‘Climate mitigation needs India’s ancient food and farming wisdoms’

Vandana Shiva

is an environmental scholar and activist. She tells

Times Evoke

about the vulnerabilities industrial farming cause — and the Indian wisdoms which can heal these:
The ‘Indian food system’ means about twenty diverse ways of farming and many ages coexisting. India has genetically modified agriculture and Green Revolution crops alongside indigenous systems which value agroforestry and biodiversity. There are huge differences therein.



The farming of genetically modified varieties relies on fossil fuel products like

chemical

fertilisers — these are made by burning fossil fuels at very high temperatures. This gives ammonium nitrate used for explosives and urea. One kilogram of such urea thus requires two litres of diesel.

In contrast, Indian farmers knew how to fix nitrogen in the soil through pulses that nurture soil rhizobium through plant roots. This sustained the environment for centuries. Chemical fertilisers were an abrupt break — these also emit carbon dioxide and the even more damaging nitrous oxide. They also demand more water while damaging soil organisms that hold water, causing a deeper crisis.



To weather climate impacts now, we need to grow water-holding capacity in the soil — around 0.5% organic matter increases the soil’s water-holding capacity by about 80,000 litres per hectare. This explains how in India, organic farming could once be done even in non-irrigated areas and in the rabi season. Chemical agriculture reduced this to irrigated areas and the monsoon season. We forgot our water and soil — but these are the elements which give us resilience.

An important mitigation is to encourage the consumption of millets, about which my organisation Navdanya has been spreading knowledge for years — millets are both drought-resistant and build the soil’s water-holding capacity.



We also need a commons for indigenous seeds. When I began Navdanya in 1987, I understood our ancestors’ foresight in evolving certain seed varieties — we developed seed banks with these salt and floodtolerant varieties. We’ve distributed these when cyclones impacted the Bay of Bengal and these indigenous innovations have saved thousands from what

Naomi Klein

terms ‘disaster capitalism’ or the exploitative conditions that befall farmers upon an earthquake or flood.

India’s forgotten indigenous systems are vital in the era of climate disasters. We should revive our organic farming methods, privilege biodiversity over monocultures and use climate-resilient and nutritionally dense seeds. Only these can feed a large population sustainably. The richer the soil’s biodiversity, the more its phytochemicals and the nutrition in food. Soil biodiversity literally feeds

Earth

— and all its life. If we adopt biodiverse and organic farming, we could feed millions of Indians with adequate nutrients and without dependence on foreign debt caused by fossil fuel supply chains for fertilisers.

Chemical farming also has very real current costs. The externality costs for environmental damage and human health consequences caused by these chemicals runs into trillions of dollars annually. While impacting our GDP thus, this also harms farmers — our research has found that on average, a farmer using indigenous seeds, working organically and selling on their own terms earns more than commodity-chasing farmers who get locked into debt for chemical fertilisers and pesticides. That farmer retains a tiny percentage of what the consumer pays but confronts a far greater debt, which explains the numbers of farmers who go hungry — and even end their lives in desperation.

Consumers can help change this situation. We need to eat wisely, so that we don’t harm the planet, cause climate change or disease for oneself since the same factors drive all of these. We should eat organic foods and link to farmers and organisations working with them to source these. Also, we should heed Indian dietary wisdom which said we need six tastes in every meal to protect our gut microbiome.

Another wisdom is to eat fresh, seasonal foods and not seek produce outside their season. Processed foods use chemicals which cause chronic diseases, so turn to artisanal foods and support rural dhanis and chakkis which provide fresh oil and healthy produce, nurtured by India’s ancient wisdoms.

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