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!

India! Fieldwork in Bihar.

Here I am on a 2-week exploratory research trip in India! I have begun collaborating with Bioversity International who will graciously host me at their office in New Delhi, and I spent the past week travelling with some of their researchers and staff. Bioversity is currently working with CCAFS and other groups to investigate how farmers in the Indo-Gangetic Plains of India are adapting to climate change. Here's an interesting article on CCAFS's work in Africa, which of course interests me due to the talk of farmer innovation, and also of using flood/drought/etc. tolerant crop varieties as an adaptation (two things my research will address). The particular interest of Bioversity is the conservation of plant genetic material, and how that might be an adaptation strategy for farmers. It's an interesting project, to be sure! But my own research will focus more on the science policy of agriculture in northwest India.

The past week has been a whirlwind of adventure across India. Just one day after I arrived in Delhi, we boarded a plane to Bihar, a poor, crowded state in northeastern India. We went there because Bioversity/CCAFS has a field site there, where farmers were given a selection of wheat and rice seeds to grow and compare. The idea is that farmers could more effectively manage climate change and risk if they have more options of plant varieties. The farmers that we talked to were all landholders, which is likely a bias of working through our local contacts. They told us that this year was an especially bad drought. Thus it will be difficult for them to judge the different varieties of rice being grown right now.

The photo above shows one of the field sites we visited, where the local research staff from Pusa works closely with farmers to monitor the progress of the crops (rice, in this season). We stayed at the Pusa agricultural research campus, which was actually the first agricultural research station in India, started over 100 years ago! For this reason, the agricultural center in New Delhi, where I'll be working, is named the "Pusa Institute."

Bihar itself was similar to what I experienced in Bangladesh. Very rural, and as Ed Carr would put it, on "globalization's shoreline." There were few cars on the road but plenty of people, motorcycles, and goats. It was quite difficult to find places to eat or stay during the day (and I miraculously managed to avoid using the latrine all day...), the power at our guest house went out regularly (and was likely lacking in most villages), and even in the intense heat, there is of course no A/C but plenty of insects. The roads seemed better than in Bangladesh, but the traffic comparable (and the general madness of it, though like I said less cars or buses in Bihar). There is a recent NYTimes piece about Bihar, and how it suffers from structural poverty.

Overall, I'm glad I had the experience of visiting Bihar, but I have realized that I'm really not cut out for this sort of intense field work. I'm much, much happier back in Delhi, where I can be more independent and have small luxuries such as coffee and a clean room.