AGRICULTURE
A group of farmers in disaster-prone Dadu district are advocating for ecological farming to increase food security by adopting conservation of vanished seed varieties in their areas.
This community-led conservation programme is a way to promote organic and indigenous seeds.
The move creates awareness among local farmers to avoid unnecessary expenditure of machinery, chemical input like fertiliser and pesticides, hybrid seeds, and insists to apply environment-friendly practices in crop cultivation.
The motivational factor behind it is to bring back the local crop varieties, which find the local weather more favourable and give more yields without chemical inputs. The idea was circulated after the devastations caused by frequent floods and emerging threats of water scarcity.
Reports gathered from the area reveal that initially 25 villages were selected in the district, where small-scale farmers were motivated to sow indigenous seeds, which had vanished three generations ago and had been replaced by hybrid seed crops after the green revolution in 1960.
These farmers while practicing learned about the negative impacts of chemical inputs, which not only caused soil infertility, but also poisoned water sources and killed birds and other earth-friendly insects. On the basis of carrying out this exercise, they believe that local seeds are not only more productive but also are heat and dryness resistant.
They contradicted the claim by certain multinational companies about the local seeds, which they have replaced by their own modified seeds, and said, "We have made experiments with three varieties of wheat in our family lands this year and proved successfully that the crops can sustain without chemical inputs, fertiliser, pesticides and grow on only one-time water."
Yar Muhammad Jatoi, who is small-scale farmer from Village Mithal Jatoi, Dadu district, said they have got Kahnni, Dendglo and Bekoria wheat seeds, which were not prone to any crop disease. “These old seed varieties need only one-time water and grow without chemical inputs,” he said.
About per acre cost high yield verity (HYV) wheat crops require four bags of fertiliser and more than one time weedicides/pesticides spray, which is more than Rs9,500 per acre. It also requires four to five times water till ripe and harvest.
A farmer Sajjan Jatoi told Money Matters about old variety ‘Dendglo’, which requires less than 16 kilogram seed for one acre land. The average per acre yield is around 40 mounds, which is favourable for them.
About indigenous variety of wheat seed ‘Kahnni’, the growers said they had been sowing this variety long before the introduction of new varieties under the green revolution in Sindh, and continued to so even after that. This variety of indigenous wheat seed is climate resilient. Its crop can be managed with organic agricultural inputs ie farmyard manure, green manure or compost and it doesn’t need chemical inputs. It is a drought and heat resistant wheat seed.
Farmers are familiar with its sowing and harvesting time. The sowing season starts from 15th of November and its crop is harvested from third or fourth week of March. The farmers can preserve this seed for next sowing easily, thus it remains in their access.
These farmers and local breeders have created space at their homes to store the local seeds of grains in earthen jars and baskets, and also for drying vegetables.
They admire the taste of flour made from wheat grains of this indigenous variety, saying it is more nutritional compared to other high-yield varieties of wheat. After harvest, the raw stems of the wheat plant are used to make baskets and other items to cover meals and keep them safe.
These farmers reside in the catchment area of the Indus River, and depend on winter crops. Traditionally they cultivate wheat, chilli and varieties of pulses.
Zulfiqar Jatoi, another farmer of the same village, said, "We experimented with sowing wheat varieties that our ancestors used to cultivate long ago, and now we are reviving the tradition here."
They had brought these varieties from different districts just for experiment. But they it was disaster-resilient and could survive with low water, in heat and dryness. “We keep this seed carefully for future and the next year we will have more land for the purpose,” he said.
"It is a successful move. But we are looking for local seeds of pulses, like channa (chickpeas), mung (Vigna radiata) and masoor (red lentil), which are common crops in the catchment areas. We have lost our own seeds once used by our elders,” Jatoi added.
Presently, the seed of these pulse crops available in the local market are not bona fide. “We have to buy new seed from the market every year," he said.
Farmers in non-irrigated areas sow lobia (black-eyed pea) and jowar (sorghum). They too have suffered from losses due to sowing unauthentic seed varieties.
These spate irrigation area growers usually depend on rains, floods in the Indus and waterways resulting from rains in the hilly areas.
Dadu district is a disaster-prone area. On one side, the district is on the floodplains of the Indus River and gets inundated during heavy rains; on the other side are the hills, which also cause flash floods during heavy monsoon rains. These hills are also known as the gateway to drought.
The arid parts depend on rains. Growers in barani (non-irrigated) areas of the district are solely dependent on spate irrigation for farming and livestock. They look oriented to adopt old crop methodology for saving their indigenous seeds to improve yield and avoid loss of using fake seeds.
Altaf Mahesar, leading Basic Foundation, said new crop varieties associated with the 'green revolution', were putting the old varieties at risk. He argued that seed conservation was a promising strategy to promote old vanished varieties and continue with cultivation of crops.
He disagreed with the claim that new seed varieties gave higher yield. He said the communities, based on their personal experiments, were able to prove that the older seed varieties of wheat not only gave higher yield, with better taste, but were also cost-effective and climate resilient.
Mahesar said this region was identified because it suffered heavy devastation due to floods in 2010, 2011, and 2012. Since it depended on agriculture, the main source of livelihood for the local communities, destruction during three consecutive years played havoc with their finances.
“Using tractors, fertilisers, and pesticides was an extra burden on their already meagre sources of income,” Mahesar said, and called it unnecessary expenditure, which has negatively impacted the livelihoods of the communities.
Hence, these old varieties of seeds might be the only way to keep them safe from the high cost of crop cultivation connected with using unauthentic seeds.
Mahesar said people are crying against chemical use which has resulted in land degradation and contamination of water sources. The unaware farmers, following new methods, have already stopped using chemicals to protect soil fertility.
He said they are mobilising communities to at least set up 25 farmers’ organisations in this district to lead the campaign, and then might replicate it in other areas. Research on echo-friendly pest management in agricultural crops is also the part of activities they are doing.
A recent meeting in Dadu attracted a large number of small-scale farmers, who demanded the provincial government to introduce Sustainable Agriculture Act to save the major economic sector, which contributes to the national exchequer. For this, they advocate to bring back the local varieties, which can withstand the local weather as well as climate change, and can also give higher yield.
The writer is a staff member
