Potato harvest at the Quechua village of Huito, showing local agrobiodiversity (photo Leslie Main Johnson 2008)
Two articles have caught my attention lately, telling a different story about traditional agriculture than I usually engage with as an ethnobiologist. One is an article about the potato in Smithsonian (Mann 2011), and the other is an article in the latest Scientific American about what will be needed to increase the world food supply without irrevocably destroying the environment to meet projected needs by 2050 (Foley 2011). The history of the potato and the innovative development of agroecological systems involving tubers and camelid livestock by Andean peoples goes well enough, and resonates with my own experiences visiting villages as part of the 2008 International Congress of Ethnobiology in the Cusco region of Peru. Mann's recounting of the frequency of famine due to grain crop failures in 15th through 18th century Europe was less familiar to me, and he goes on to detail how potato cultivation allowed an explosion of European population (which then gave surplus population for global imperial expansion). The story of the potato blight was familiar to me, though the fact that it came from Peru was not. I had elsewhere read of the rebuilding of potato varieties in Europe from a different subspecies of potato (Solanum tuberosum) in the southern Andes (Grun 1990). I had not realized the intimate connections of potato culture to both large scale monoculture agriculture, and to use of both fertilizers (initially guano also from Peru, later synthetic nitrogen compounds) and pesticides (the Colorado potato beetle apparently was nearly as devastating to potatoes as the blight, and farmers in desperation accidentally discovered that arsenic compounds would kill the beetles and thereby save the crop….beginning the escalating spiral of pesticide development and obsolescence that industrial agriculture is now caught in. No one mentioned whether the potatoes so produced were toxic…).
The other article dovetails, in a way, as it describes how the “green revolution”, based on intensive plant breeding, and high levels of inputs of pesticides and artificial fertilizers has allowed the global food supply to keep pace with population….but at substantial environmental cost. I recall learning that the neatly integrated system of rice paddy culture, which used blue green algae to fix nitrogen for the crops, and incidentally raised protein in the form of the carp that thrived in the flooded fields, and which controlled pests by staggering production and periods of rest, went out the window in Bali with the “green revolution”. When maximizing rice crop yield in reductionist fashion, the fields were too toxic for carp, the self fertilizing blue green algae no longer were permitted to maintain field fertility, and pest outbreaks accompanied monocultures of high yielding varieties of rice which all were planted and harvested in synchrony. Another cautionary tale from traditional agriculture detailed how traditional Zuni farming techniques could get crops with no inputs of irrigation or fertilizer (Muenchrath et al 2002). To be sure per field yields were low, but environmental costs and pollution were nil, and no irreplaceable water table draw-down occurred. Given the staggering impacts of industrial agriculture in terms of depletion of non-renewable water tables and water pollution from pesticides and fertilizers, the sensitive and nuanced Zuni example should not be ignored in the rush for "bigger and better".
So alarm bells began to ring in my mind as the Scientific American article talked of “reducing the yield gap” and inducing farmers in the poorest countries to grow higher yielding crops….which are often “genetically engineered”, patented, and costly…and usually are not locally adapted, require high levels of inputs, and may destabilize local diets and foodways. If for example, you clean weed fields, or worse use herbicides to accomplish this, you loose your nutritious spontaneous vegetation. These greens, such as amaranth, purslane and other plants, are highly nutritious, and can help balance local diet, and also can provide food sources while waiting for the maize or main crops to mature (Bye 1981; Baker 2006). In addition to their nutritional properties spontaneous vegetation and traditional crops can provide important medicines (Etkin 1986, 1994, 2006). In India and Nepal high use of spontaneous vegetation for food and to ensure nutritional adequacy has also been documented (Harisha R.P 2011, Daniggelis 2003) especially for the poor and for women and children. I am nervous always of top down expert solutions which do not take into account local needs, conditions and values. Too often the experts have destabilized systems that were fundamentally sound. In the industrial world we can learn from these systems, even if we can’t emulate them in total. I buy much of my food at the Strathcona Farmer’s Market in Edmonton, where the food is often organically produced and is largely grown by small holders.
We can do better than we have, and I believe that we should move cautiously and begin at home with sustainable options like organic farming, poly culture, reduced meat consumption, and an end to grain feeding of grazing animals. Multinational agricultural interests are not the place to begin. Potential human foods should NOT be grown for biofuels as Foley comments; more smart-cars and electric options would help here, as well as more bicycles. Much of the change needs to occur here in the rich populous “First World” where, shamefully, obesity is an expanding epidemic. We need to support more local food. We need to waste less. We also need the World Bank and other organizations to stop undermining local farming and traditional agriculture in other countries in the name of market rationality and debt reductions. I saw a documentary when I was visiting in Scotland 7 years ago detailing how African local poultry farmers were going under because structural readjustments were forcing Ghanians to buy Canadian factory chickens. Canadians shouldn’t even buy factory chickens, which are unhealthy and hard on the environment, and undermining local food self sufficiency by “structural adjustment” is immoral. I can’t remember the particulars, but viewing the show I was momentarily ashamed to be Canadian.
On the face of it REDD, championed by Foley, seems like a good idea. Who could oppose preserving the rainforest? However, the devil appears to be in the details. It designed to conserve tropical rainforest, but in South America is seen as yet another imperialist imposition from the rich First World impacting the already tenuous subsistence and autonomy of Amazonian indigenous peoples; quite a few anti-REDD posts have graced the International Society of Ethnobiology listserv. The gist of these critiques is that they are imposed as a globalized top-down solution with no regard for the realities or nuances of human co-existance with the rainforest, and threaten tenure, culture and livelihood of local peoples. Governments have used REDD as an excuse to attack and dispossess local people. While stopping Brazilian clearing of rainforest for industrial production of soyabeans for biofuels is a good idea, I would argue that prohibiting Indigenous people from a sensitive and sustainable swidden system supporting high crop diversity and enhancing regional landscape diversity is a bad idea, and also a violation of human rights.
Moving toward solutions: Foley critiques eating meat, and indeed meat production can be wasteful and environmentally damaging. In the North and in arid lands, however, eating meat makes sense despite the reduction of caloric yield as you go up trophic levels, because animals can turn inedible species into human food in regions which may have limited potential for intensive agriculture. I cannot eat red willow or grass, but moose and cows can. That sense goes out the window as soon as you jam the cows together in a feedlot and fatten them on grain. Cows are not made to eat grain, so become less healthy. Animal wastes become a significant pollution problem when they are concentrated in small areas. Small is beautiful; a few animals fertilize the pastures. Grass fed beef is healthier. We don’t need the fat in marbled meat unless we are working very hard… Moose, deer, elk and caribou are healthy, and require no cropland to support. Pasture raised cows, sheep and goats are also relatively low impact. In the cities, we could garden more as well, and adopt values of wasting less. There are no simple answers, but if those of us who are in danger of overeating and over-consuming were more moderate that would go a long way toward making more for all. If those of us who can afford it buy organic or sustainably produced food that would help as well.
Baker, Janelle Marie. 2006. “It’s Good for Many Things”: Wixárika (Huichol) Ethnoecology of Amaranth MA thesis, University of Alberta.
Bye, Robert A. Jr. 1981. Quelites- ethnoecology of edible greens- past, present and future. Journal of Ethnobiology 1(1):109-123.
Etkin, Nina (Ed.) 1986. Plants, Indigenous Medicine and Diet, Biobehavioural Approaches. Bedford Hills, NJ: Redgrave Publishing Company.
Etkin, Nina (Ed.) 1994. Eating on the Wild Side, the Pharmacologic, ecologic and social implications of using noncultigens. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Etkin, Nina. 2006. Edible medicines, an ethnopharmacology of food. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Daniggelis, Ephrosine. 2003. Women and “Wild” Foods: Nutrition and Household Security among Rai and Sherpa Forager-Farmers in Eastern Nepal. in Howard, Patricia, Ed. Women and Plants, Gender Relations in Biodiversity Management and Conservation. pp 83-97 London and New York: Zed Books.
Foley, Jonathan C. 2011. Sustainability- Can we Feed the World and Sustain the Planet?- A 5 step program could double food production by 2050 while greatly reducing environmental damage. Scientific American 305(5): 60-65.
Grun, P. 1990. The Evolution of Cultivated Potatoes. Economic Botany 44(3) suppl: pp 39-55.
Harisha, R.P. 2011. Livelihood and potential conservation roles of wild edible herbs. International Society of Ethnobiology Newsletter 2011 Number 2 www.ethnobiology.net
Mann, Charles C. 2011. The Eyes have it. Smithsonian 42(7):86.
Muenchrath, Deborah A., Maya Kuratomi, Jonathan A. Sandor, and Jeffry A. Homburg. Observational study of maize productions of Zuni farmers in semiarid New Mexico. Journal of Ethnobiology 22(1): 1-33.
Other resource: http://ipcca.info/parque-de-la-papa/about/ website of the Parque de la papa, Pisaq, Peru (the potato park)
