The modern farmer

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• (un)common sense

ANIL BHATTARAI

NOV 03 - Building a resilient, locally-based and diverse food production system is the only way to address the disruptions wrought by the changing climate in the Himalayan region. Global warming is leading to two major disruptions across this region. First, it is leading to disruption of previously stable weather patterns. Rainfall patterns and wind patterns are changing fast. The monsoon has become especially unpredictable, while extreme weather events such as floods and landslides have increased in severity and frequency. Second, it is leading to accelerated melting of the Himalayan permafrost and glaciers. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted that if the warming continues as it is, these glaciers will disappear within the coming three decades. These changes are already impacting on the food production system and there will be more severe repercussions throughout the region in the coming years.

While halting global warming has to be the number one priority and thus what happens in Copenhagen in a little over a month from now matters immensely, we also need to act fast in creating and promoting adaptive responses. It appears that the current industrial system of production based on increasing throughput of fossil fuel is not going to stop any time soon. Therefore, even with a good climate agreement (which is looking more and more unlikely, barring some surprises), it will be many years before global greenhouse gas emissions will be stabilized and reduced. Therefore, for the majority of the people throughout the Himalayan region including Nepal, the best option ahead is to seriously begin adapting their food production system to the changing realities. This can be possible with nothing short of revolutionary mobilizations. This, therefore, should be the central political issue of our time. The life and death of hundreds of millions of people are at stake.

The IPCC’s third assessment report in 2007 predicts that by the 2020s the warming climate will most likely lead to a 2.5 to 10 percent decline in the yields of major crops: wheat, maize and rice. If warming is not halted by then, which currently looks very unlikely, the decline will be more severe in the decades after that with crop yields dropping to the tune of 30 percent of current production. Obviously, it assumes that the dominance of these three crops will remain in place. For most of the people engaged in agriculture for their livelihood, the biggest challenge will arise from the accelerated melting of the Himalayan glaciers.

This is going to inflict two major disruptions. First, because of the fast melting of the glaciers, there will be an increase in floods in the major snow-fed rivers. The Chinese have already experienced increased flooding on their northern side of the Himalayan glaciers. There has been a perceptible increase in flooding on the southern side of the Himalayan range too. No one knows about the magnitude of the destruction of lives and resources that will follow the bursting of glacial lakes in the coming years.

This increased frequency of floods will eventually give way to an increased situation of reduced water flows in the river systems. There will be a very significant reduction in the amount of snow on the Himalaya. This combined with reduced rainfall and increased drought will add to the woes of the current food production system already suffering from multiple stresses such as soil erosion, decline in bio-diversity, reduction in soil fertility and increased uncertainty and risks arising from a monoculture production base.

Many of the streams, rivulets, springs and underground water sources are normally recharged by the rains and glacier melt. The disappearance of glaciers and decline in monsoon rain will, therefore, lead to a significant reduction in the amount of fresh water available throughout the mountain and plain regions. The IPCC estimates that over one billion people living in the watersheds of the Himalayan glaciers — both on the southern and northern sides — will face increasing water distress.

Preparing for these potential crisis situations requires building production systems that are diverse, conserve water and enhance system productivity rather than produce monoculture yields. This means changing the current dependence on the water-based cropping system and incorporating a diverse range of food crops ranging from annuals to perennial tree-based and vine-based food species. This then calls for changing our dietary patterns too. In fact, if we can transition from the current narrow range of crops to very diverse food items, climate change might even be a boon in disguise as we will focus on mixed diets which will be beneficial to health.

Tree-based perennial food systems especially can go a long way in minimizing the risks associated with annual climate variations. We have plenty of edible trees for vegetables, fruits and proteins (such as nuts). Wild yams could be another way of adding to the diversity, and so could the drought-resistant sweet potato. What is required is building a system that creates temporally and spatially multi-layered edible production in the field. The temporal layers consist of food items that grow in durations ranging from a few months such as fresh vegetables to perennials such as tree-based species.

These can also be spatially layered with the lower levels of a farm occupied by annual and seasonal food species and the upper layer canopy created by more perennial tree species. In fact, that is how much of the tropical and semi-tropical ecological systems operate. Here we are talking about mimicking these systems in producing mostly edible and human need-centred systems. The practitioners of sustainable food systems in Nepal and other parts of the world have created very vibrant, productive and resilient systems based on the system of mimicking the forest systems. Building a more perennial-based food production system can go a long way in addressing the problems of irrigation. Irrigation uses over two-thirds of the freshwater in the world.

But we also need to address drinking and other uses of fresh water. Investing in water harvesting should be our priority for most of the mountain regions — both in the cities and rural areas. We have to seriously work towards water conservation. Effective and locally adapted technologies exists for both. Ultimately, the potential and ongoing disruptions in the climate system also calls for radically reorienting the very definitions of progress and models of development. The industrial model, based on increased use of fossil fuel, is increasingly looking like a dream gone awry.

Anil Bhattarai

anilbhattarai@gmail.com