are organised has proven very successful. ASA is taking steps to support farmers in Mandla and Dindori districts in a similar way. In 2011, ASA supported the formation of more than 200 self-help groups amongst farmers in about 50 villages. Members from these groups formed the basis of three farmer producer companies that were established in 2013 and 2014. The farmer producer companies have storefronts, warehouse facilities and infrastructure needed to process and distribute the grain. All profits are distributed equitably among the farmers who collectively own the company, the majority of whom are women.

A success to date has been that, through the production companies, farmers are receiving a better price for their grain. The companies carry out primary cleaning, grading and colour sorting and as a result farmers share in the value-added price. On top of this, aggregation of grain enables bulk sale to reduce the number of middlemen between the farmers and consumers. The companies are also working to make available high quality kodo, kutki and finger millet seeds. This has involved participatory variety selection with several farmers specialising in seed production. Looking further afield, the farmer producer companies have joined a consortium made up of 51 farmer producer companies from across the state to facilitate larger scale transactions.

Locally adapted minor millets

Owing to their nutritional value, hardiness and cultural relevance, minor millets are all but minor. The green revolution put them aside but today their rediscovery is opening up huge opportunities for unleashing their benefits. Traditionally considered as a separate group from the other ‘major’ millets (sorghum and pearl millet), minor millets in India include six species: foxtail millet (Setaria italica), finger millet (Eleusine coracana), proso millet (Panicum miliaceum), kodo millet (Paspalum scrobiculatum), little or kutki millet (Panicum sumatrense) and barnyard millet (Echinochloa colona).

These crops play an important role in food and farming systems in both sub-Saharan Africa and India. Their short growing season makes them well suited to rainfed farming conditions. Compared to rice and wheat, they require relatively few inputs. Millets offer a wide variety of flavours, excellent taste, crispy or fluffy textures that can make our food experience both healthier and more attractive. They are nutritionally superior to wheat and rice in many aspects. For instance, finger millet has the highest calcium content among all cereals. Their starch composition and low glycemic index (which make them ideal for diabetic patients) are also accompanied by gluten free status of the flour.

Farmer to farmer knowledge exchange

Since seeing is believing, farmers from Madhya Pradesh and Kolli Hills have been involved in a number of knowledge and cultural exchanges. Last year farmers from Kolli Hills visited Mandla to share recipes and methods for preparing millets. This was such a success that when community members from Mandla participated in the Indigenous Terra Madre event in northeast India they prepared a kodo ladoo, a traditional sweet recipe, that they learnt from the Kolli Hills farmers. In January 2016 seventeen custodian farmers from Mandla and Dindori visited Kolli Hills, where they saw community seed banks, village-based mills, and the storefront where packaged final products are sold and distributed. They also had the opportunity to taste several millet dishes.

“These people are our people”

These exchanges are beneficial from both a learning point of view and for the unique experience of meeting people who share similar lifestyles, challenges and aspirations. “These people are our people,” said Khantibai, a female farmer from Mandla district. The visiting farmers were excited to find similarities between their native language, Gondi, and Tamil. Moreover, the cottage-scale machinery for millet processing in the villages that the farmers saw in Kolli Hills, could be strategic in increasing the use of millets in Madhya Pradesh. This would be particularly beneficial for women who traditionally spend hours grinding and separating stones from the small grains. All of the farmers were enthused to take their knowledge back to their villages and share it with the members of their self-help groups.

Millet on the menu

Another lesson from Kolli Hills is that awareness campaigns amongst rural and urban populations are key to getting these climate hardy crops back on their plates. ASA has organised a number of millet festivals in the district centres that provide a platform for producers to showcase their millet. Prizes for ‘the tastiest dish’ and ‘the most popular stall’ and the presence of government officials has proven a successful way of boosting self-esteem amongst producers and revalidating this traditional crop and food.

The path towards a full millet revival in Mandla and Dindori districts continues and increasing demand for the crop is an important priority. Staff from ASA recently visited three local primary schools to discuss climate change and the role of climate resilient crops such as millet for adaptation. At the same time the self-help groups are negotiating with these schools to provide lunches and, without a doubt, millet will be on the menu.

Ashis Mondal, Somnath Roy, Shambhavi Priyam and Sharad Mishra work for Action for Social Advancement (asa@asabhopal.org).
Israel Oliver King works for M. S. Swaminathan Foundation.
Gennifer Meldrum (g.meldrum@cgiar.org) and Stefano Padulosi work for Bioversity International.

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Dialogue amongst the different members of The Food Sovereignty Alliance, India resulted in co-creating knowledge, strategies and actions to strengthen our food sovereignty and cope with climate change. The Food Sovereignty Alliance, India works to reclaim and democratise local community control over food and agriculture systems . Members of our alliance include organised groups of Dalit people, Adivasis, small and marginal farmers, pastoralists, and co-producers. The co-producers are a political constituency of the alliance, who may not be directly engaged with food production themselves, but work in solidarity with the Alliance. Co-creating knowledge is a key element in our movement through which innovative and creative solutions emerge. I share one such example through this article in which, through co-creation of knowledge, we developed our own way of assessing the impacts of climate change and strengthening our coping strategies in our villages.

Rejecting top-down solutions

The establishment of REDD/ REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation programme), in 2010, as a key strategy to combat climate change, has been applauded by world leaders. In practice, REDD entails sinking carbon in standing stocks of trees, and raising new plantations, often on indigenous territories. From previous such models of carbon trade that had been tested in their territories, indigenous peoples were aware of how such policies and programs alienated Adivasis from their territories and forests. They had been forced to relinquish customary practices and forest governance, undermining indigenous resilience and climate coping strategies and threatening local food sovereignty.

An indigenous alternative

In 2010, Adivasi Aikya Vedika, a member of the Food Sovereignty Alliance, was invited by the Indigenous Peoples Biocultural Climate Change Assessment (IPCCA), to join a global initiative of indigenous peoples to assess climate change impacts and also to develop indigenous peoples’ response strategies to extreme climatic events drawing from their knowledge, experience, wisdom and worldviews. The Adivasi community became deeply involved in identifying a framework of enquiry to facilitate local assessments of climatic impacts and response strategies. Intense dialogue amongst the different Adivasi communities and co-producers resulted in the idea of reconnecting with the indigenous rhythm of life or ‘life cycle’. This life cycle is a representation of how the community members live their lives, based on the Adivasi worldview. It describes their relationship to their territories, seasons, food, forests, and the cultural cycles of life, in time and space.

In the course of one of the dialogues, at a meeting of Adivasi elders and youth, different groups were busy drawing their communities’ life cycles on paper and we realised that this life cycle was in fact a lived, dynamic, indigenous epistemology that could be used by communities to assess and record the impacts of climate change in their indigenous territories and on their lives. There was tremendous excitement. Young people from the community took the lead in creating a collective vision of their communities’ cycle of life. They began working with both male and female elders of the community recording their narratives and memories in spoken word, art, poetry, stories or songs. They translated all of this onto paper and on their walls. There was unanimous consensus of a circular representation of the life cycle.

In the case of some of the indigenous communities there existed another layer of information of ‘how it was 70-80 years ago’, which came from existing literature. For instance, books about Gonds the Chenchus and the Konda Reddis, include intricate descriptions of people’s lives, centred around their relationship to their territories and seasonal cycles. This was used by the community as additional information about climatic events on the life cycle.

The life cycle in action

After illustrating the cycle as ‘we know it is’, according to the communities’ experience, the young folks of the community began to use the life cycle to assess in real time, the trends each year. This was done by recording what was happening in the present and comparing it with established life cycles. They compared the flowering and fruiting of trees, the appearance or not of birds and insects, the onset or delay of weather patterns, and sowing and harvesting cycles. They also used the life cycle to identify forces that threaten or strengthen indigenous resilience. Most significantly what emerged was that villages with strong functioning village councils were far more resilient than villages with poorly functioning village councils. For instance, village councils which had rejected plantations showed higher diversity of food crops and thus resilience to climatic changes, than villages where individual families were persuaded to replace food crops with plantations on their lands.

They used the life cycle to identify forces that threaten or strengthen indigenous resilience

The life cycles illustrate the resilience of communities in the face of climatic variability. For instance, in 2012, the Savara community of Bondiguda village recorded how in the month of Lologain (approximately, the month of May), the usual season to sow diverse food crops, rains were scarce (see Savara Adivasi Life cycle illustration above). Around the same time, the community recorded how the forest department tried to convince, and in many instances force, the community to raise tree plantations on their food crop lands, saying this would bring both money and rains. The constant refrain of the forest department is that growing trees will bring more rain. Discussions in the village revealed that despite the scarce rains and the pressures of the forest department, the village residents preferred not to establish tree plantations on agricultural land and instead continued to grow food. This continued planting ensured that there was food for the year, and seeds for the future. In this case, the life cycle exercise also made visible communities’ commitment to autonomous food production despite external pressures to use the land for other purposes.

The life cycle approach not only continues to be used by the Adivasi communities to develop the idea, but it has also been adopted in other territories. It has proven to be an extremely effective approach for a number of reasons. It readily captured impacts of climate change, but this was just the first step of the process. The life cycles have been a critical tool for communities to discuss their own lives and situations. They have been a means for the communities to understand their own resilience and to share their innovative adaptation strategies with each other.

The life cycle exercise also made visible communities’ commitment to autonomous food production despite external pressures to use the land for other purposes

They help communities to actively assert their knowledge and strategies in the wake of climate change, offering concrete proposals that build indigenous resilience as well as mitigate the effects of climate change. In other instances it also stimulated intense discussions on steps to be taken by the community to halt and prevent the entry of mining, dam and plantation projects.

Road ahead

A major challenge continues to be state and global policies that refuse to recognise these indigenous approaches and epistemologies as valid. States are still determined to push false carbon trade arrangements, such as REDD/REDD+ as the solution to climate change, despite evidence of another way forward based on Adivasi peoples worldviews and life practice. However, through the life cycles, communities are increasingly able to confidentally reject the government’s climate change proposals.

Dr Sagari R Ramdas

Dr Sagari R Ramdas (sagari.ramdas@gmail.com) is a veterinary scientist, a member of the Food Sovereignty Alliance, India, and is learning to be a farmer.

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