Discussion

I am referring specifically to the two papers on India in which reasons for farmers' preferring traditional varieties were elaborated. There might be something missing in the scientific argument here. If you do a search process and you utilize the biodiversity amongst released cultivars, then you will probably find that many of the released cultivars satisfy all the criteria that you have described as characteristic of the local.

GHILDYAL: I want to comment of Vijayalaksmi's paper. High-yielding rice varieties have been primarily limited to irrigated agriculture. When IRRI started in 1962, the objective was clear: our target was the irrigated ecosystem and our yield target was for 6 or 8 tons. IRRI has now produced special types that can yield up to 15 tons per hectare. Their target was not to remove poverty among rainfed farmers. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) really only started a project on rainfed rice last year with, a coordinated project in Eastern India.

MAURYA: I want to clarify what Ghiidyal has said. We have been able to breed varieties for the rainfed ecosystems, but these systems are highly heterogeneous and a single or few varieties cannot satisfy the needs of many micro-niches. One of the reasons that farmers in these situations are risk-prone is that they have not been able to purchase costly seed. Because of that, seed is not spreading and the impact has not been as visible as in the irrigated system.

WITCOMBE: lf you make an analysis of releases over the last 10 years, there have been about 40 a year and about ten of them are for upland rainfed conditions .... We have focused on the biodiversity of traditional material, but there is also a huge biodiversity amongst released material, which is unexploited because it is not being given to farmers.

GHILDYAL: We have not been able to convince the National Seed Corporation or, the State Seed Corporation to produce seed for upland rices. They do not want to produce small quantities. They want large quantities of high-yielding varieties so they can make money. So I have asked breeders to produce seed, because the government is not prepared to produce. But breeders say: 'that is not my job.'

MANDAL: The upland varieties are problematic, there is no denying that. But even some of the new upland varieties have been found to be superior to the local varieties. Yet we cannot expect a variety which will behave like the Brahmin's Cow, which will eat less and produce more grain. Even the variety mentioned, Kapachini, gives 74 Qtls per hectare — yet it also impoverishes soil fertility. They are not synthesizing nitrogen. There are others which are giving consistently about 4 tons per hectare.

JARDHARI: [Editors'note: translated from Hindil. Pantnagar University has spent a great deal of time and effort in trying to produce soybean to replace the kind of cultivars that are being grown in the hills. Why has Pantnagar not spent equal time and effort to improve the 'Barahnaga' [agricultural system of sowing twelve crops]. Why has this traditional system been ignored to improve upon as a mode?

GHILDYAL: The reason is that if you grow five or six crops together — rice, pulses, maize, sorghum — then the total yield becomes very very low. If the yield of maize can go up to 80 tons per hectare, then it may be giving eight tons only. ... Soybean was recommended because it was found to be a solution for oilseeds and proteins, both.

SAHAI: In fact, nobody wanted it.

GHILDYAL: Because 'bhatt' is being grown in the hills, the rhizobium culture is available and the production of soybean has been excellent. The question is that soybean cannot be eaten by farmers nor can it be marketed, unless you have a processing factory. So we started a processing factory at Nainital and that factory is now taking all the soybean and producing oil and soybean cake.

JOSHI: I want to comment on monocropping. While it may give the best returns from optimum environments, the same is not true when you are talking of stress situations. We have calculated economic benefit in mixed cropping systems (like maize-millet, wheat and barley) and it is also beneficial, in Nepal, to have two component crops in rainfed and stress environments.

SPERLING: A question on the work of CONSERVE. You are doing something very different from others here in that you have a back-up bank and then an intermediary group of farmer curators who then pass on seed to farmer users. My questions are on these farmer curators. What kind of people are they? Are they subsidized? What kind of role do they have in the community? Why do you feel that this intermediary group is necessary?

MAGNIFICO: These farmer curators are actually the original farmers. They are members of the farmers' cooperatives, the farmers' organizations and they have been trained by us, the staff, about conservation: some technical aspects, crop improvement. In the beginning, with about 45 cooperators, we distributed only 100 g of seeds, but at least 10 different varieties per farmer, and no compensation was given. At the start, we even had a budget to compensate for some loss to the farmers. But realizing the value of these genetic resources, the farmers said there was no need to subsidize because they were sowing very small plots and that, even if the varieties failed, there would be no great loss. But in the process of propagating and observing these seeds, farmers were able to select the better potential varieties. So eventually they increased the area under this organic system and because of that other farmers were eager to join. As of the end of 1994, we have 106 cooperators.

SPERLING: Are they men or women? Does it make a difference?

MAGNIFICO: Most of the farmer cooperators are men, but in terms of farm work, women also have their role. Even the whole family might be engaged in breeding: the children are participating, the wife is participating in the decision on what variety to be crossed and what should be planted on a larger scale. So, the whole family is actually involved.

BERG: l would like to draw attention to one point which was made in Jardhari and Kothari's paper. They said that seeds in communities were traditionally considered as communal property and that this kind of virtue in a community is about to be lost. This is something which we see everywhere. I think it has a universal value in traditional communities and it is a logical consequence of the fact that the seeds are evolving through communal achievements and once the traditional seed systems are being replaced by a modern seed system, these values are, obviously, being lost. Now when we start discussing and experimenting with participatory breeding, there is a possibility of reversing this trend in erosion of values because in participatory breeding, we are dealing normally with organized farmer groups. Again, we reconstitute a kind of communal nature and participatory common nature in the improvement of seeds and then we have a chance of maintaining a feeling of having seeds as a common property within the community.

RILEY: A question to all those who are seedbanking. Many of papers are talking about seed genebanks which seem to be either very short-term or to protect heirloom varieties or some other types over a longer period. What is the range of the number of years in which various groups would like to protect their seed: from one year, two years, tens years? That would give us a good estimate about what kind of seed banks we need to look at.

WELTZIEN: Also a question to all groups. I understand most of these seedbanking efforts are fairly new and so experience is building up. I was wondering whether any of these you have a conceptof introducingsome more dynamics intoyourconservation efforts towards lettingfarmers improve what they have in these traditional varieties. Conservation per se is a valuable goal, but I think most farmers would also be interested in improving their conditions. They don't live in a static situation, for instance, the environment is changing. So are there any plans to introduce more dynamics into their local systems?

SAHAE: (Chairman). Both these questions, on dynamics and duration, should probably be answered in the interactions later on because several groups want to express their opinions.

LOEVINSOHN: There is a strong sense from several presentations this morning that what is being lost is more than just material — that it is a sense of involvement and control over the process, the life-giving processes in which people work. The genebanking and seedbanking efforts that are being described, some in embryo, are an attempt not just to conserve the material, but also that sense of control. Participants have said that farmers are not prejudiced against modern varieties or HYVs pe rse, it is the way in which they are presented; people don't believe they control how the choices are made. It is that sense of involvement that has to be maintained. Coming back to the approach proposed by J. Witcombe, if we only restrict attention to the varieties that have been released, I think that may do very little to help preserve the sense of people's involvement in the process. The recognition of what farmers have accomplished through generations of selection of local material has to be maintained and an even playing field in which local and modern varieties are compared has to be preserved.

KOTHARI: A question for Dr. Maheshwari. There has been some concern about the information and knowledge you having been gathering in these last ten years of your project, which is currently being stored at Trivandrum. Who controls this incredible amount of knowledge that you have? What is the guarantee that it will not misused by commercial or government interests? Is there any conscious policy of returning benefits, knowledge or something like that to communities from whom all this originated? And so on — the whole range of issues involved with the control over a knowledge system.

MAHESHWARI: The All India Coordinated Project on Ethnobiology was formulated in 1977. I prepared a draft report and submitted it to the department of Science and Technology. There were two other great scientists involved: Dr. M.S. Swaminathan and Dr. K.N. Khoshoo. At the time this working group was formed, there were no such problems. The problems have come after the post-GATT developments about protecting IPRs, etc. So, it started as a Government of India Project; we collect the material and whatever material has been collected is safe. Research reports have been prepared and submitted. During the transitional period, there has been some talk about IPRs but nothing has been mentioned in drafts.

For example, at the Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI) at Lucknow, they have already gone ahead with the product patents because the product patents are apart from the process patents. But as f ar as the biological material is concerned, I think we are still in the nascent state. We have to formulate and sort out ideas and make a strategy known.
 

© 1997 International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada
pub@idrc.ca | 5 June 1997
Source: http://www.idrc.ca/books/focus/833/discuss7.html