As I pack my bags each year for New York, friends and family ask me what Climate Week it is about and how it helps address the climate crisis. Absorbing an enormous amount of resources, it’s an important question. Climate Week began in 2009 as a side event to the U.N. General Assembly’s (UNGA) annual meeting to deepen climate commitments. Today, the two events are largely separated with limited opportunities to influence the UNGA. Its organizers describe it as a “world-leading global climate event” of leaders “that have the means, the scale and the ideas to take bold action.” Although policies are not forged at Climate Week, relationships are. While the larger environmental NGOs tend to be well-represented, grassroots civil society movements are generally not, which left me concerned as to whether the bold actions hatched there will be sufficiently grounded in community leadership.

Nonetheless, the conversations offered inspiration. Traffic was predictably awful, black Suburbans ushering heads of state about. To arrive at venues from Columbia University to Tribeca, I weaved on a bicycle between taxis. In one midtown session, a slide tracked how, over the past decade, the links between climate and food systems have gained momentum in deliberations at the COPs. It was good to see a general trend I’ve observed—of growing interest in this link—confirmed by the data. At the Agroecology Fund, we’re convinced that there is no climate solution without a redesign of food systems along agroecology principles.

In a session on Indigenous-Led Climate Finance hosted by the Collective Action for Just Finance, NDN Collective and Oweesta, a speaker noted that an investment in Indigenous-led funds providing blended capital for alternative energy and traditional food systems isn’t “concessional” in the conventional  sense—which can be  unappealing to investors seeking higher returns—but rather offers a “restorative” return on a broken planet. A fund manager, Vanessa Roanhorse, said, “I’m not here to pass down debt, rather to pass down opportunity.”

Truly harrowing was a session organized by ClimateWorks and others on “A Philanthropic Path to Collective Action on Agrochemicals and Fossil Fuels.” There, we heard about the fossil fuel industry’s agile footwork. As fossil fuels decline as an energy source, companies double down on petroleum-based agrochemical inputs. Seeking a more resilient horizon, Tonya Allen, President of the McKnight Foundation, shared, “the more we farm with nature, the more we solve problems.” She cited examples of agroecological innovations in Tanzania, including non-fossil fuel bio-inputs that fortify soil health.

On the other side of the Atlantic, I joined the Milano Urban Food Policy Pact’s Global Forum. More than 300 municipalities worldwide have joined MUFPP to share experiences in strengthening sustainable and equitable food systems. I served on a jury to recognize cities’ outstanding food policy innovations; all tied to climate resilience. From Jericho’s use of treated wastewater to irrigate a greenbelt of dates to Choné’s reforestation with cacao trees which has generated employment along the value chain, it was a wealth of creativity and political commitment carried out in partnerships with civil society. In these moments of cruel and neglectful national politics, gestures to guarantee livelihoods and the most basic of rights—the right to food—seemed just the right medicine.

Further south in Rome, the Agroecology Coalition convened donors of diverse stripes—from multilateral development agencies to philanthropies—to explore how to deepen investments in agroecology. Development banks joined the conversation. Were they to finance principles-based agroecology, it would be a significant investment flow.

Immediately after the donor gathering, the Committee on World Food Security’s (CFS) annual meeting took place at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). CFS has a special place in my heart. It celebrates multilateralism amidst its generalized collapse, exacerbated by the U.S. retreat. The U.N. Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Michael Fakhiri, stated that “the U.N. died in Gaza” when food was used as a weapon and the U.N. stood by. Perhaps CFS can be a space for multilateral resurrection.

In a vivid representation of the links between the global and local, Anna Scavuzzo, Vice Mayor of Milano spoke at CFS and the CFS chair H.E. Nosipho Nausca-Jean Jezile spoke at the Milano forum. The next High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) report—a previous one articulated the 13 principles of agroecology—will be on Resilient Food Systems and present research findings on strategies to safeguard food security in a changing climate.

CFS’ governance is unique. In the reform of 2009, the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism (CSIPM) was born a space in which many Agroecology Fund grantee partners participate. One has to admire the CFS as a forum in which the private sector and philanthropic foundations both have seats, the CSIPM delegation advocates for Indigenous land rights and in a plenary session, the U.S. asks to be dissociated from policy recommendations on Urban and Peri Urban Food Systems due to a series of “red lines” including climate change, equity, and diversity that are “not actionable given their lack of focus and expensive scope.”

Of course, CFS has plenty of problems, not least of which is that recommendations and guidelines are non-binding. The CSIPM advocates hard for these products to be taken up by governments. Some are rankled by CFS’ inclusive nature. Over recent years, a new forum has appeared, the World Food Forum, in which the food and agriculture industries have a heavier hand. It could siphon interest away from CFS.

A common thread tying together these diverse fora is that they are moments in time. While CFS stands out as the culmination of consultative processes from territories to parliaments, all three are primarily places to strengthen relationships, share knowledge, and pledge joint commitments. The hard work occurs both before and after, in communities across landscapes. In nearly every session I attended, grassroots actors were lifted up as essential landscape leaders, wonkily described as the secret sauce to scaling resilient food systems up and out. Their underfunding was noted. May action follow discourse. May funding for these community-driven food and climate solutions be abundant and may agroecological food systems grow like corn after a summer rain!

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The post Op-Ed | After the Party: Putting Flesh on Food and Climate Commitments appeared first on Food Tank.

The Learning Exchange made clear that for innovation, agroecology does not rely on technology transfer. At the very center of agroecology lies the principle of knowledge co-creation.

A gallery of 45 stories showcased agroecological approaches to farming and fishing across Asia. They told stories of circular economies, revived traditions and local knowledge, and securing land reform. They described triumphs and hardships of marginal farmers and fishers challenging the domination of industrial food systems and grappling with the mounting threats of climate change.

Behind the posters were grassroots innovators, grantees of the Agroecology Fund. The Agroecology Fund is a pooled, multi-donor grantmaking fund and learning connector which has provided over US$40 million in funding to support agroecology movements to strengthen resilient, healthy food systems; uphold rights; conserve biodiversity; and address climate change through sustainable, low-input agriculture.

Globally, agroecological systems are vital not only for addressing poverty and hunger but also for climate change mitigation. Agriculture alone contributes 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions through production and use of industrial farm inputs—fertilizers and pesticides.

In a discussion on climate and agroecology entrepreneurship, Sakiul Millat Morshed of SHISUK from Bangladesh and Karan Singh of Farmversities from India presented their agricultural development models rooted in traditional knowledge. The SHISUK agroecological experience integrates rice and fish farming on Bangladesh’s floodplains, significantly boosting farmers’ year-round income by cutting paddy cultivation expenses and adding revenue from aquaculture. Before SHISUK stepped in, the seasonal inundation of the floodplains pushed farmers out of their livelihoods and deeper into poverty.

In Sakiul Millat’s view, “traditional knowledge is social capital that helps a community to grow together.” SHISUK’s success comes from blending social capital with modern science, managing natural resources wisely and adapting to climate change. In addition to better income and nutritional benefits to the farmers, strengthening entrepreneurship on floodplains improves soil moisture, groundwater recharge, while diminishing pollution.

Karan Singh of Farmversitiy, a grassroots organization based in Rajasthan, India, shared how his work with young farmers, men and women, has dissuaded migration to cities, revived traditional farming practices, and introduced value-added farm-products as additional source of income.

Nantawan Manprasong of The Field Alliance shared their approach, from Vietnam and Thailand, to collaborating with government and community-supported school meal programs, where children not only eat traditional agroecological food, but also grow it at their school. Strengthening this public procurement demand mechanism fortifies an agroecology economy and makes visible and viable traditional food varieties. Manprasong described nutritional improvements from agroecology, and the health and environmental benefits of pesticide-free farming practices and climate change resilience.

Consumer awareness is likewise key to the growth of agroecology economies. Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) were discussed as a popular, low‑cost mechanism for building trust between producers and consumers. Community-led certification validates the application of agroecological principles. Muhil Kannaiyan of the Thalavady Farmers Foundation, India, said “we leverage agroecology’s sustainability, ecological, health and ethical values to build consumer trust.” The Foundation’s multilingual smartphone app ‘Farmfit’ gives farmers direct access to markets—enabling them to reach consumers directly and bypass intermediaries. The application helps with pricing and distribution challenges and results in better returns on food production.

But agroecology economies receive little investment on an uneven playing field already biased towards heavily subsidized industrial agroecology. Cristino Panerio of the Philippines, an advisor to the Agroecology Fund, spoke to the ways in which agroecological farmers are often left out of a longer value chain, which favor use of chemical inputs over bioinputs.

Critical to a strong local agroecology economy is strengthening territorial markets, often in collaboration with municipal governments, a strategy employed from Turkey to Malaysia. These markets function best with sufficient local supply of agroecological produce, which is much aided by robust networks of food-producing cooperatives.

Serikat Petani Indonesia (SPI), a national farmers organization and the learning exchange co-host in Indonesia, described how farmers’ market and cooperativism empowers otherwise marginal farmers. After years of struggle for peasants’ rights to land and seeds, establishing food sovereignty zones has helped achieve productivity, at par with industrial farming—but at significantly lower costs. And FAO studies confirm that agroecological practices can deliver higher long-term yields without external inputs, and enhance crop resilience in the face of an uncertain climate.

SPI’s work underscores how localized control and collective enterprise can lay the groundwork for an agroecology food economy. Recalling her experience with the empty supermarket shelves during Covid and setting up markets for agroecology products across Bangkok, Anne Lapapan of The Assembly of the Poor, Thailand, stated that the pandemic showed how neither consumers nor farmers can rely on long supply chains dominated by transnational corporations for their food and seeds. During the pandemic, the Assembly of the Poor ensured agroecological vegetable supply in Bangkok’s urban neighborhoods.

Participants from India shared experiences leveraging government programs to finance agroecology. Sridhar Radhakrishnan, sustainable agriculture specialist and AEF advisor from India, suggested that to scale agroecology, organizations need to explore local financing beyond traditional donor models. He cited examples from India.

The discussions underscored the global forces that conflict with the growth of localized agroecological economies. Azra Sayeed of Roots for Equity, Pakistan, spoke to the layered vulnerabilities faced by smallholder farmers—ranging from war and climate crises to debt, economic restructuring, and displacement in the name of development. AEF advisor Lim Ching cautioned against biodiversity offsets, noting that related schemes such as carbon credits had not yet delivered on their sustainability and equity claims. She cautioned that such offsets can have perilous outcomes for communities with irreversible ecological damage.

A report by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food estimates that a global transition to agroecology would require a US$250-430 billion investment per year to align our food systems with the 1.5°C Paris Agreement. We have a long way to go. The Asia Learning Exchange clearly brought to light dozens of impactful community-based initiatives hungry for investment and capable of leading an agroecological shift in the world’s food systems.

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Photo courtesy of Agroecology Fund

The post Op-Ed | Asia’s Farmers Root for a Resilient Future appeared first on Food Tank.

Digital tools can help farmers monitor field conditions in real time, understand soil quality, plan their planting—and connect directly with consumers. Digital tools can also be costly and out of reach for smaller farmers. Data ownership and privacy are big concerns. Will the big data that underpins digitalization lead to even greater corporate control over agriculture?

From the perspective of Veronica Villas Arias of the ETC Group shared during an Agroecology Fund webinar, “when new technologies are introduced into societies who are already facing injustice and inequality, they’re just going to widen and increase those injustices and inequalities.”

Grassroots agroecology movements—recognizing that digitalization can facilitate learning and is here to stay —are asking, how can we use digitalization to strengthen farmers’ understanding of the ecosystems in which they work, their connections with other farmers, their relationships with consumers, and even their ability to access native seeds? Perhaps most fundamental to a truly sustainable food system grounded in agroecology, they’re asking, how do we use these tools to ensure equity and sustainability?

While many concerns with digitization persist, grassroots organizations are developing digital tools to help their members and scale agroecology worldwide. Ironically—and unfairly—because agroecology is proudly born from Indigenous Peoples food systems, it is sometimes painted as anachronistic and anti-technology. Agroecology, however, is rooted in adaptive learning and technologies. It is deeply scientific, and its efficacy has been proven by researchers in dozens of peer-reviewed studies.

One new technology, CropFit, developed by Thalavady Farmers Foundation in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, India connects buyers and sellers in India, in eight different languages.

Thalavady Farmers Foundation Co-founder Kannaiyan Subranamian created the tool during the COVID-19 pandemic when lockdowns prevented people from moving freely between villages to sell their crops. Subranamian himself had three acres of cabbages to sell but was unable to travel to find a market.

A first step was to talk with other farmers to find out what features and functionality they might want in such an app.

“It was a very difficult job,” says Subranamian, speaking on a recent webinar organized by the Agroecology Fund.  “I know how to do farming, organizing people and fighting in different places including in the World Trade Organization, but I did not know how to make a software that would work for the farmers.”

Subranamian sought support from other people outside of the farmer movements, found a tech provider he could trust, and produced a very useful tool.

CropFit “has brought a revolution among the farmers and buyers,” he says. It has helped farming communities learn who is growing what and where, enabling them to buy seeds from neighboring growers.

The farmers group plans to further develop its application, such as by adding livestock and chickens, a crop advisory function and market information in real time. It also plans to expand use of the tool, across Tamil Nadu and India, and eventually all over the world, Subranamian said.

Schola Campesina & Partners in Eastern Europe and Central Asia developed a mobile application called BILIM (which means knowledge in Central Asian languages) to facilitate learning exchange on agroecology across more than 10 different countries.

The region has a rich history of practicing agroecology, said Maria Anisimova, Co-Founder of Schola Campesina, which works to promote farmer to farmer knowledge sharing, especially among women and youth.

Developing the application was challenging because of the vast number of different languages in the region, which spans the Balkans, Central Asia, Syria, and Turkey.

The group conducted user centered design workshops, both remotely and live, to develop the tool.

BILIM allows users to choose and receive all content in their native language. Users can post a topic, create a discussion or group, or send a private chat.

Çiğdem Artık, chief of Çiftçi-Sen farmers union in Turkey says that Turkish farmers appreciate exchanges with farmers from countries like Pakistan, Tajikistan, or the Balkans.  “Generally, we don’t hear their voices and it’s a good advantage for us to hear their experience and knowledge.”

And the Seed Savers Network, a grassroots network of community-based organizations and cooperatives representing 74,000 Kenyan farmers developed the Seed Exchangers app to help remote farmers access native fruit tree seedlings, like dragon fruit, passion fruit, or loquat.

Indigenous fruit trees are at risk of disappearing in Kenya because of a shift in market demand toward more exotic trees. Wambui Wakahiu, a program officer at the Seed Savers Network, warns that this threatens biodiversity, food security and farmers’ ability to adapt to climate change because indigenous varieties are more climate resilient.

Farmers want to incorporate Indigenous varieties on their farms, she said, but they face many challenges accessing the seedlings.

Nursery operators and farmers in the seedlings business have trouble accessing central marketplaces where they can reach buyers, so they set up nurseries along roadsides where passersby can find them. Kenyan authorities, however, won’t certify these roadside nurseries or recognize them as legal businesses.

The Seed Savers Network developed its mobile application to address these problems. The app provides buyers with information on how to care for the plants and access to extension services.

“We are empowering smallholder farmers and small nursery operators. We are enhancing agricultural diversity, contributing to tree cover, and helping in adapting to climate change,” said Wakahiu. The group is also working to make it easier for nursery operators growing native trees to become certified.

While these are inspiring initiatives, there are barriers too. Many farmers in remote areas have poor—if any—internet connection. Ironically, the webinar in which these organizations shared their experiences faced its own connectivity challenges!

Farmers often have older phones that are incompatible with the apps. Older farmers in particular struggle with digital literacy; the average age of farmers worldwide is 57 years. Agroecology groups address these challenges with training programs. Some, like AlterMundi in Argentina, are tackling the issue of connectivity with community-led internet development projects in remote areas.

Still, some groups are hesitant to embrace digital tools, stressing concerns about the technology’s reliance on conflict minerals, companies using farmers’ data to sell them ever more expensive and addictive inputs and a broad concern that technological fixes mask deeper inequalities.

“Hunger will not be resolved by data. Digitization will also not solve structural problems of poverty and injustice,” says Arias.

That is certainly true. But what if the new digital tools are designed with principles of agroecology built into their operating systems? Agroecology rests on practices of applied learning and collaborative co-creation. And as these groups demonstrate, when digital tools are controlled by farmers and consumers, they may be able to facilitate both and ensure that digitization benefits those who technology often leaves behind.

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Photo courtesy of Diego Moreira, Wikimedia Commons

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Navandya encourages a mix of ancestral and modern farming techniques through the practice of agroecology. At the heart of their work is the observation that the green revolution has destroyed traditional knowledge that previously guided Indian farming communities. Now, most are poorer; their land and innards poisoned. Unable to pay off credit for expensive chemical pesticides and fertilizers, more than 300,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide, often drinking the very toxins they apply to their crops. Neha’s teaching is based on simple science and economics—farmers don’t need to bury themselves in debt to tend their crops. Healthy soils and climate-adapted, local seeds can generate adequate yields and well-fed children. Navdanya’s method isn’t anti-modern, but it is based on ancestral wisdom.

Neha took me to visit a farmer who had participated in Navdanya’s training program. I asked his advice for U.S. farmers, also deep in debt to agrochemical companies, planting row upon row of purchased, genetically modified corn seeds. “Cow dung,” he counseled. “Lots of cow dung.”

As we spoke, his wife poured pails of water on their cow—revered provider of milk and soil nutrients—and scrubbed vigorously. We walked past a composting pile of dung and straw that had yet to be plowed into his fields. Rather than buy seeds, he saves them from the previous year’s harvest. He’d planted a little bit of everything, spreading risk and diet among an astonishing variety of grains, tubers, and vegetables. There was always something to put on a plate.

Neha’s colleague, Drona Chetri, felt with his fingertips for a hidden key on top of a beam. The padlock to Navdanya’s central seed bank—smaller seed repositories are spread across the country—sprang open. Each week, Bija Devi and Sheila Devi, the Navdanya Seed Keepers, brandish smoking branches in the dirt-floored storehouse to dissuade insects and reduce moisture. To minimize contamination, he had me take off my shoes. In socks, I examined the labels of hundreds of glass jars, clay pots, and seed-laden stalks drying above on a twine line. Handwritten entries in a notebook described the conditions in which the seeds thrive and fail. In a live experiment, seeds are planted and returned each year—the circulation keeps them adapting to evolving ecosystems, essential in today’s quickly changing climatic conditions. It was a far cry from one-size-fits-all seeds cooked up in a Monsanto lab.

Each year, Drona travels back to his home in Bhutan to work with the Gross National Happiness Index (GNH). The index uses happiness indicators to prioritize policy directions and budget allocations. The higher a policy scores on the happiness index, the more support it gains. Coca-Cola doesn’t score well on the GNHI indicators for nutrition and so is not sold in Bhutan. Agrochemicals which expose soils and humans to uncertain toxicity, don’t score well either. The Bhutanese government is seeking Navdanya’s support to transition to a 100-percent organic farming.

As a teacher and advocate, Neha uses culture, science, and spirituality to illustrate agroecology. But she knows that the value must also express itself in rupees. When she can help them save money and reduce risks, they’re more likely to adopt new practices. If she’s lucky, that farmer will convince neighbors to do the same.

Neha brought me to a meeting of a women’s savings club. Each month, a dozen women roll out mats in front of a Hindu temple and make 100 rupee (approximately US$1.30) contributions. In delicate Hindi script, the secretary records transactions in a common ledger and within each contributors’ passbook. This meeting was particularly poignant because Prime Minister Modi had just demonetized India’s money supply. In an alleged surgical strike against black money, 500 and 1000 rupee notes were voided, to be turned in and replaced by new currency. Bank lines snaked for blocks; families couldn’t pay for their daughters’ weddings or buy seeds for planting. The savings and seed banks provided a small measure of economic and food security.

Navdanya’s farm is a small oasis amidst a massive water crisis. Thousands of wells in the area have sunk the water table. Where soil has been restored on Navdanya’s farm, groundwater had begun to percolate back up. Neha had me meet a farmer, vocal on matters of water and climate. His hair was hennaed bright orange; an oversize gold ring glinted on a gnarled finger. He tapped the rim of the irrigation ditch with his ringed finger.

“The problem is the cement,” he said. “Too much cement on roads, houses. In this irrigation ditch. Water can’t get into the soil and cool the earth.” Machetes high, the farmer’s neighbors whacked at the sugar cane in his field. In exchange for their labor, he offered them fodder for their cows, particularly useful in the long dry season.

Bartering labor for fodder doesn’t work for everyone, especially teens with their eyes on a pair of sneakers or a cell phone. Navdanya calls its approach, “Health Per Acre, Wealth Per Acre,” to project the idea that properly stewarded, an acre can provide sustenance and income. While purchased seeds may have a higher yield, they’re expensive. Neha explained that farmers tend not to subtract input costs from earnings. Neha teaches farmers to account for true costs and value forgotten assets like a chicken or a goat. Applying agroecological practices, farmers can earn up to US$2,500 an acre, a large sum in a country where the rural wage is often US$1 a day.

Mahatma Gandhi’s self-reliance is core to Navdanya’s teaching. So it was particularly galling to Neha when the government sought to outlaw cold-pressed mustard mills and introduce genetically engineered mustard plants. Mustard is native to Rajasthan and ubiquitous around Dehradun, the oil and greens are staples of the Indian peasant kitchen. The government alleged that rustic mustard oil mills were unhygienic and that patented mustard seeds would be more productive. Neha sees the attack on mustard as a stepping stone towards imported or industrially produced oils and away from support for peasant agriculture. Modi and Trump might strike a deal, she mused.

Over decades, Navdanya has led thousands of farmers into the streets and has made extensive use of the Indian courts. Navdanya works closely with land rights and tribal rights organizations, small farmer advocates which are powerful but often lack practical tools to build a sustainable food system. Neha works with partner organizations across India to train their members in agroecological and organic practices.

Towards dusk, Navdanya’s staff and interns—the latter having come to India tatted, pierced, and dreadlocked to get their hands dirty in Navdanya’s soil—played a spirited game of volleyball. The dusty court was hidden in a mango grove, not far from where winter wheat had begun to sprout. Navdanya’s training farm serves as an agroecological mecca for farmers from across the globe who seek to cultivate healthy food and a broad movement for change. Straddling urban and rural culture, still in her twenties and already a veteran of lengthy campaigns, Neha provides essential leadership for this growing movement.

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Five hours west of Bangalore, at the Amitri Bhoomi Agroecology School, Ashlesha introduced me to Chukki Nanjundaswamy, a powerful woman leader of KRRS and director of the school. The students are Karnataka farmers from across the state, looking to wean themselves off of expensive seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides and form part of a grassroots groundswell against a global agricultural system rigged against them. A portrait of Chuki’s father and KRRS founder M. D. Nanjundaswamy hangs in a courtyard next to that of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, an “untouchable” who led the fight against the caste system. Both men inspire KRRS’ members. Ashlesha’s research dug into M. D. Nanjundaswamy’s leadership style, seeking to understand how it was that KRRS embraced agroecology while most farmers’ movements don’t. Most fight for access to land and markets, with their eyes on yields, subsidies, and prices. They don’t tend to question the logic of industrial agriculture.

Across from  M. D. Nanjundaswamy’s portrait, a doorway opened to the KRRS’ seed bank. Cupboards and shelves of jarred and labeled legumes stretch beneath drying stalks of millet and rice. The seed bank is the literal and figurative foundation of  Karnataka’s small farmers’ sovereignty, nourishment, and prosperity. The idea, Chukki explained, is that “farmers don’t have to be dependent on anything. The earth has everything. Farmers are nature’s protectors.”

Each year, Shri Subhash Palekar teaches a week-long course at Amrita Bhoomi and others across the state. The charismatic guru of “zero budget natural farming” has been supported by KRRS and has inspired farmers across Karnataka. Farmers love his entertaining, heated diatribes on the perversity of industrial agriculture and the state’s complicit subsidies for chemical inputs. Beyond the stinging criticism, they are spellbound by the practical results of applying homemade composting potions to ailing soils and under-nourished plants. Amrita Bhoomi’s fields are dotted with bright blue plastic barrels, brimming with brown soupy slosh. Amrita Bhoomi’s staff and students double as popular scientists, applying the concoction to rows of banana trees, castor oil, pumpkin and other crops too numerous to name. Their real-time experiments demonstrate what grows best where. Evidence-based results are circulated through the farmers movement; the farmers apply the learnings—and their own home-made compost—in their fields. “Agroecology isn’t new to Indian agriculture,” Chukki said. “The green revolution techonologies that wiped out agroecology happened only 50 years ago. Before that, agroecology was everywhere.”

The Karnataka farmers movement is affiliated with a global network called the Via Campesina. The Via is active in 67 countries and has taken the centuries-old struggle for “land to the tiller”—a battle still far from won—in a direction increasingly urgent for a world rocked by climate change: towards sustainable stewardship of crop diversity, soil, and water. “I’m proud of how this movement has evolved,” Chukki said. “Young farmers are joining. They know what’s going on with the agrarian crisis and are choosing agroecology as a way forward.”

The day before we traveled to Amrita Bhoomi, Ashlesha had returned from the Conference of the Parties on the Convention on Biological Diversity in Cancun, Mexico. She was still jet-lagged. I asked her why a farmers movement would bother with a global gathering on biodiversity. On the face of it, it seems far from food production. Agrobiodiversity—the biodiversity of cultivated plants, Ashlesha explained, marries farmers with environmentalists.

Both constituencies are close to Ashlesha’s heart. “Agroecology attracts me because, for the sake of both consumers and farmers, we can’t continue producing food in the way that we have been,” she said. In the movement for agroecology, she has found a sort of blended family—not always harmonious, but one that appreciates how biodiversity contributes to farmers’ well-being and a healthy planet. In Cancun, she fed journalists stories of indigenous peoples growing food and conserving landscapes.

Colorful rocks at the edge of Amrita Bhoomi’s fields were painted with Kannada stanzas from a 12th-century poet. Ornate script on one warned of the environmental, income, and nutritional dangers of over-dependence on rice. Another exhorted respect for rice’s poorer sister, millet. Re-introducing millet is one way that Amrita Bhoomi seeks to preserve biodiversity. It is less sensitive to an erratic climatic, requires less water, and has the bonus of being more nutritious. The fact that India counts more than 50 million diabetes cases, the highest in the world, is partially blamed on over-consumption of rice. Yet rice has deep roots in Indian cuisine. Ashlesha knows that it won’t be easy to exchange millet for rice.

Crop diversity and soil fertility are important fights, but not likely to prevail when they stand alone. Cash is essential. Ashlesha took me to visit two of KRRS successful entrepreneurs—brothers Ravi and Girish. Wrapped in a knee length sarong with three ash stripes and a tikka on his forehead, Ravi read from an accounting sheet. With a ruler and a blue pen, he had drawn rows and columns in which he entered costs and revenues of each crop he’d planted—nearly two dozen different varieties. Barring a windswept monsoon or an expected price drop—both quite possible—maturing eggplant and tomato plants appeared likely to yield a fistful of rupees. Interspersed papaya, guava, and mango trees would bear fruit over the coming seasons.

Girish’s plot had a higher proportion of perennials and fruit trees with fewer annual crops—and less time bent over digging with a hoe. He claimed that Ravi was the harder working brother. Both practiced a resilient (if not slightly tragic) form of climate-smart agriculture—more sustainable than buying controversial genetically modified, drought-resistant seeds. The tragedy is that hundreds of thousands of wells had been bored across the Karnataka landscape; Ravi and Girish recognize that the water table will soon sink out of reach. Their insurance is planting fruit-bearing trees whose deep roots extend into moist soil. The fruit will fetch a good market price, commensurate with the vegetable income.

In front of a wedding prayer painted on the Ravi’s wall, we dangled our legs into a sunken interior courtyard and drank tea. Ashlesha inquired about his marriage plans. “No one wants to marry a farmer,” he said. We insisted that his field was no ordinary plot—its bounty could make a wife happy. Village women aren’t inclined towards farmers, he said. India’s booming cities hold greater allure. KRRS seeks to restore the pride and viability of Karnataka’s rural communities.

Dodging cows and goats, we drove through a small village where men congregated around a moonshine shop. Ashlesha pointed to a milk chilling plant next door, a kind of a community refrigerator. Across Karnataka, farmers show up at one of thousands of chilling plants with any quantity of cow’s milk—even a liter—to sell to the state cooperative at a guaranteed, subsidized price. It’s a critical source of rural income in a world of erratic monsoons and ephemeral public programs. This dairy-based safety net, however, distorts free trade. It favors local farmers over, say, a Dutch dairy company that might want to export milk to India. In the 1990s, the government sought to outlaw artisanal mustard oil mills, opening markets for imported and industrially-produced oils. In the 2000s, the Indian government sought to open India to imported genetically-modified seeds. Milk could be next. Battling free trade policies and shoring up pro-small farmer subsidy programs are high priorities for KRRS and the Via Campesina.

Since the green revolution, hundreds of thousands of indebted Indian farmers have committed suicide. More than anything, it was this suffering that led Ashlesha to join the Via Campesina. It will take some time for Amrita Bhoomi to build a new food system. Chukki and KRRS have to resolve how to broadly distribute peasant-grown and saved seeds, how to strengthen markets for agroecologically produced food, and how to knit a coalition with farmer organizations across India. So far, however, Chukki said, “No zero-budget natural farming farmer has ever committed suicide or gone into debt.”

The post Free from Debt and Suicide: India’s Natural Farmers appeared first on Food Tank.

Dr. Carl Rangad was something of a lone wolf among agronomists and scientists before finding a home within the North East Slow Food & Agrobiodiversity Society (NESFAS). Although trained in mycology and plant pathology, he stumbled upon his true passion in his father’s library, through a book describing a composting technique perfected by Jean Pain for cooking down saplings, branches, and underbrush into a rich heap of composted, natural fertilizer. Carl was fascinated with the idea of increasing soil fertility by composting—it was much kinder to farmers’ wallets and depleted soils.

How to get his fellow agronomists in the Indian government to embrace agroecological techniques was another story. Accustomed to improving crop yields with chemical fertilizers and pesticides, eager ears were few. He persisted. During 31 years of public service, the government mostly put up with him, and occasionally permitted him to design and implement soil conservation and agro-biodiversity programs that understood agriculture not as process of mining soil fertility, but adding to it.

Carl’s home is in Shillong, in a tribal region of North East India, sandwiched between Bhutan, Bangladesh and Burma. Outside of Shillong, by a sacred forest, we looked over paddy fields that Carl had sought to restore through a government watershed development program. Down in the valley, Carl pointed to evidence of soil conservation – fruit orchards and live bamboo fencing.  “It didn’t always work out as I would have wished,” he said, “but I wanted to show you this. When I look at this valley, I have to admit to feeling somewhat nostalgic and proud.” Below a band of forest, a lazy stream meandered through the paddies, draining finally to the Bay of Bengal.

Since Carl retired from the Department of Agriculture four years ago, he has focused all his efforts on agrobiodiversity and indigenous issues. The indigenous communities, he explained, are front-line protectors of biodiversity. The hillside on which we stood was the western edge of the fairgrounds of the Indigenous Terra Madre, a global gathering organized by Carl and his team. It was held in 2015 with 70,000 people, including 169 indigenous communities from seven continents. The event was a huge success even as the complex logistics nearly killed them physically and financially. The event struck a chord among advocates across the world seeking to build – or rebuild – fair and sustainable food systems based on ancestral wisdom.

“Modern” food systems haven’t worked so well in India– hundreds of thousands of indebted farmers have committed suicide since the start of the “green revolution”. While the global industrial food system narrows diets to fewer crops extracted from bigger factory farms on unhealthier soils, the Indigenous Terra Madre celebrated the food systems of not only the Khasi (the tribe to which Carl belongs) but indigenous peoples around the world. Their traditions of seed saving and crop diversity are hedges against too much or too little rain – trends likely to worsen as climate change turns weather topsy turvy. Their practices reduce risks of malnutrition and market uncertainties.

While markets generally haven’t been kind to indigenous small farmers, NESFAS is not anti-market. Although the communities with which NESFAS works grow most of the food they eat and forage in the forest for medicines – one villager showed me the herbal equivalent of Viagra – there are school fees to pay, salt, sugar and oil to purchase. During the week I traveled with Carl and his colleagues  to Khasi, Jaintia and Garo communities, we needled shy teens to imagine their future. NESFAS’ drive to preserve ancestral traditions only works if the next generation takes interest. How do the youth reconcile their attachment to their families and villages and traditional foods with the draw to towns and cities and Kentucky Fried Chicken?

In Laitsohpliah, a village where the village council has pledged a sizeable plot of land to NESFAS for an agroecology school, 20 year old Bakmenlang Nongrum isn’t doing too badly. He has an enviable harvest of peas, rice and radish. He and a stout schoolteacher led a composting party on a heap of grasses and manure. Kids hooted, sang and stomped. Traditional Khasi agriculture is slash and burn, with a long fallow period after harvest to restore soil fertility. Due to a growing population, farmers’ plots are shrinking. Pressures mount to keep the land producing. The composting practices introduced by Carl and his team are essential for the long-term well-being of the communities and the landscape.

It’s not easy to find young people willing to spend hot days bent over in the fields and cold nights huddled at home. Bakmenlang seems the exception. When teens leave to study high school, they taste urban life. Many stay on, except for the youngest girl who takes care of her parents – Khasi communities are matrilineal, with the ancestral lands being under the custody of the youngest girl. At four years old, NESFAS is just beginning to bridge the villagers’ agricultural talents with urban consumers’ growing interest in healthy, local foods. To sustain their operations, NESFAS is sketching plans for a business and brand that sells farmers’ organic rice, millet, tubers and vegetables. Shillong, with a population of nearly half a million, remains devoid of supermarket chains. That consumers aren’t yet buying from far-flung suppliers is a big advantage for fortifying local links to the region’s small farmers.

With NESFAS’ support, farmers are forming Participatory Guarantee System groups to assure quality. Having seen how the third party certification can exclude small producers, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) and some Indian state governments, including Meghalaya, now recognize this grassroots form of self-certification. A roadside stand that Carl helped start while serving in the Ministry draws urbanites interested in good quality vegetables.

As important as markets are, so is stopping land degradation, landlessness and land grabbing. Carl winced when we passed a smoking brick kiln that steals fertile topsoil for construction material. “Who gave them permission to put it there?” Carl laments the corruption, the sly deals that village councils strike with miners. “Sometimes I don’t feel so democratic. I want to just put a stop to this. Now.” We passed coal caves catacombs at roadside turnouts; black heaps spilled onto the road. The Public Works department buys gravel from aproned women who drive hammers into boulders. The greenery of the paddy fields is deceiving; prime farm country is being strip-mined.

Carl has seen government schemes sputter and pervert – it drives him nutty that most afforestation programs are done with pine, which not only aren’t native but undermine soil health and biodiversity. Carl admits to having been part of the problem, hooking farmers on subsidy-induced practices often abandoned when the subsidy ended. Despite misgivings, those watershed, afforestation and soil conservation programs have the potential for a reach and impact that NESFAS can only dream of. Carl’s contacts in public agencies are not yet cold; NESFAS collaborates with any and all to build a fair and sustainable food system.

Carl has a passionate team of young people as his colleagues– principally from the Khasi community. He insists on horizontal leadership, which is no simple thing when yielding to one’s elders is the cultural norm. He is 63 while they are in their twenties. They show him immense respect, calling him Sir – or Bah – Carl. I watched one young colleague – who described Carl as a father figure – pat his back through a coughing fit and later debate him on strategy. The team is grounded in community organizing – there is no skill that Carl wishes to impart more than listening to, and affirming, villagers’ ideas and leadership.

While Carl seeks to restore pride and practices in the Khasi hills, he knows it must be more than cultural restoration. The world has changed too much – population pressures on the land are too great, families’ cash needs too many, the web of intermediaries in the supply chain too complex. He is opposed to genetically-modified seeds and skeptical of many hybrid varieties but welcomes collaboration with scientists, economists and government. Doses of “modern” knowledge and new alliances – chosen selectively and converged with indigenous wisdom – will help craft the new sustainability.

Northeast India’ is a biodiversity hotspot; in fact, Carl serves as technical advisor to the state of Meghalaya’s Biodiversity Board. Their mission is to catalogue the cornucopia and publish it as a guide for land use planning. Elephants and leopards still roam in the rolling hills of forest; indigenous culture is strong, community ties relatively intact. Domino Pizzas are few; the economy is still largely Indian, if not local. If there’s somewhere on earth that a community food system based on agroecology can withstand global forces – and cut a path out of the food mess humanity is mired in – it’s here in India’s tribal Northeast with Carl and NESFAS’ support.

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