Filipino rice farmers claim that national heritage sites like the 2,000-year-old Ifugao Rice Terraces are threatened by the looming presence of genetically modified crops. Credit: Courtesy Diana Mendoza

By Diana Mendoza
MANILA, Nov 26 2014 (IPS)

Jon Sarmiento, a farmer in the Cavite province in southern Manila, plants a variety of fruits and vegetables, but his main crop, rice, is under threat. He claims that approval by the Philippine government of the genetically modified ‘golden rice’ that is fortified with beta-carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A, could ruin his livelihood.

Sarmiento, who is also the sustainable agriculture programme officer of PAKISAMA, a national movement of farmers’ organisations, told IPS, “Genetically modified rice will not address the lack of vitamin A, as there are already many other sources of this nutrient. It will worsen hunger. It will also kill diversification and contaminate other crops.”

Sarmiento aired his sentiments during a protest activity last week in front of the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI), an office under the Department of Agriculture, during which farmers unfurled a huge canvas depicting a three-dimensional illustration of the Banaue Rice Terraces in Ifugao province in the northern part of the Philippines.

“We challenge the government to walk the talk and ‘Be RICEponsible’." -- Jon Sarmiento, a farmer in the Cavite province in southern Manila
Considered by Filipinos as the eighth wonder of the world, the 2,000-year-old Ifugao Rice Terraces represent the country’s rich rice heritage, which some say will be at stake once the golden rice is approved.

The protesting farmers also delivered to the BPI, which is responsible for the development of plant industries and crop production and protection, an ‘extraordinary opposition’ petition against any extension, renewal or issuance of a new bio-safety permit for further field testing, feeding trials or commercialisation of golden rice.

“We challenge the government to walk the talk and ‘Be RICEponsible’,” Sarmiento said, echoing the theme of a national advocacy campaign aimed at cultivating rice self-sufficiency in the Philippines.

Currently, this Southeast Asian nation of 100 million people is the eighth largest rice producer in the world, accounting for 2.8 percent of global rice production, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).

But it was also the world’s largest rice importer in 2010, largely because the Philippines’ area of harvested rice is very small compared with other major rice-producing countries in Asia.

In addition to lacking sufficient land resources to produce its total rice requirement, the Philippines is devastated by at least 20 typhoons every year that destroy crops, the FAO said.

However, insufficient output is not the only thing driving research and development on rice.

A far greater concern for scientists and policy-makers is turning the staple food into a greater source of nutrition for the population. The government and independent research institutes are particularly concerned about nutrition deficiencies that cause malnutrition, especially among poorer communities.

According to the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), “Vitamin A deficiency remains a public health problem in the country, affecting more than 1.7 million children under the age of five and 500,000 pregnant and nursing women.”

The vast majority of those affected live in remote areas, cut off from access to government nutrition programmes. The IRRI estimates that guaranteeing these isolated communities sufficient doses of vitamin A could reduce child mortality here by 23-34 percent.

Such thinking has provided the impetus for continued research and development on genetically modified rice, despite numerous protests including a highly publicised incident in August last year in which hundreds of activists entered a government test field and uprooted saplings of the controversial golden rice crop.

While scientists forge ahead with their tests, protests appear to be heating up, spurred on by a growing global movement against GMOs.

Last week’s public action – which received support from Greenpeace Southeast Asia and included farmers’ groups, organic traders and consumers, mothers and environmentalists – denounced the government’s continuing research on golden rice and field testing, as well as the distribution and cropping of genetically-modified corn and eggplant.

Monica Geaga, another protesting farmer who is from the group SARILAYA, an organisation of female organic farmers from the rice-producing provinces in the main island of Luzon, said women suffer multiple burdens when crops are subjected to genetic modification.

“It is a form of harassment and violence against women who are not just farmers but are also consumers and mothers who manage households and the health and nutrition of their families,” she told IPS.

Geaga said she believes that if plants are altered from their natural state, they release toxins that are harmful to human health.

Protestors urged the government to shield the country’s rice varieties from contamination by genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and instead channel the money for rice research into protecting the country’s biodiversity and rich cultural heritage while ensuring ecological agricultural balance.

Though there is a dearth of hard data on how much the Philippine government has spent on GMO research, the Biotechnology Coalition of the Philippines estimates that the government and its multinational partner companies have spent an estimated 2.6 million dollars developing GM corn alone.

Furthermore, activists and scientists say GMOs violate the National Organic Law that supports the propagation of rice varieties that already possess multi-nutrients such as carbohydrates, minerals, fibre, and potassium, according to the Philippines’ National Nutrition Council (NNC).

The NNC also said other rice varieties traditionally produced in the Philippines such as brown, red, and purple rice contain these nutrients.

Danilo Ocampo, ecological agriculture campaigner for Greenpeace Philippines, said the “flawed regulatory system” in the BPI, the sole government agency in charge of GMO approvals, “has led to approvals of all GMO applications without regard to their long-term impact on the environment and human health.”

“The problem with the current regulatory system is that there is no administrative remedy available to farmers once contamination happens. It is also frustrating that consumers and the larger populace are not given the chance to participate in GM regulation,” said Ocampo.

“It is high time that we exercise our right to participate and be part of a regulatory system that affects our food, our health and our future,” he asserted.

Greenpeace explained in statements released to the media that aside from the lack of scientific consensus on the safety of GMOs on human health and the environment, they also threaten the country’s rich biodiversity.

Greenpeace Philippines said genetically modified crops such as corn or rice contain built-in pesticides that can be toxic, and their ability to cross-breed and cross-pollinate other natural crops can happen in an open environment, which cannot be contained.

Last week saw farmer activists in other cities in the Philippines stage protest actions that called on the government to protect the country’s diverse varieties of rice and crops and stop GMO research and field-testing.

In Davao City south of Manila, stakeholders held the 11th National Organic Agriculture Congress. In Cebu City, also south of Manila, farmers protested the contamination of corn, their second staple food, and gathered petitions supporting the call against the commercial approval of golden rice.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

A man walks through agricultural land in the village of Mirusuvil, in Sri Lanka’s northern Jaffna District. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
KILINOCHCHI, Sri Lanka, Oct 3 2014 (IPS)

Gazing out over the parched earth of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province, one might think these farmlands have not seen water in years. In fact, this is not too far from the truth.

The World Food Programme (WFP) last month allocated 2.5 million dollars to assist hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans in the throes of an 11-month drought that has shown no signs of abating.

A woman stands in front of her parched paddy land in the eastern Batticaloa District, one of Sri Lanka’s largest paddy-producing regions, that has been hit by the 11-month-long drought. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

A man stands in the middle of parched paddy land in the northern Kilinochchi District. Sri Lanka’s staple rice harvest is expected to record a loss of 17 percent from around four million metric tonnes in 2013. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

The WFP said on Sep. 1 that 2.3 million dollars worth of supplies, including rice rations, would be provided to the drought victims. The assistance scheme will also provide 277,000 dollars in cash grants to needy families.

A woman covers her head with a cloth to escape the extreme heat in Sri Lanka’s northern Jaffna District where daytime temperatures can reach 40 degrees Celsius. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

A woman carries firewood in the drought-impacted Pillumalai area of the eastern Batticaloa District. Residents of this region are staring a water crisis in the face, as the main reservoir, the Vakaneri Tank, is almost completely dried up. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

The drought has so far impacted over 1.6 million people, of whom at least 190,000 are in need of urgent food assistance, while there are concerns about the food security of an additional 700,000.

A parched tank bed in the southeastern Moneragala District, where farmers say the absence of rain since late 2013 has completely destroyed their agricultural lands. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

A young girl drinks water out of a bottle in Sri Lanka’s eastern Batticaloa District, where over 220,000 persons have been affected by the drought. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Over half of those impacted by the drought are from the northern and eastern provinces of the country, two of the poorest in the nation.

A tractor moves along the side of the dried-out Elephant Pass causeway in the northern Kilinochchi District. Officials told IPS the district was in need of at least nine million rupees (69,000 dollars) per week for drought relief. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

A man uses water from an industrial-grade pump in the Karadiyanaru area of the eastern Batticaloa District. Experts warn that the rampant use of powerful water-pumps in this arid region is putting undue stress on the water table. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

While the situation calls for immediate assistance, the WFP also warned that the affected would need long-term help to adapt to the impacts of changing climate patterns.

A woman tries to salvage whatever is left of her green gram crop before the lack of water destroys the entire plot in the eastern Pillumalai area of the Batticaloa District. According to government estimates, Sri Lanka’s agricultural output is likely to fall by at least 10 percent this year due to the drought. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

The World Bank estimates that the annual risk to Sri Lanka posed by climate-related disasters stands at some 380 million dollars. The worst disaster to date, a severe flood in 2010 and 2011, caused damages to the tune of 50 billion dollars.

A man rides a bicycle over a road washed away by floods in the village of Panasalgolla in the north-central Polonnaruwa district. Extremely remote and almost entirely dependent on agriculture, this village is falling into a debt trap due to cyclical natural disasters, according to the United Nations. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Jun 9 2014 (IPS)

By now, the tale has become almost mundane: first the rains remain elusive, refusing to quench the parched earth. Then, without warning, they fall in such torrents that they leave scores dead, hundreds injured, and thousands homeless, plus a heavy bill in accrued damages.

This is what climate change looks like in Sri Lanka, where unusual weather patterns have left meteorologists stumped, and the poor bear the brunt of the government’s lack of preparation for the annual monsoon, which hits the southwestern coast between June and October.

By the time the deluge subsided a day later, 24 people were dead, over 120,000 in 13 districts were badly affected, 25,000 were displaced by floodwaters and close to 1,500 houses had been damaged.

As always, the poorest of Sri Lanka’s poor were hardest hit: over 12 percent of the country’s urban population of three million live in slums, most of which are erected on government lands close to lakes and canals and are thus prone to flooding. Other affected populations include impoverished fisher communities who reside in humble dwellings along the coast.

This is not the first time that Sri Lanka’s most marginalised and ill-informed communities have had to bury loved ones and flee their homes as a result of unexpected, torrential downpours.

On Jun. 8, over 60 fishermen from the coastal Kalutara district, 50 km south of the island’s capital Colombo, were killed when they were caught off-guard by the monsoon’s fatal embrace.

Two years earlier, just a month before Christmas, 25 fishermen from the same region perished at sea in fast-moving winds and fierce rain.

Time and again, Sri Lanka’s most impoverished populations suffer in silence, be they slum-dwellers in Colombo, fishermen on the southern coast, farmers in the north-central provinces or war-affected members of the Tamil minority population in the northeastern regions.

The lack of a national water management policy is hampering Sri Lanka's efforts to tackle recurring droughts. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, May 30 2014 (IPS)

Stuck in mid-day rush hour traffic, commuters packed tight into a tin-roofed bus in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, peer expectantly up at the sky that is beating a savage heat down on the city.

No one speaks, but it is clear they are all waiting for the same thing: for the heavens to open up and provide some relief from the scorching weather that is slowly cooking this island nation.

Over 200 km east, in the agricultural district of Ampara, farmers and rural folk wait equally expectantly for the elusive monsoon, already a few weeks late in coming.

Water levels at the Senanayake Samudraya tank, which holds the bulk of the district’s water needs, are dangerously low, having dropped below 30 percent of the reservoir’s capacity at the end of May, according to the department of irrigation.

All over the country, low-level anxiety over the water shortage is slowly giving way to panic. With each day that the rains do not fall, food shortages increase, poverty worsens and the economy lurches in uncertainty.

Strangely, the government is yet to officially declare a drought situation, even though water levels in most major reservoirs – which supply close to 46 percent of the country’s electricity needs – are alarmingly low.

No rain, no rice

“The problem is that this is not a one-off drought, this is the third big drought in three years." -- Rajith Punyawardena, chief climatologist at the department of agriculture
Given that over 75 percent of Sri Lanka’s population lives in rural areas, with a large percentage engaged in rice farming, a drought threatens the country to its very core.

Harvest losses mounted in the first half of this year, leaving farmers and officials fearful that a predicted weaker-than-average southwest monsoon season will exacerbate the situation.

“It is not looking very good,” warned Rajith Punyawardena, chief climatologist at the department of agriculture, pointing out that the main rice harvesting season, which concluded in April, recorded a loss of 17 percent compared to last year.

According to a recent update from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), Sri Lanka only produced 2.4 million metric tons of paddy during the main harvest in 2014, compared to around 2.8 million last year.

The FAO predicted that overall paddy output on the island in 2014 was likely to record a 19 percent loss from the previous year, with an expected production of 3.8 million metric tons – eight percent less than the five-year average yield since 2014.

Weerakkodiarchchilage Premadasa, a farmer from Thanamalvila in Sri Lanka’s southeastern Uva province, told IPS he had already lost half of his two acres of paddy to the drought. “If the rains don’t come, or are too weak, I will have to mortgage the house,” he said.

High demand and predictions of further losses pushed rice prices up by 23 percent this past April.

Meanwhile, a report compiled last month by the World Food Programme (WFP), together with Sri Lanka’s ministries of economic development and disaster management, detailed the country’s precarious situation vis-à-vis erratic weather, including the drought’s potential impact on food security and livelihoods.

In affected regions across the northern, eastern and northwestern provinces, over 768,000 persons out of a total population of 8.3 million have been identified as food insecure, double the 2013 figure. In addition, 18 percent of all households in over 15 districts in those same regions were consuming low-calorie diets.

Over 67 percent of the affected population are farmers who rely heavily on irrigated water for their livelihoods and daily subsistence. An unbroken string of extreme weather events since 2011 has heightened food insecurity and severely impacted rural populations’ resilience to natural disasters like droughts and floods, the report added.

Experts say the northern province, which accounts for 10 percent of the national paddy harvest, is particularly vulnerable. It lost over 60 percent of an estimated 300,000-metric-ton harvest in April, according to Sivapathan Sivakumar, the provincial director for agriculture.

Having borne the brunt of the island’s protracted civil conflict, which finally closed its bloody 30-year chapter in 2009, the people here have shouldered about as much hardship as they can take. A possible debt-trap, caused by repeated losses in harvest, has them on the edge, Sivakumar added.

“We have to come up with a major assistance plan to help them,” the official told IPS.

According to the joint WFP-governmental report, the northern districts of Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi have been hardest hit, with 49 percent and 31 percent of their respective populations identified as food insecure as a result of drought.

Urgent need for national planning

Those who are monitoring the situation say the drought will bring more than just hunger. Already food shortages are taking a disproportionate toll on low-income households, who have no safety net against harvest losses and rising prices.

In the districts surveyed by the WFP, a full 50 percent of households were spending over 65 percent of their monthly income, about 20 dollars, on food.

Poverty levels in these areas are also rising, with families reporting damage to agricultural land, limited employment opportunities as a result of scarce yields and significant reductions to their income.

“The average income in these areas is reported to be 37 percent lower than the national poverty line [of 29 dollars] for the month of March,” the report found.

In some areas, there was a big gap between expected income and actual income. In the northwestern Kurunegala district, a relatively rich region, actual income was 76 dollars, 81 percent below the expected income of 190 dollars.

In the northern Vavuniya district, actual income for the month of April was 67 percent below expected income.

The WFP has recommended the immediate commencements of six months of emergency assistance to the worst affected populations, but officials say this is easier said than done.

“The problem is that this is not a one-off drought, this is the third big drought in three years,” Punyawardena told IPS. “We need a national plan to assess and deal with the impact of extreme weather events.”

A drought between December 2011 and October 2012 affected 1.8 million people in the same regions currently enduring the dry spell, according to assessments by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. During that time, total harvest losses were feared to be between 15 and 20 percent.

So far, the only drought-related move has come from the ministry of agriculture, which has recommended that 35 percent of the 779,000 hectares of land under paddy cultivation be used for crops that require less water.

But Punyawardena believes that paddy farmers steeped in traditional farming practices are unlikely to change their methods or crops quickly. Such a move, he said, “needs time and a bit more work.”

As Premadasa, the farmer from the Uva province, pointed out, “Farmers like me need advice at the start of the planting season so we can plan accordingly. We get some information, but we need more detailed updates.”

Similar long-term planning will also be required to cushion the blow a weak monsoon could deliver to the country’s energy sector.

The Ceylon Electricity Board reported that as of the last week of May, hydro power was only meeting 11.8 percent of the country’s energy needs, compared to 46 percent during previous monsoon seasons.

Water experts told IPS there is an urgent need for an integrated national water management policy that takes note of fluctuating rain patterns.

“It will allow for national-level planning of water resources, identifying and prioritising needs and acting accordingly,” Kusum Atukorale, who chairs the Sri Lanka Water Partnership, told IPS.

Such a policy, she said, would allow for the kind of countrywide planning that is woefully lacking right now.

Until the government puts its best foot forward, the people of Sri Lanka can do little more than look to the skies and pray for the rain to fall.

(END)

Maryam Akhtar, a farmer in Kashmir, worries the taps will not yield enough water for her family's daily needs. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Aug 16 2013 (IPS)

Zareena Bano has had to skip school 17 times this year to help out on her family’s farm in Tangchekh village in the northern Indian state of Kashmir.

Her teachers say she has the potential to be a brilliant student, but warn that if she keeps missing school she will not go far.

Never before has the 15-year-old had to sacrifice her education in order to support her family, but an acute water crisis in this Himalayan state has made irrigation a constant worry and severely disrupted the way of life for thousands of farming families like her own.

Troubled though they are by the toll the extra labour is taking on their daughter’s schoolwork, Zareena’s parents are in no position to order her to stay away from the fields.

Her father, Gaffar Rathar, says the family is entirely dependent on the yields from his 2.5-acre paddy field and half a dozen walnut trees. Frequent droughts mean a lot of additional hard work for him and his family.

“Sometimes, when water is in extremely short supply, we have to store water in small ponds that we dug ourselves, and plastic containers,” he told IPS.

Most residents of this lush valley, nestled between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range, are unaccustomed to drought. For generations subsistence agriculturalists have relied on steady rainfall and glacial rivers to irrigate their farmland, but now this scenic alpine region is feeling the pinch of climate change.

The most recent State of the Environment Report (SOER), released by the Directorate of Ecology, Environment and Remote Sensing in the capital, Srinagar, says that all its monitoring stations across Kashmir – except Jammu, which is located 290 km away from the capital – recorded a decreasing trend in total annual rainy days.

A number of other studies carried out in recent years corroborate these findings, adding that glaciers in the Kashmir Himalayas are receding, while snowfall and precipitation are both showing decreasing trends.

A study by Norwegian scientist Andreas Kaab and his French colleagues, which was published by Nature Magazine in August last year, found that increasing temperatures in the region posed no immediate threat to glaciers in the Hindu-Kush Karakoram Himalayas (HKKH) except to those in the Kashmir Himalayas.

Kaab’s findings suggest that Kashmir’s glaciers may be receding by “as much as half a metre annually,” presenting an immediate threat to the rivers that feed the Indus basin.

Jhelum, the largest river in the region, originates in South Kashmir and is fed by glaciers in the upper reaches of the town of Pahalgam. One of the river Jhelum’s primary tributaries, the Lidder, is fed by the Kolhai glacier, which is receding fast.

Quoting a study conducted by Kashmir University’s geography department, Department Head Mohammad Sultan Bhat informed IPS that, since 1975, precipitation in the lower parts of Kashmir has declined by 1.2 centimetres in lower altitudes and eight cm in higher altitudes.

These trends, say experts, bode badly for the future of Kashmir’s agricultural industry: according to figures in the most recent Kashmir Economic Survey, only 42 percent of agricultural land in Kashmir is covered by irrigation facilities like canals and lift stations, while the remaining 58 percent is entirely dependent on rainfall.

Following the enforcement of the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act in 1959, over 9,000 landowners were stripped of over 100,000 hectares of land, which was transferred to peasants, thereby creating an agrarian-based economy in Kashmir.

Over 80 percent of the population is now dependent on agriculture for a livelihood, cultivating such crops as rice, maize, pulses, saffron and potatoes.

Official statistics indicate that 75 percent of agricultural land – roughly 46,943 hectares – is under paddy cultivation in Kashmir, indicating that rice farmers comprise the bulk of agriculturalists here.

Early this year, scientists from the earth sciences department at the Kashmir University revealed that increases in temperature and a considerable reduction in precipitation would result in a sharp decrease in paddy yields across the region.

Earlier this year, renowned scientists Shakil A. Romshoo and M. Muslim presented a paper at the Indian Science Congress in New Delhi, predicting that rice production would decrease by 6.6 percent (over 4,000 kg per hectare) by 2040.

According to Romshoo, these projected declines are based on predictions that maximum and minimum temperature will increase by 5.39degrees Celsius and 5.08degrees Celsius respectively by 2090.  Precipitation levels are likely to decrease by about 16.67 percent by 2090.

Most farmers in Kashmir earn roughly 1,900 dollars a year and produce an annual average of 40 quintals (4,000 kgs) of paddy per hectare. Experts say these farmers will struggle to withstand the decrease in yields that will undoubtedly accompany the predicted weather changes.

Already countless families are feeling the pinch of decreasing water supplies. Nasreena Begum, a mother of three children living in the village of Surigam in the northern Kupwara district, spends several hours every morning walking over a kilometre to fetch water from a stagnant pond, since the stream that once bordered her village has completely dried up.

She told IPS she makes the trek several times a day in order to collect enough water to meet her family’s daily needs.

In addition to drinking and washing water, she must also ensure that the family cow is properly watered, since her children rely heavily on the cow’s milk for nourishment and she herself sells five litres a day to the local milkman in order to supplement her husband’s meagre earnings as a daily labourer.

As the rains become thinner, and the glacier-fed rivers slow to a trickle, she and many other farming families will be forced to hunker down to weather a hotter and drier Kashmir.

(END)

Rina Banu, a farmer's wife, dries the rice from the harvest made possible by mini ponds. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Naimul Haq
CHAPAINAWABGANJ, Bangladesh, Jul 8 2013 (IPS)

Bangladesh, a country of 150 million people who depend on rice as their main staple, is gearing up for drought. Already huge areas of the rice-producing regions are on a knife’s edge, as elusive rains and hotter temperatures team up on thirsty paddy fields and threaten to disrupt food supply.

Already nursing an annual food deficit of 1.8 million tonnes, Bangladesh is on the verge of a crisis.

But with the help of an initiative sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to dig mini-ponds in rural communities, desperate rice farmers are seeing light at the end of the tunnel.

Small Ponds Bring Bumper Harvests from IPS Inter Press Service on Vimeo.

(END)

Members of Girls Farm, based in Japan’s Yamagata Prefecture, are changing the image of agriculture. Credit: Girls Farm

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Jun 26 2013 (IPS)

Yukako Harada, an energetic 29-year-old, is part of a small but determined band of women farmers working hard to revitalise Japan’s moribund agricultural sector, which is feeling the crunch of an ageing population and a flood of cheap imports.

From accounting for half the country’s economic output just after World War II, agricultural production has shrunk down to just 1.2 percent of the world’s second largest economy, generating only 39 percent of Japan’s food needs.

“It’s time for a makeover, to save Japanese farms,” Harada told IPS. “And the only way to do this is to get youth and more women involved in agriculture.”

In 2010, Harada, who was born in Tokyo, joined the Girls Farm, a project launched in Yamagata Prefecture, located in the Tohoku region of Honshu Island, by a local female farmer keen to change the stodgy image of Japanese agriculture.

Here, 400 km west of Tokyo, fertile land produces rice, watermelons and grapes. Thanks to Girls Farm, the region is quickly becoming the poster child of a new and improved agricultural system, as images of smiling young women working happily in the fields dispel the stereotype of farming as a gender-biased and backbreaking activity.

According to Professor Masao Fukunaga, an economist specialising in rural development, there is a renewed interest in farming not so much as a profit-generating activity but as a mental release from the stresses of city life, as well as growing awareness of the need to boost the country’s food security.

Japan’s food self-sufficiency rate, in terms of caloric intake, continues to hover at 39 percent, a steep drop from its former 73 percent in 1965. In comparison, the United States registers a self-sufficiency rate of 100 percent.

Rice production, heavily subsidised by the government, is the only crop that can feed Japan’s population of 127 million without relying on imports of staples like wheat, meat and vegetables.

In 1999, 2.8 million households were involved in commercial farming enterprises; today that number has fallen by 200,000 families, who are now heavily dependent on non-farming income.

In total, the agricultural industry comprises just over one percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), which touched six trillion dollars in 2011.

This situation, experts say, is the result of a national policy that ignored agriculture in favour of industrial development – through the auto manufacturing and electronics sectors – to turn Japan’s devastated post-war economy into a high-tech exporter nation, and the third largest economy in the world after the United States and China.

The downside of that march into material prosperity, according to Yoshie Oguno at the ministry of agriculture, fisheries and forestry, was that it bulldozed a huge part of the agricultural sector.

Urbanisation spread rapidly, vast areas of rural farmlands were converted into factories, and family farms – averaging one to 1.5 hectares – were left in the care of ageing parents as their children moved to the cities in search of better paying jobs in more lucrative fields.

Data from the ministry of agriculture suggest that in the 1960s, an average of seven million people per month migrated from rural to urban areas.

But now, the prospect of footing huge bills for food imports to feed a massive ageing population is pushing the government to invest heavily in solutions to reverse this trend.

It recently poured 50 billion dollars into efforts to promote awareness on women farmers’ right to land ownership and income, cutting against the grain of traditional farming culture where farm titles are held by the husband or father in a family.

“This is the only way to go if we are going to attract the younger generation who expect gender equality,” Oguno told IPS.

Professor Tomoko Ichida, an expert on farming populations, told IPS that simply improving women’s income could have a positive impact on the limping sector.

“My research has shown that women farmers are good at innovation. They are bringing new value-added products – jams and pickles made from fruit and vegetables, or small restaurants, for example – into the market, which have become popular with Japanese consumers,” she said.

Government data released in 2011 showed that more than three-quarters of new agribusiness ventures – the ministry recorded 10,000 start-ups in 2010 – were headed by women, highlighting the shifting gender dynamics in an industry that was, until a few years ago, controlled by men, with women only entitled to a meagre share of joint family income.

Yoshiko Kaido, 61, hailing from the Tokyo suburb of Ibaraki, won a Mayor’s award for her jam-making business in 2003. “I now have my own income that is separate from the family farm,” she told IPS. “It makes farming far more worthwhile.”

While farm workers are keen to see results right away, experts caution that the change will not take place overnight.

“The going is still tough,” Harada told IPS. The most recent official data indicates that 60 percent of female agribusiness owners earned less than 30,000 dollars annually.

Seminars on business management have become a popular means of creating self-sufficiency among women business owners, but experts say a lot more needs to be done to encourage the youth, who accounted for six percent of the agricultural workforce in 2011.

Despite some shortfalls, the tides seem to be turning, and if the government lays its plans carefully, it could usher in a new era in which women buoy up a productive and lucrative agricultural sector.

Rural Indonesian women selling jackfruit crackers. Photo: Abigail Lee/IPS

By Kanis Dursin
SUBANG, Indonesia, Jun 24 2013 (IPS)

When 45-year-old Kaswati joined an income-generating project in her village in Indonesia’s West Java province in 1999, all she hoped to do was supplement her family’s income at a time of erratic harvests.

But today, 14 years later, her fertiliser and jackfruit cracker businesses have far exceeded those modest plans: they have become the main sources of income for her family of four and are helping to offset the expenses of maintaining their half-hectare rice field.

Water scarcity over the past few years has forced the farming family to “draw water from faraway irrigation canals”, meaning they spend more on pumping water, and on labour, Kaswati told IPS in Pogon, a village in the Subang district of West Java province, a two-hour drive from the capital, Jakarta.

The shortage has also “limited planting opportunities to two each year instead of three, as suggested by the government,” the farmer said, adding that her compost and cracker businesses have “come to (my family’s) rescue.”

“I’ve got an outstanding order to supply 348 tonnes of compost fertiliser this year and since I cannot meet the demand all by myself, I have asked my friends to make compost and sell it to me.”

She buys the compost at an average price of 51 dollars per tonne and sells it for 77 dollars per tonne, thus making a tidy profit while also supporting members of her community.

Kaswati is just one of the many women in Pogon to benefit from an income-generating project that was partially funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in order to help this Southeast Asian archipelago nation tackle the impacts of climate change on the agricultural sector.

Under the programme, which ran from 1999 to 2006, each woman was given a bank loan, worth about 40 dollars, as capital to start a business. The loan carried an interest rate of one percent and had to be repaid in 12-month installments.

When the programme ended in 2006, Kaswati and her fellow women villagers ventured into the compost business. Along the way, however, all but Kaswati abandoned the fertiliser trade. In 2008, Kaswati began a jackfruit cracker business, together with 24 other women in the village.

“The programme taught us how to start and manage a business in order to make a profit. We also learned about bookkeeping,” Kaswati recalled.

Climate change hits hard

Indonesia’s agricultural sector provides 87 percent of raw materials for small and medium-scale industries, contributes 14.72 percent to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), and employs 33.32 percent of the total labour force.

Due to its geographical situation, Indonesia is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change including increased droughts and floods, changes in planting patterns, and increased pests, all of which threaten the country’s food security, according to Hari Priyono, secretary-general of Indonesia’s ministry of agriculture.

“Indonesia has been focusing on increasing rice production from 54.1 million tonnes in 2004 to 69.05 million tonnes in 2012,” Priyono said in his keynote remarks at an early June media workshop on climate change, which was part of an IFAD series for journalists.

“Agricultural development faces increasingly serious challenges due to climate change as well as conversion of fertile agricultural land for industrial estates and settlements,” he continued.

Prolonged drought and an extended rainy season have struck Indonesia more frequently in recent years, leaving farmers in a quandary over when to start planting crops and causing worries about the country’s food security.

In early June, for example, climate experts here predicted that Indonesia would experience rain throughout 2013, even during the dry season that usually runs from May to September or early October.

Given the changes in climate patterns, the ministry of agriculture introduced in 2012 a ‘cropping calendar’ that advises farmers on the best planting periods, seed variety, fertilisers and pesticides. It has launched new rice varieties that can withstand prolonged drought or flooding, or high salinity due to seawater intrusion.

One expert, however, says these innovations may prove insufficient to deal with the impacts of climate change.

“The problem is we don’t have the technology yet that can predict the exact beginning of each dry or wet season or the severity of floods and drought,” said Zulkifli Zaini, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) liaison scientist for Indonesia.

To make things worse, almost 100,000 hectares of fertile farmland on the island of Java are being converted into industrial estates and settlements every year.

“Rice fields on Java island yield twice the amount produced by rice fields outside Java and this means that the government has to create 200,000 hectares of rice fields outside Java just to cover the loss (of these converted lands),” Zaini said.

According to IFAD, around 70 percent of Indonesia’s 245 million people live in rural areas, where agriculture is the main source of income. A least 16.6 percent of the country’s rural people are poor.

“Millions of small farmers, farm workers and fishers are materially and financially unable to tap into the opportunities offered by years of economic growth,” IFAD’s country manager for Indonesia, Ronald Hartman, said.

But Kaswati’s experience seems to show that diversifying means of income can help rural villagers continue to make a decent living from agriculture.

Kaswati’s businesses have only grown bigger. Early this year, she took out a bank loan worth 4,100 dollars to finance her compost business, which has given her financial freedom and power.

“I no longer ask my husband for money to buy food and other household needs, and more importantly my first daughter now studies at a university,” said Kaswati, who until early 1999 had worked as a farm labourer.

Another woman participant who declined to give her name told IPS that her jackfruit cracker business has allowed her to send her children to school.

“My first child finished elementary school only, my second only finished junior high school, while the third only senior high school – but the fourth is now studying at a local university,” she said.

“Now my husband involves me in decision-making, particularly when it comes to my children’s studies.”

A farmer looks out at a flooded paddy field in Laos. Credit: E Souk/IPS

By Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau
BANGKOK, Jun 20 2013 (IPS)

The future of food security in the Mekong region lies at a crossroads, as several development ventures, including the Xayaburi Hydropower Project, threaten to alter fish migration routes, disrupt the flow of sediments and nutrients downstream, and endanger millions whose livelihoods depend on the Mekong River basin’s resources.

Running through China, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Laos, Thailand and Cambodia to the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, this is Asia’s seventh longest transboundary river.

An estimated 60 million people live within the lush river basin, and nearly 80 percent depend on the Lower Mekong’s waters and intricate network of tributaries as a major source of food.

But if all goes according to plan, 88 dams will obstruct the river’s natural course by 2030. Seven have already been completed in the Upper Mekong basin in China, with an estimated twenty more either planned or underway in the northwest Qinghai province, the southwestern region of Yunnan and Tibet.

Construction of the 3.5-billion-dollar Xayaburi Dam on the Lower Mekong in northern Laos is the first of eleven planned dam projects on the main stem of the Mekong River, with nine allocated for Laos and two in Cambodia.

Construction began in 2010 and as of last month the project was 10 percent complete.

At best these development projects will alter the traditional patterns of life here; at worst, they will devastate ecosystems that have thrived for centuries.

Over 850 freshwater fish species call the Mekong home, and several times a year this rich water channel is transformed into a major migration route, with one third of the species travelling over 1,000 kilometres to feed and breed, making the Mekong River basin one of the world’s most productive inland fisheries.

Large-scale water infrastructure development projects such as hydropower dams have already damaged the floodplains in the Lower Mekong and in the Tonlé Sap Lake in Cambodia, affecting water quality and quantity, lowering aquatic productivity, causing agricultural land loss and a 42-percent decline in fish supplies.

This spells danger in a region where fish accounts for 50 to 80 percent of daily consumption and micronutrient intake, Ame Trandem, Southeast Asia programme director for the non-profit International Rivers, told IPS.

Locating alternative protein sources such as livestock and poultry is no easy task and would require 63 percent more pasture lands and more than 17 percent more water.

“Cambodia is the largest fish eating country in the world. Get rid of the fish and you’re going to have serious problems because there is not enough livestock in Cambodia and Laos to compensate for the loss,” Trandem said.

With a total population of over 16 million, the Mekong Delta is known as the ‘rice bowl’ of Vietnam. It nurtures vast paddy fields that are responsible for 50 percent of national rice production and 70 percent of exports.

This low-lying delta depends on a natural cycle of floods and tides, with which Vietnamese farmers have long synchronised their planting and harvesting calendars.

Now, experts like Geoffrey Blate, senior advisor of landscape conservation and climate change for the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Greater Mekong Programme in Thailand, say this delicate ecosystem is vulnerable to changes brought on by global warming and mega development projects.

Rising sea levels and salt water intrusion have already put Vietnamese communities in the Mekong Delta on red alert, “while sediment losses caused by upstream dams will exacerbate these problems. In addition, the increased precipitation and heavier downpours anticipated from climate change may also substantially alter flood regimes in the Delta,” Blate told IPS.

If all the dams are built, experts estimate that 220,000 to 440,000 tonnes of white fish would disappear from the local diet, causing hunger and leading to a rapid decline in rice production.

Electricity over sustainability?

Citing a shortage of energy, Thailand’s leading state-owned utility corporation, EGAT, signed an agreement to purchase 95 percent of the Xayaburi dam’s anticipated 1,285 megawatts (MW) of electricity.

Six Thai commercial banks comprise the financial muscle of the project, while construction is in the hands of Thailand’s CH. Karnchang Public Company Limited, with some support from the Laotian government.

But energy experts like Chuenchom Sangarasri Greacen, author of Thailand’s Alternative Power Development Plan, have poked holes in the claim that the dam is required to meet growing energy needs.

Thailand is a net importer of electricity, but a lot of it is utilised wastefully, she told IPS, adding that countries like Laos and Cambodia have a much more immediate need for electricity: the World Bank estimates that only 84 percent of the population in Laos and 26 percent in Cambodia have access to electricity, compared to 99.3 percent in Thailand.

But instead of developing their own generation capacities, these governments have chosen export projects that profit corporations over people.

“Thailand is creating a lot of environmental, social and food issues for local communities by extending its grid to draw power from beyond our borders,” Greacen said.

Already, 333 families from villages like Houay Souy in north-central Laos, who were moved to make way for the dam, are feeling the first hints of greater suffering to come.

Once a self-sufficient community that generated revenues via gold panning and cultivated their own riverbank gardens to produce rice, fruits and vegetables, villagers are now finding themselves without jobs, very little money and not enough food.

“The villagers’ primary source of food was fishing and agriculture. In their new location, about 17 km away from their old homes, they were given small plots of agricultural land but not enough for their daily consumption needs,” said Trandem.

“Ch. Karnchang never compensated them for lost fisheries, fruit trees or the riverbank gardens that were washed away. Their new homes were built with poor quality wood, which was quickly eaten into by termites, so what little compensation they did receive went to fixing their new homes,” she added.

These families, numbering about five members per household, are now barely surviving on 10 dollars per month and symbolise the gap between so-called poverty alleviation programmes and their impact on the ground.

“The Laos government claims that dams will generate revenue but in reality…projects like Xayaburi basically export benefits and profits away from the host country while smaller projects that are more economically sustainable are being ignored,” says Greacen.

She believes the Laotian government should explore small-scale renewable energy projects like biomass and micro-hydro plants that would attract local investment and directly serve local populations.

Blate also suggested building diversion canals for smaller dams, rather than obstructing the main stem of the Mekong River.

A farmer in northwestern Bangladesh points to one of the newly dug ponds that are helping to boost food production. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Naimul Haq
CHAPAINAWABGANJ, Bangladesh, Jun 16 2013 (IPS)

“I would never have believed it possible to get a bumper rice harvest during the drought season,” 43-year-old Mohammad Shajahan Ali, a farmer hailing from the village of Magtapur in Bangladesh’s northern Chapainawabganj district, told IPS.

Yet this is exactly what he has got. Leading a proud tour of his small holding, Ali stops beside a pond, dug close to his modest, thatched-roof home. Without this, he says, the dry season that runs from June to October would have brought with it the usual hardships and hunger that most farmers in this district, 330 km from the capital, Dhaka, are accustomed to.

“We usually only cultivate aman rice (a deepwater crop) during the summer monsoon. But since we began digging these mini ponds for storing water, we’ve had extra production, almost year-round,” he said.

This year Ali harvested 12 tonnes of aman rice from his three-acre plot, making a 450-dollar profit, in addition to earning 542 dollars from growing and selling other varieties of rice, all grown using rainwater harvested in his 12 square-metre pond.

To the small farmer, whose income last year barely touched 200 dollars, this was a small fortune.

He attributes this windfall to a project sponsored by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to tackle a chronic water shortage here by digging 100 ponds in villages around the region free of charge.

Small Ponds Bring Bumper Harvests from IPS Inter Press Service on Vimeo.

Rashid Miah, a veteran farmer in the Nachole division of Chapainawabganj, showed IPS the small diesel-powered motor pump that channels water from the small pond into his four-acre paddy field.

Just 200 metres away, his neighbour Jashimuddin’s field lies barren, but Miah believes it is only a matter of time before he, too, reaps the benefits of harvested rainwater.

Revitalising an arid region

Chapainawabganj is one of seven districts comprising the 8,000-kilometre Barind Tract, an arid drought-prone region in northwestern Bangladesh that accounts for 60 percent of the nation’s rice production.

Paddy farmers here have recently been struggling to secure a harvest in the face of changing climate patterns, with experts warning that output in the world’s third largest rice producing country is under severe strain.

Studies show that the groundwater table in the Barind is gradually sinking, while annual average rainfall has dropped to less than 1,200 millimetres, against the national average of 2,350 mm.

With about 2.7 million hectares of paddy fields – out of a total of 5.8 million hectares of arable land in the Barind Tract – affected by drought during both dry and wet seasons every year, researchers predict a 7.4-percent annual drop in rice production.

In a country with a population density of 900 people per square-kilometre and an annual food deficit of 1.8 million tonnes, a decline in food production in the Barind region is a major concern for government, civil society and farmers alike.

Already, demand for rice is rising along with the population, which is expected to increase from the current 150 million to a staggering 192 million by 2025.

Over one-third of Bangladeshis live on less than a dollar a day, while 35 percent of the population is malnourished and 45 percent of children under five are underweight and stunted.

Anxious to take action against an impending crisis, the government, with support from the FAO, launched a comprehensive disaster management programme in 2005 aimed at enhancing the capacities of the agriculture department to cope with climate change and possible disasters in the agriculture sector.

Dr. Abu Wali Raghib Hassan, former national programme officer who supervised and implemented the FAO-funded project in 2005, said implementing the project was no easy task.

“We found frustrated farmers, barren farmland, abandoned deep tube wells and declining production,” he told IPS. Quickly realising that water, or the lack of it, was at the root of all the problems, the food agency began to dig 12-square-metre mini ponds to store summer monsoon rainwater for use during the dry season.

Part of the reason for the project’s success was that it built on indigenous knowledge that has been present in this region for generations.

According to 56-year-old Ashutosh Podder, a local farmer from the neighbouring Hamidpur village, “Mini-ponds are not new – they are simply a modern version of dug wells, known locally as ‘kua’, which our ancestors have used for centuries.”

He told IPS this traditional wisdom had initially been put into practice at higher levels of elevation, since over 47 percent of the Barind Tract is classified as highland (between 18 and 22 metres above sea-level), compared to other agricultural regions located primarily in low-lying floodplains.

But as temperatures got hotter, and rainfall thinner, these dug wells, along with the gigantic rivers that once watered this region – the Jamuna, Mahananda and Korotoa – dried up, seriously affecting farmers’ access to surface water.

Attempting to overcome the looming water crisis in the region in the late 1970s, the Barind Multipurpose Development Authority (BMDA) installed over 8,000 electric water pumps to facilitate continued irrigation, while hundreds of kilometres of narrow canals were dug to allow water to meander through roughly 600,000 hectares of rice fields.

But BMDA Project Director Dr. Abul Kashem told IPS that a receding groundwater table made this task much harder, resulting in over 30 percent of the pumps lying idle during periods of drought.

In desperation, farmers began to flee the drought-ravaged region. A 2008 survey of several villages revealed that 41 percent of farmers and agricultural labourers left to seek work in other regions of the country during the dry season, when temperatures reach as high as 40 degrees Celsius.

But now the ancient way of life in this region has come full circle, with experts hoping that the pond system will ease farmers’ burdens once and for all. The same local NGO that carried out the 2008 survey recently reported that fewer agricultural labourers are leaving their small-holdings, relying instead on mini ponds to reap a harvest at unexpected times.

An agricultural officer in Nachole told IPS that roughly 4,500 farmers in his district are benefiting from the project, while over 15,000 farmers throughout Chapainawabganj have experienced higher yields as a result of improved irrigation.

Hoping to multiply the success of the project, major agencies like the World Bank and the FAO have awarded the government a 22.8-million-dollar grant to try out the scheme in other parts of the region, and throughout Bangladesh.

It was another Monday afternoon in the remote Thai village of Baan Dong when an incoming text message lit up the black, dust-covered Nokia phone belonging to Eiem Sompeng.

Jasmine rice farmer Eiem Sompeng shows a weather forecast text message he received on his mobile phone. Credit: Marwaan Macan-Markar/IPS

The brief, 18-word message alerted the 68-year-old farmer to unexpected showers across parts of Yasorthorn, one of the poorest provinces in Thailand’s northeastern rice bowl, including his own village of 190 families.

Accustomed by now to these weekly alerts, part of a scheme initiated by the Community Weather Forecast Centre (CWFC) to help farmers cope with climate change, Eiem says the messages “have helped us farmers prepare our fields”, echoing the sentiments of roughly 10,000 other farmers benefiting from this new flow of information.

“The forecasts are also useful for (planning) planting, water storage and harvesting times,” Eiem told IPS.

With the annual monsoon rains expected in June, farmers in this community that grows Thailand’s famous jasmine rice are becoming increasingly dependent on their mobile phones for regular and precise weather updates, which they use when preparing the fields for another harvest of the long, fragrant white grain.

Until now, a joint effort by Thailand’s meteorological department and a private mobile phone operator had served to supply weather forecasts to vulnerable farmers. These daily updates had provided broad estimates, such as rainfall percentages for an entire province.

But farmers like Eiem found little use for such information, since it was “too general, when we need specific details.”

“In some provinces like Yasothorn there were no forecasts at all and the farmers had to rely on the forecasts for nearby provinces like Ubon Ratchathani,” Kasina Limsamamphun, programme coordinator for the British-based charity Oxfam, told IPS.

Little wonder, then, that the CWFC has earned thousands of farmers’ praise and gratitude for connecting agrarian communities to a network fed by the Bangkok-based Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency that uses satellite-supplied information to make very specific predictions.

After two years of trials CWFC has succeeded in providing forecasts particular to small geographic areas, which have helped to reduce losses and damages caused by extreme weather on the farms.

Just last year, for instance, over 1,600 jasmine rice farmers in one part of Yasothorn reported that rice yields dropped by 15 percent from the previous year due to a lengthy dry spell.

“Micro-level weather information is what farmers prefer at a time of erratic rain and drought conditions,” says Suwanasart Konbua, head of the Climate Change Knowledge Management Centre, an affiliate of the CWFC. “Many of the farmers are still struggling to cope with the way the weather keeps changing, destroying crops and harvests.”

The nod towards technology also stems from the fact that unpredictable weather patterns have rendered traditional forecasts unreliable.

One such example is the annual fireworks festival, ‘Bang Fai’, where rockets are fired into the sky at rural fairs throughout the month May, signaling the end of the dry season. According to custom, the rockets are meant to appease the local gods, whose blessings will precipitate heavy monsoon showers.

But farmers can no longer depend on the magic of deities. Severe droughts and unusual storms have come to characterise this region known locally as the ‘Crying Plain’, where unique soil conditions in eight provinces are responsible for producing 80 percent of Thailand’s world famous staple, demand for which is matched only by India’s basmati.

The first hints of the fluctuations that would come to plague jasmine rice farmers in Yasothorn emerged eight years ago, according to Oxfam’s Kasina.

“It became a serious issue five years ago, when they (farmers) perceived a rice yield reduction of 30 to 50 percent.”

According to the Earth Net Foundation, a local grassroots campaigner, some years have seen prolonged dry spells during the early months of the growing season – usually beginning in June – and then heavy rainfall at harvest time, resulting in broken grains.

The loss from climate extremes is made worse by the fact that 6.7 million hectares of Thailand’s estimated 11.2 million hectares of paddy fields are rain-fed.

Thus farmers like Eiem, who earn about 300 dollars a month at the best of times, are entirely dependent on the monsoon rains in order to plough their fields and earn money from a crop that has made Thailand one of the world’s leading rice exporters.

Last year saw Thailand ship 6.9 million tonnes of rice to the world market – of which nearly two million tonnes were jasmine rice – down from the previous year’s exports of 10.7 million tonnes.

Experts attribute the drop to a rice-pledging scheme introduced by the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, which made a promise during the 2011 general elections to buy the grain from farmers at 665 dollars per tonne, roughly 40 percent above the market rate.

But the unprecedented windfall for the rural economy will not go far if the government fails to heed warnings by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO): according to a 2012 report by the United Nation’s food agency, rice farmers in Thailand’s northeast should brace for more weather extremes, given that they fall within the Southeast Asian terrain forecast to be seriously affected by the adverse impacts of climate change.

Since early November 2009, rainfall has been consistently below the long-term average in Southeast Asia, a region that accounts for 48 million hectares of the world’s 154 million hectares of rice harvested annually.

“It is estimated that 50 percent of the world’s rice production is affected to a greater or lesser extent by drought,” the report added.

Women collecting water from a deep tube well in Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh. Credit: A.S.M. Shafiqur Rahman/IPS

By Naimul Haq
CHAPAINAWABGANJ, Bangladesh, May 22 2013 (IPS)

Fahima Begum rises each morning at dawn and walks two kilometres to a small pond, the nearest source of fresh water. On her way she passes the rusty old hand-pumped tube well that used to supply water to her village in Bangladesh’s arid Barind region until the water table here dropped out of reach.

Using a ragtag array of pots, she carries back as much as her frail body will allow, knowing that it will have to last her family all day.

“When I came here 27 years ago there were plenty of freshwater ponds that served as our main source of drinking and cooking water - as time passed, they all disappeared.” - Laila Banu
Susma Sen, also a resident of the Hamidpur village, located in the Chapainawabganj district, about 330 kilometres from the capital, Dhaka, echoed her neighbour’s lamentation, adding that she rations out her family’s water use for a few days to avoid making the grueling trek again the next morning.

“Finding fresh water here is like finding gold,” chimed in 52-year-old Johra Khatun, who lives in the nearby village of Gopalpur. These villagers say every drop of water they collect is precious, and used sparingly.

They are wise to be so cautious, given that this northwestern region is the most water scarce part of Bangladesh, a country of 160 million people that is bracing for severe water shortages.

Already, global warming has dealt a harsh blow to farming communities. Extremely hot temperatures, inadequate rainfall and prolonged drought have become a matter of routine in the 7,500-square-kilometre Barind region.

Average rainfall has dropped to less than 1,200 millimetres, against the national average annual rainfall of 2,300 mm, putting undue stress on a groundwater table that is accustomed to being replenished by heavy monsoon rains.

According to unpublished data disclosed exclusively to IPS, excessive extraction of groundwater by 8,000 electric irrigation water pumps in the last three decades has also contributed to alarming levels of water scarcity in Barind, which produces 60 percent of the country’s most important crop: rice.

The two rivers that once supported life and livelihoods here – the Jamuna and the Mahananda – have slowed almost to a trickle. Massive dams in India that siphon off huge amounts of water during the dry season have led to heavy siltation of these cross-border rivers. In Bangladesh, extreme silt deposits have resulted in island-like formations across rivers that locals call “chars”.

Sardar Mohammad Shah-Newaz, director of the Institute of Water Modeling, a leading research body operating under the aegis of the ministry of water resources, told IPS, “Our latest studies indicate that… if the water levels of the two rivers drop any lower, the groundwater level will further decline, thus forcing the region into an acute water crisis.”

Rural women walk up to two kilometres to find fresh water in some parts of Bangladesh. Credit: G.M.B. Akash/IPS

Nachole, a sub-district of Chapainawabganj, is one of the worst affected parts of the region, experiencing average annual rainfall of less than 1,000 millimetres in 2011 and 2012.

With a population of roughly 120,000 people, many of whom earn between 38 and 50 dollars a month, Nachole is teetering on the brink of disaster: about one-third of the 17,500 families who live here have no access to safe, clean drinking water.

Walking through the villages of Nachole, one is confronted with the dismal sight of dried out ponds, barren farmland, and withering crops. Though such scenes have become almost mundane, some residents still recall a time when these lands were lush and yielded plenty of food for the region’s 50,000 farmers.

Fifty-five-year-old Laila Banu tells IPS, “When I came here 27 years ago there were plenty of freshwater ponds that served as our main source of drinking and cooking water… as time passed, they all disappeared.”

The government responded by constructing some 5,000 tube wells here, drilling 200 or 230 feet into the earth to reach fresh water, compared to the average 30 to 50-foot-deep wells in the rest of the country.

“About 35 percent of those wells are now out of order,” Sakhawat Hossain, superintendent engineer of the department of public health and engineering (DPHE), told IPS.

“This significantly reduces access to safe drinking water in the area, particularly in the summer months.”

Now, organisations like the Barind Multipurpose Development Authority (BMDA), responsible for installing hundreds of tube wells in the region, are realising that long-term agricultural productivity cannot be achieved by pumping more water out of the earth but by restoring the delicate ecosystems that act as natural conservation and security systems.

“Our aim is to increase agriculture productivity by promoting biodiversity or encouraging farmers to use alternative crops,” BMDA Project Director Dr. Abul Kasem told IPS.

BMDA Chairman Mohammad Nurul Islam told IPS that in order to “overcome the challenges of…climate change, we strongly encourage farmers to grow crops that require less water, like wheat, maize, pulses, tomatoes, potatoes and other cereals.”

He is optimistic about initiatives like the government’s policy on biodiversity that promotes “crop diversification, which maximises use of farmland and increases farmers’ profit margins.”

Instead of relying on income from a single yield every season, as is the case with crops like rice, farmers with an array of crops can secure an income up to three times a year, he added. This amounts to roughly 300 dollars more every year for smallholders.

Farmers like Rafiq Hasan, who owns just two hectares of land in the Naogaon district, are starting to reap the benefits of this method, though he admits there are “more risks involved,” particularly with crops like potatoes that require cold storage facilities to preserve the surplus.

Ranjan Kumar Das, a small farmer in Chapainawabganj who now plants chickpeas and maize alongside his rice, says he has noticed enhanced soil fertility as a result of crop rotation.

The national biodiversity policy also called for the construction of canals that crisscross this vast landscape, alongside of which trees have been planted in the hopes that their complex root systems will improve the soil’s water retention capacity and ward off desertification.

Farmers in Indonesia’s West Java province follow instructions on the government’s “integrated planting calendar”. Credit: Kanis Dursin/IPS

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Mar 29 2013 (IPS)

Last October, at the beginning of Indonesia’s rainy season, a 37-year-old farmer named Herinurdin took a leap of faith. Instead of planting corn in his entire 1.3-hectare rainfed farm in the Sukabumi town of West Java, as his family had done for generations, he sowed 1,600 square metres worth of rice instead.

In November he ploughed another 700 square metres and by December he had seeded the remainder of his land in this densely populated province, some 120 kilometres south of the capital Jakarta.

“The rice (planted in December) is now flowering,” Herinurdin told IPS. “I harvested 750 kilogrammes of unhusked rice from that 1,600 square metres.”

Until last year, he had always used the farm for corn or peanut “because I did not know that rice could grow in the rainfed field”.

With rice selling for 0.36 dollars per kilogramme, against the going rate for corn of 0.8 dollars per kilogramme, Herinurdin took in more money this year than he can ever remember.

Herinurdin is one of the earliest beneficiaries of a government programme launched last year aimed at easing the impacts of climate change on the roughly 41.2 million farmers spread across this archipelago.

Indonesia has been scrambling to find solutions to irregular rain patterns that have made farmers’ lives a living hell. Excessive rain, floods, and prolonged drought ferquently hit the world’s largest archipelago, home to 242 million people, undermining national food security programmes.

Agriculture plays an important role in Indonesia’s economy, with around 18 million farmer households and five million peasants dependent on the sector for livelihood, according to the state Central Statistics Agency (BPS).

“The planting calendar is designed to deal with adverse impacts of climate change, particularly changes in rain patterns that directly affect the planting season,” Eleonora Runtunuwu, a researcher with IAARD, told IPS.

It also contains information about suitable planting weeks for each of Indonesia’s 6,501 districts in 33 provinces; crops and seed varieties appropriate for certain planting seasons; fertilisers required for recommended crops; and potential scourges such as pest attacks.

In drawing up the calendar, the IAARD, which falls under the Ministry of Agriculture, takes into account weather forecasts issued by Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BKMG), the agriculture ministry’s Automatic Weather Station, and the Predictive Ocean Atmosphere Model of Australia.

The agency divides the year into three planting periods: the rainy season that runs from October to February; the first dry season from March to May; and finally, the second dry season from June to September. The calendars are issued in August, February, and May respectively.

Besides publishing the calendar online, the ministry has dispatched tens of thousands of field experts to advise farmers on what crops to plant, how to take care of them and when to fertilise.

But results have so far been patchy, and the iniative has illicted harsh reviews across the country.

Flaws abound

Nandang Sunandar, head of the West Java Agricultural Research and Development Agency (BPTP), praised the planting calendar but lamented the fact that the government cannot force farmers to follow the guidelines.

“The calendar only gives recommendations to farmers on crops, seeds, and fertiliser. Farmers have the final say; they may or may not follow (our) advice,” Nandang told IPS from Bandung, the provincial capital of West Java.

Others, like Tejo Wahyu Jatmiko, coordinator of the Alliance for Prosperous Villages, charge that the calendar has not been communicated adequately to farmers.

“The more detailed the weather information is, the better for farmers and the calendar is doing just that – however, farmers have little knowledge about the calendar, forcing them to stick to traditional schedules that result in crop failures due to prolonged drought or excessive rains,” he said.

“Most farmers here are following our traditional planting calendar, which we believe to be more reliable for our area,” said Astono. Known locally as ‘pranta mangsa’ this calendar takes its cues from animal behaviours, plants, the sun’s position, and ancient wisdom on astronomy.

“Our calendar takes into account not only the beginning or end of the rainy season and rain intensity, but also cycles of pest and rat attacks based on our experiences,” he told IPS, adding that some farmers who follow the government’s calendar have often experienced crop failures due to unanticipated pest attacks.

Experts who believe farmers themselves should have been consulted in the development of the calendar say that traditional wisdom is being lost.

“Farmers should be involved in designing food-related programmes because they have knowledge of the local environment,” Said Abdullah, manager of the People’s Coalition Network for Food Security, told IPS.

Another hurdle to full implementation of the planting calendar is a shortage of seed.

“Often farmers simply cannot find seeds recommended by the calendar, prompting them to use any seed available in the market and completely ignoring our advice,” Nandang said.

According to Abdullah, few farmers can afford to buy the subsidised fertiliser and seeds recommended by the calendar. “In the end, they borrow money from loan sharks,” he said, which pushes prices even higher.

Though the government has assigned state-owned enterprises to distribute seeds and fertiliser throughout the country, the combination of poor coordination and extreme weather results in late deliveries, causing farmers to miss crucial planting dates.

“All seeds and fertilisers are imported from Java. When the sea is too rough for cargo ships to sail, we have no access to recommended seeds, (leaving) us with no choice but to use any low-quality seeds available,” said Adrianus Asia Sidot, a farmer from the Landak regency, a major rice-producing area in West Kalimantan.

Nandang also said that a dearth of field officials to explain the planting calendar and assist farmers in the lead-up to the harvesting period also slows down effective implentation.

“West Java province has only 6,000 field officials, far below its real need of at least 10,000,” he said.

Senior field official Titiek Maryati of Majalengka, West Java, added that his regency relied on just 395 field officials overseeing 2,336 farmers’ groups spread across over 100,000 hectares of rice fields in 2012.

(END)