Custodian farmers and global agro-biodiversity

This week I attended two conferences in Delhi (and have one left to go): one on "custodian farmers" and the other on global agro-biodiversity. My host organization did a large part of the work for the custodian farmers conference, which brought together 20-30 farmers from south and southeast Asia as well as experts in agro-biodiversity. It was interesting, definitely innovative, and somewhat logistically challenging to bring together farmers, some of whom had not travelled before, and who spoke at least 5-6 languages between the group. They each gave a short presentation that was translated by their country's research/NGO partner. Throughout the meeting I learned exactly what a custodian farmer is: someone who actively maintains, conserves, adapts, and shares agricultural biodiversity. Similar to what we might call "early adopters" or innovative farmers, although in some cases they said their communities did not recognize the importance of what they were doing. They have a lot of different motivations for doing this. Many of the farmers (which was a limited sample size, for sure, and only included one lady farmer) seemed to have some intrinsic motivation to conserve different species and varieties of crops. They were also motivated by financial benefit, and were very interested in how they could get more education, technology, and access to markets to make value-added products or to market their rare varieties. The two-day workshop was very interesting to hear about some of the research and policy related to custodian farmers, and we also had some interactive (participatory agricultural research, you could call it) activities with the farmers about what they valued and what suggestions they have to get more people to become custodian farmers.

The next conference was a global consultation on agro-biodiversity, more specifically, plant genetic resources (for a brief background, see my previous posts here and here). I know that at previous conferences on this topic, there's always a lot of strain between the "global north" and the "global south" because the global south contains most of the in-situ (in nature, or on-farm) biodiversity, but the global north has historically housed most of that diversity in seed/gene-banks while southern countries sometimes struggle to build their capacity at collecting and banking different plant (and animal, insect, and microbial!) species/varieties. But attendees at this conference were mostly Indian scientists (India has one of the largest biodiversity collections), country-representatives from the global south, and international research center representatives. So it was interesting to hear the perspectives from this group of people, and for me to talk to a bunch of scientists who I have studied so much about!

Quinoa: food fads and fallacies

In an alternate universe, perhaps I am an agricultural economist. Or, maybe my graduate training has prepared me to critically view articles like this recent one about quinoa and why vegans are awful people, as well as the response. For an actual economist's point of view, check out Mark Bellemare's blog.

There is no easy answer to this question. Like determining the greenhouse gas impact of "food miles," without a lot of data it's difficult to determine the net positive or negative effect that rising quinoa prices have on Bolivian farmers. My instinct is that in this case, rising prices might actually be helping farmers. If there are getting consistently high prices for quinoa that they sell, that means that they can actually sell less (or grow less acres) of this high-value export and still make a good profit. A good analog would be basmati rice that's grown in the Punjab region. But in both articles, the problem of quinoa prices for Bolivian farmers is conflated with the impact of globalization. It's true that globalization is changing the price of foods, their availability, and consumer preferences all over the world. Sometimes this can have negative impacts (think Coke, junk food, subsidized grains, and volatile markets), but there are also positive impacts. It's all more complicated than the first article would admit.

My DIY portable book scanner

While I'm in India next year, I plan on visiting several agricultural research libraries to find primary sources related to my research. And while there are several options for how I could record these documents, the fastest, easiest, and most useful seems to be using a digital camera to photograph pages from my documents. I am unsure whether these different libraries will let me use a camera and a tripod, but I am hoping they will.

I've been researching the best way to use a camera for scanning documents, and found an entire world of DIY book scanning. Unfortunately most of these scanners are not portable, and a bit above my ability level as a novice DIY-er. But after some research into camera tripods, I found this set up, pictured above, to be the most promising. I then came across this article and decided it was worth it to invest in the equipment (which all in all, cost me less than $100, not counting the camera). I also got a piece of plexiglass from the hardware store to flatten pages, but I think it will depend on what the libraries allow. Finally, hopefully I will be have good ambient light in the libraries, because I found that my camping lantern cast uneven shadows (but the overhead light caused glare in the plexiglass). If anyone has a suggestion for lighting, please let me know!

I am pretty happy with my results so far. The process goes pretty quickly, and I can do it sitting down. My files are large and as long as I get a good enough contrast between the page and the words, I can make readable files (not exactly OCR text readable, but readable to me). Processing the images is taking longer than taking them, and then I'm converting the files into pdfs (since so far I've been scanning from library books, it is pretty easy to keep them organized).

Here's a pretty good example of what I've collected. For this specific photo I used my lantern for lighting and the plexiglass sheet. I edited the photo in iPhoto to adjust the color/shadows, crop it, and make it black & white. As you can see, it is easily readable especially when zoomed in. The next scan I do, I will probably play around with the white balance and ISO settings on my camera.

Throughout my research in India I will be keeping all of my digital files on Dropbox and Google Drive so that if something happens to my computer, I won't lose my files.

Feel free to ask me any more detailed questions about my method, and I would of course appreciate any advice!

Countdown to India + semester accomplishments

(In Uttarakhand, India, this September, hiking down to visit some farmers)

While I've been neglecting this blog for a while, I'll be back blogging soon about a major project in my life-- my 6-month journey to India for my research. I'm leaving January 5th, 2013, bound for New Delhi. I'll use this blog to update my friends, family, and internet-friends from afar about my personal journey as well as my research-related insights and experiences.

In related updates, this semester has been full of ups and downs with stress/anxiety and progress/excitement over my research. And although I'm a somewhat modest person, I'd like to take a moment to recognize that I've accomplished a lot-- in fact looking at the list, more than I would expect anyone else to accomplish and still maintain sanity (which might explain some things...).

1. Successfully defended my research prospectus and passed without edits! This makes me an official PhD candidate and also a very happy person.
2. Went on a 75-mile victory bike ride!
3. Spent 2 weeks travelling in northern India, meeting international scientists and my host organization in Delhi.
4. Co-coordinated 400-ish volunteers for the Tempe Tour de Fat and raised around $72,000 for local bike-related non-profits. Also led the largest team of beer-pourers.
5. Co-directed GISER, a interdisciplinary graduate student organization at ASU.
6. Ran a 5K to support Arijit and the Poop Strong crew.
7. Learned to edit articles for the Embryo Project.
8. Started to learn हिन्दी
9. Took a weekend vacation in Austin to visit my former roommate.
10. Hosted my mom and explored Tempe for a week.
11. Spent time with my lovely friends in Tempe.
12. Stayed on top of the research and logistics details necessary for a 6-month trip to India (of course, I'll find out soon enough whether I am truly prepared...).

So right now I'm finishing up my semester and prepping for India. Moving out is going to be a pain, but packing shouldn't be too difficult since I know the essentials from my 3-months in Bangladesh several years ago. In India I'll wear mostly Indian-style clothes, which are long shirts called a kameez and scarfs with mostly Western-style pants. I hope to look professional, although fashion won't be a priority for me in the next few months. My goal is to look professional and to be respectful towards the culture.

Research note: In an effort to alert my non-academic followers to parts they can skip, I'll mark my research-related updates like this. So for those interested (academic or not) in what my research actually is, I'll be doing a mostly historical study of wheat research in northern India. I'm taking the time period of 1965 to present and I'm tracing the major themes in wheat research during this period. The mechanics of this will involve spending time in several agricultural research libraries around Delhi and the adjacent state of Haryana and interviewing key administrators, scientists, extension offices, and farmers. I'll also likely be doing a survey of plant breeders. The specific topics I'm interested in are the connections between wheat breeding, the adaptation of wheat varieties to different climates and agroecological conditions in India, and farmers' adoption of such varieties. Obviously I hope to connect all of this to climate change, and I have more than a few hunches that I'm on the right track to look at the history of climate/plant breeding connections. In particular, I'm wondering whether breeding crops for wide geographic areas makes them more or less likely to be adopted, and what role farmers play in the process of plant breeding. I'm also interested in what drives scientists towards certain paradigms of plant breeding for "wide" versus "specific" locations/climates, and how these themes are playing out in discussions of climate change.