http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/01/native-seeds-sustain-brazils-semi-arid-northeast/
[links and images in on-line article]
Native Seeds Sustain Brazil’s Semi-Arid Northeast
By Mario Osava
APODI, Brazil, Jan 6 2017 (IPS) - In his 76 years of life, Raimundo
Pinheiro de Melo has endured a number of droughts in Brazil’s semi-arid
Northeast region. And he remembers every one of them since 1958.
“The worst one was in 1982 and 1983, the only time that the river dried
up,” said Pinheiro do Melo, who has lived near the river since 1962.
“The one in 1993 was also very bad,” he told IPS, because neither Bolsa
Familia nor Networking in Brazil’s Semi-Arid Region (ASA) existed yet,
which contribute to a less traumatic coexistence with droughts like the
current one, which has dragged on for five years.
Bolsa Familia is a government cash-transfer programme which helps some
13.8 million poor families in Brazil, half of whom are in the Northeast.
ASA is a network of 3,000 social organisations which promotes the
collection of rainwater, as well as techniques and know-how suited to
rural life in a climate of irregular rainfall.
Water is not so scarce for Pinheiro do Melo and his neighbours because
of their proximity to the Apodi river, because even when it dries up,
they can get water from the cacimbas, which are water holes in the
riverbed or along the banks.
Mundinho, as he is known, besides making an effort to obtain water on
the high-lying land where he lives in a rural area in the Apodi
municipality, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, is dedicated to a
task that is vital to the sustainability of small-scale farming in the
semi-arid interior of Northeast Brazil, an ecosystem known as the
Sertão. He is a “guardian” of native seeds.
In bottles and small plastic barrels, he stores the seeds of corn, bean,
sorghum, watermelon and other locally planted species, in a shack next
to his house, in the middle of land that is now sandy and covered with
dried-up vegetation.
More than a thousand homes that serve as “seed banks”, and 20,000
participating families, make up the network organised by ASA to preserve
the genetic heritage and diversity of crops adapted to the climate and
semi-arid soil in Brazil’s Northeast.
Saving seeds is an age-old peasant tradition, which was neglected during
the “green revolution”, a period of agricultural modernisation which
started in the mid-20th century and involved “an offensive by companies
that produced the so-called ‘improved’ seeds,” which farmers became
dependent on, said Antonio Gomes Barbosa, a sociologist who is
coordinator of ASA’s Seed Programme.
The strategy, adopted in 2007, of disseminating technologies for
harvesting rainwater for production, in search of food security, lead
ASA to the awareness that small producers needed to always have seeds
available, he told IPS.
A study carried out among 12,800 families found that “the semi-arid
Northeast has the greatest variety of seeds of food and medicinal plant
species in Brazil.” Of the 56 million people who live in the Northeast,
more than 23 million live in the semi-arid parts of the region, in this
South American country of 208 million.
According to the survey, the family and community tradition of storing
seeds and passing them down from one generation to the next contributed
to this diversity of seeds, as did migrants who returned to the
semi-arid Northeast from southern São Paulo and east-central Brazil,
bringing seeds native to those areas.
What ASA did was to identify the houses which had stored seeds, create a
network of them and help multiply the number of these traditional seed
banks, in order to salvage, preserve, increase stocks and distribute
native seeds, Barbosa said.
Antonia de Souza Oliveira, or Antonieta as she is known, participates in
seed bank number 639, according to ASA’s records, in Milagre, a village
of 28 families on the Apodi plateau, which is crossed by the river of
the same name.
The community seed bank “has 17 guardians and stocks mainly of corn,
bean and sorghum seeds,” she said.
The strong presence of women in the activities in this community
prompted former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) to
choose Milagre to inaugurate a line of credit for women participating in
the National Programme to Strengthen Family Farming (PRONAF).
A model case, highlighted by ASA, is the seed bank in Tabuleiro Grande,
another rural settlement in the municipality of Apodi, in Rio Grande do
Norte. There, a family initiative stores seeds of 450 varieties of corn,
beans and other legumes and herbs.
Antonio Rodrigues do Rosario, 59, heads the fourth generation that
maintains the “family bank”.
The native seed movement is in conflict with the green revolution, where
seeds are distributed by the government or are sold by biotech
corporations “in great quantities but with little variety,” said Barbosa.
“We don’t need this kind of distribution, just local initiatives in
every area to rescue local seeds, with great diversity and
dissemination,” said Barbosa.
The movement is about knowledge accumulated by local families with
experience in adaptation to each specific place, soil and climate, based
on the intended type of production and resistance to pests and drought.
“There are many varieties of corn that address different needs; you can
produce more leaves to feed animals, or more corn for human
consumption,” he said.
“Family gardens are laboratories, where experiments are carried out,
genetic improvements and testing of resistance and productivity of
seeds. The garden is where women participate the most, teaching their
children as well,” Barbosa said.
“In the severe 1982-1983 drought, a variety of fast-growing potato,
which in 60 days was reproduced and stored by a grandmother, saved many
lives,” he said.
The exchange of materials and knowledge within and among communities is
also an important part of maintaining the diversity of native seeds. ASA
works to bolster this exchange, promoting contact among small farmers
from different areas.
“Native seeds are at the centre of resistance to the impositions of the
market, in order to overcome the dependence on big suppliers,” said Barbosa.
Climate change boosts the importance of native seeds from the semi-arid
region. “There is no agricultural poison to combat the rise in
temperatures,” he said, half-jokingly.
The Semi-Arid Seeds Programme proved the “great creative capacity and
ability to experiment of family farmers in the Northeast,” Barbosa told
IPS in the nearby municipality of Mossoró.
It also showed their tendency towards autonomy. “Farmers follow their
own experience, more than the advice of agronomists, because they always
choose the safest bet.”
But there are two threats that concern ASA’s seed movement. One is the
“genetic erosion” which could be caused by the current drought, which in
some areas has lasted for seven years.
Isolated rains tempt farmers to plant. Knowing they could lose their
entire crop, they never use all of their seeds. But the seeds are
gradually lost, with each deceptive rainfall, which puts their entire
stock of seeds at risk.
Another threat is posed by transgenic seeds, which farmers involved in
ASA reject. The presence of genetically modified corn was detected in
some crops in the northeastern state of Paraíba, apparently a
consequence of contamination from seeds brought in from other regions.