Indigenous Peoples' Traditional Ricfe Varieties Making a Comeback

Indigenous People's Traditional Rice Varieties Making A Comeback

By Michael A. Bengwayan

Traditional rice varieties once grown and nurtured by indigenous peoples are making a comeback because of the importance of their genes that are necessary in breeding rice for the future.

This was made known when this author, director of the Cordillera Ecological Center (PINE TREE) was invited to speak at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), which has spearheaded world research in rice technology since the early 1950s.

For sometime, there was a growing fear that hybrid rice will altogether eliminate traditional rice varieties. Today, current conditions prove that traditional rice varieties are here to stay and are necessary for rice evolution.

IRRI has started giving back to farmers and communities small packets of traditional rice varieties that will be planted and serve as planting materials. Technological assistance is likewise provided by IRRI for those who wish to plant once again traditional rice varieties.

“IRRI has now realized that traditional rice varieties need to be put back into farmers’ fields. IRRI is doing just that—giving back traditional rice varieties it has kept for so many years in its high tech seedbank, the environmental group PINE TREE bared.

Outstanding characteristics of traditional rice varieties, like resistance to pests and diseases and high yielding capability, are genetically engineered with other characteristics of other rice varieties to serve as building blocks for new rice varieties.

PINE TREE is working with United Nations Development Program Global Environment Facility (UNDP-GEF) in the Philippines to protect indigenous peoples traditional rice varieities.

In Karao, Bokod, Benguet, farmers with assistance from PINE TREE has saved and continue to sustain the use of seven traditional rice varieties by establishing a rice seedbank shared by community people. seedbank. The seven traditional varieties now being conserved by the Karao farmers are found nowhere else in the Philipines.

PINE TREE is linking with IRRI to get traditional rice seeds especially upland un-irrigated varieties and bring these back to farmers’ fields because these are vital for food security and in providing future genetic material.

For many years, hybrid rice was promoted in the Philippines especially by the government believing it was the an answer to the growing population. But while it improved production, it required expensive chemical inputs that endangered not only humans but also altered the ecosystem adversely. Today, the country is the leading rice importer in Asia and it has lost 90 per cent of all its traditional rice varieties, he said.

The Philippine government insisted on pushing for hybrid rice even with its past dismal failure, especially so because the Department of Philippine Agriculture signed an agreement with IRRI to a US$216 million project for the production of subsidized hybrid and certified seeds, he added.

This happened even though the World Bank concluded that the Philippines hybrid rice program had not produced “much net social benefit’, adding that “conventional rice varieties were more socially profitable than hybrids”?

The reality, PINE TREE says that food giant corporations Philippine corrupt officials and food corporations stand to gain illicitly from all these.

The main beneficiary of the various hybrid rice schemes, for instance, is SL Agritech, owned by Filipino Chinese businessman Henry Lim. In 2006, SL Agritech supplied 65 per cent of the hybrid rice seeds purchased through the country’s hybrid rice programme earning the company more than US$ 4 million. It also was a time when the Philippine government official of the Department of Agriculture JocJoc (Oh what a joke indeed to Filipino farmers!) Bolante romped away with millions of pesos worth of fertilizers intended to support the program, PINE TREE explained.

While traditional rice varieties were forgotten in the past decades, they are the “heart and soul of rice”, PINE TREE avers.

They require little fertilizer and no chemical inputs, now blamed for the degeneration of farmlands in many parts of the world. Traditional rice varieties are more nutrient-rich, tastier and friendlier to the soil. It allows farmers protect to protect their soil and ecosystem and have control of the seeds that their forefathers have reared for centuries.

PINE TREE is encouraging farmers to keep their own seeds and bank these to prevent the seeds from being pirated by big multinational groups.

Seedsaving or banking is the best protection that indigenous peoples have against biopiracy, PINE TREE said.

The indigenous peoples in the Cordillera region own some of the best sustainable and indigenous practices in agriculture and forest conservation.

For instance, the IPs from mountain Province practice sustainable farming by using “lumeng” (mixture of decomposed rice straw with pig manure) and wild sunflower (Tithanium diversifolium) stalks as basal manure and green manure before planting traditional rice varieties.

They also incorporate the brown-green nitrogen fixing algae Azolla which fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere and delivers this for rice use as nitrogen fertilizer.

In forest conservation, the indigenous peoples of Sagada, Besao, Bauko and Tadian practice the “lakon” forest system which enables forests to be conserved and protected.

In Ifugao, the IPs there practice the “muyung” and “pinugo” agroforestry systems that incorporate timber with fruits trees, rice, crops and livestock to ensure ecological balance.

But as modernization creeps in, some of these IP indigenous knowledge are starting to crumble. It may not be long before these are forgotten, unless immediate measures are taken up to popularize these with the new generation.

PINE TREE Seedbanking for Food Security

Philippine Indigenous NGO Seedbanking For Food Security

Dr. Michael A. Bengwayan, 2010

Early this year, the World Bank came out with an official announcement that there will be serious food shortages in at least 60 developing countries and that it will lead to social unrest.

The warning is the latest indication that worldwide, food security is being threatened and that there is an urgent need to address the causes behind, one of which is continuous erosion as well as loss of genetic material for crops.

Globally, food crops are being lost and worse, being owned and controlled by few corporations. This has to stop and no better answer can communities be more involved than in seedbanking for their own future.

In support to the global seedbanking movement, the Cordillera Ecological Center more known as PINE TREE which operates in the Cordillera region that is made up of several indigenous peoples particularly the Igorots, has established four community seedbanking sites in the Philippines for food security. The first is located in Karao, Bokod, province of Benguet where some 12 indigenous rice varieties have been saved and are now being grown by the indigenous peoples known as Ibalois and Kalanhuyas.

The second is in Lusod, Kabayan, also in Benguet where 29 endemic sweet potato varieties are now being grown for many uses by the Kalanguya and Ibaloi tribes.

The third seedbank is in Caponga and Central Tublay, Tublay also in Bengut where Ibaloi indigenous women-farmers now own and use seven bean varieties.

The projects were supported by the United Nations Global Environmental Facility (UNDP-GEF).

PINE TREE observed five principles or “laws” of genetic conservation as its foundation in the implementation of its community-based seedbanking (CSB).

First, agricultural diversity can only be safeguarded through the use of diverse strategies. No one strategy could hope to preserve and protect what it took so many human cultures, farming systems and environments so long to produce. Different conservation systems can complement each other and provide insurance against the inadequacies or shortcomings of any one method.

Second, what agricultural diversity is saved depends on who is consulted. How much is saved depends on how many people are involved. Farmers, gardeners, fishing people, medicine makers, religious leaders, carpenters-all have different interests that foreign scientists could never hope to fully appreciate. All segments of a community need to be involved to insure that the total needs of a community are met. The more involvement, the greater the potential to conserve.

Third, agricultural diversity will not be saved unless it is used. The value of diversity is in its use. Only use can diversity be appreciated enough to be saved. And only in use can it continue to evolve, thus retaining its value.

Fourth, agricultural diversity cannot be saved without saving the farm community. Conversely, the farm community cannot be saved without saving diversity. Diversity, like music or a dialect, is a part of the community that produce it. It cannot exist for long without that community and the circumstances that gave rise to it. Saving farmers is a prerequisite of saving diversity. Conversely, communities must save their agricultural diversity in order to retain their own options for development and self-reliance. Someone else’s seeds imply someone else’s needs.

And fifth, the need for diversity is never-ending. Therefore, our efforts to preserve this diversity can never cease. Because extinction is forever, conservation must be forever. No technology can relieve us of our responsibility to preserve agricultural diversity for ourselves and all future generations. Thus, we must continue to utilize diverse conservation strategies, involve as many people in the process as possible, see that diversity is actively used and insure the survival of the farm community-for as long as we want agricultural diversity to exist.

Safeguarding Diversity

There are several ways in which community strategy can support institutional strategies in seedbanking.

One, during seed surveys and collection, community seedbanking strategies can support socio-ecological surveys of the community land area based upon consultations with farmers, food prepares, medicine-makers, wood cutters and gatherers, herders fisher-folk and artisans involving teams of plant-users in survey and monitoring exercises covering locally and globally imported species.

During storage, communities can organize a series of community-based collection expeditions covering a range of crops throughout the entire growing season.

During rejuvenation, farmers can maintain small plots for endangered cultivars and/or samples are split with one complete set sent to a national seed bank and a matching set cleaned, dried, and stored under cool/dry conditions within the community and monitored by local people knowledgeable about the species.

In documentation, field collection sheets are copied and filed and labels are prepared. Information is kept in most useful local language using locally-understood land descriptions and personal names for the benefit of further investigation and rejuvenation.

In seed evaluation, community seed collectors discuss characteristics of each sample with the local user at the time of collection. Immediate usefulness and long-term value are documented.

Evaluation information is shared with community users and samples may be adopted directly or adapted by community members to improve production.

Tags: Philippines genetics agriculture Ibaloi Kalanhuyas food security

August, Die She Must

I leave August with a sigh of pity. It must have been that I lost doors of opportunity. or did not bother to open some. But September is in and I have concluded I had enough of thinking. Yes, I have done some chores, this and that. In my garden, most specifically but it does not give me full satisfaction. Between the things I love and the things I want to do lies a chasm. I have yet to cross over and put a bridge on both. Yet I constantly prod myself to do things which have not yet been done. Starting this month, I start once more.