Andes Traditional Farmers Under Siege by Industrial Agriculture

News from Seed Savers:
Andean Seed Matters
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14 July 2003

Notes from the highlands

The way Seed Savers gets involved with overseas non-government organisations (NGOs) is not by actively looking for projects to support but by responding to requests of assistance. Seed Savers selects NGOs that are efficient and working directly to benefit farmers.

Over the last few years Seed Savers has had five interns placed in Ecuador. The last three of them, Paul, Kerrie and Saviana arranged some technical seed training for organizations they were involved with. That is how Michel, one of the founders of Seed Savers came, to be in Ecuador in May 2003.

A wide range of Ecuadorian and Colombian farmers organisations took part in three two days workshops. Even the church got involved in the act. During Michel's visit a seed conference was also put together by a group of interested civil societies because the right to save seeds is about to be severely curtailed by new government legislation.*

Local seeds that are suitable to non-toxic agriculture are getting harder of come by. While Andean families especially those living in marginal areas are saving a large diversity of their own native crops (they are very visible at produce markets) the acreage devoted to local no spray agriculture and local food crops is shrinking dramatically. Those resisting are under siege.

Andean subsistence farmers (feeding their families with what they grow and selling excesses) are being courted by the seed industry through the Department of Agriculture free introductory seeds and chemicals, hybrid seed assistance by international aid agencies such as USAID, and seed industry nik naks such as posters, baseball caps and T-shirts.

Traditional farmers wearing home span clothes are made feel backward and stupid by government people wearing designer jeans, clean white shirts and baseball caps. Pressures are put on them not to remain in a subsistence farming system but go for the dollars that are supposed to be in the export market. The salt of the earth farmers are pushed to rationalize their ancestral agriculture and use fungicides, herbicides, and the latest hybrid maize, cabbage, carrot, capsicum etc. Genetically modified (GM) seeds are also creeping in.

While large land owners are getting seduced by the hybrids "bigger is better" culture, the purchase of machinery etc, many indigenous NGOs are becoming fierce supporters of local, native, chemical free agriculture. More and more small farmers are seeing the light and have started again to save their native food plant seeds such as a huge diversity of much more nutritive beans, amaranth, quinoa, and many Andean tubers.

Subsistence, semi subsistence and commercial farmers are under tremendous pressure to change their diverse traditional potato farming system to "the" single modern variety that need fungicide to bear a crop at all. Modern potatoes are bred to be the right size and shape for the chips industry and to supply the fast growing cities (8 children per women). The silver bullet varieties may produce more in ideal conditions but they are susceptible to fungus. The GM answer is to have GM potatoes that resist fungus and beetles attack trying to fix the problem they helped create.

Some farmers are seduced by the glamour to grow for the cut flower export market or just drop their farming and work for export flower farms that produce half of the roses and carnations of the USA and Canada. One of the large flower glasshouses Michel passed by had arm guards, dogs, spotlights and watch tours. Even taking a picture looked suspicious enough to frighten his minders.

In the Andes and the lowlands, highly skilled farmers are now employed to do menial tasks of spray poisons in banana, coffee, flower, greenhouses and palm oil plantations. They handle extremely toxic fungicides and herbicides without protection. Palm oil farms can be as large as 250 000 hectares in the Amazon part of Ecuador.

Andean native society is under pressure to consume more. Pressures are on mothers from their children to buy "cool" imported Kraft and Nestle food (noodle, sweets, chicken, fast food, soft drinks, ice creams, with recognisable icons. Phillip Morris cigarettes sales are going through the roof using top dollar advertising although local largely organic tobacco (it is a native) is sold ten times cheaper.

One Indian woman working for a community organisation commented at a workshop in Cotacachi, a traditional Indian town at 3200 metres altitude, that she is made feel ashamed to present a meal that is completely grown on the farm. Serving crunchy chocho (the excellent edible native lupin), is no longer good enough to please the palate of those used to sweet processed food as seen on TV. Chocho is....wait for it....46% protein and high is in lysine and cystine.(National Academy of Science Washington, DC)

The right to save seeds is under the hammer in Ecuador at the moment. They are as we are, up against are very powerful groups such as Seminis Seeds who has sale points in 120 countries. Seminis is the largest vegetable seed breeder, developer and marketer in the world that is penetrating South America at the moment. It owned 20 % of Yates in 1999. Seminis also develops GM vegetables as part of their strategies.

* If you have some expertise in legislation pertaining to Intellectual Property Rights issues please contact Michel at michel@seedsavers.net in Australia and Javier Carrera in Quito (guardasemillas@yahoo.es and anitabravo@hotmail.com). Javier is the co founder and coordinator of the newly formed Seed Network in Ecuador and is also the person who organised the logistics and interpretations during the seed tour of Ecuador.

Meanwhile in Byron Bay, Australia, Seed Savers is looking for a volunteer graphic designer to assist in pamphlet and poster design.

Jude and Amy have recently returned from a Melanesian farmers seed conference held in the Solomon Islands, news will be posted shortly.

A follow-up visit to Afghanistan has been scheduled for September 2003. We welcome your feedback.

This email was sent to over 3000 individual and organisations. The team here welcomes your comments and cooperation.

xox for reading to the end....

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http://www.genevar.com.au//seedsavers/news/92.html

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