"I thought of an idea to document women's experiences and interface with IVF technology and doctors' views on IVF expansion in the North East of India. FST held full trust and faith in my idea and provided the platform to express my views based on the study findings to a larger audience in the North East".
Leena Uppal
FST Individual Fellow
Assam
In the current background of an unprecedented drought and looming climate change crisis, there is an urgent need for a paradigm shift to shape the food and farming futures of our country. If we fail now, the coming decades will find us desolate for food and enervated in farming. It is in this context that the Millet Network of India [MINI] has been working towards developing and discussing the possibilities of a visionary position, one that will allow us to go beyond temporary and knee jerk reactions to address the food and farming crisis and address the root causes that has today brought us to this decisive edge.
Therefore any exercise to explore the solutions outside the box of high resource input and irrigated farming systems would need critical participation. This task might require us to challenge a three decade agricultural mindset and at the same time rekindle our conviction in the ecological agriculture that has been a heritage of Asian farming systems. It is only perhaps that we can work towards a definite policy shift from a total dependence on irrigation based farming systems to a renewal of the non irrigated rainfed indigenous farming systems which, wherever they continue to be practiced, have held the farming communities in good stead, rescuing them from hunger and suicides.
Rainfed farming systems are home to millet based bio-diverse farming and have multiple advantages in relation to climate change crisis:
Millets can rescue agriculture from being water dependent. As water grows scarcer and scarcer in the years of climate change, these farming systems put us on an excellent state of readiness.
Millet based agro biodiversity can contribute to the carbon capture and such other carbon sequestration processes, which allows it to become the first defence against climate change.
Millet based biodiverse cropping systems liberates farming from water hungry crops such as rice and wheat that need nearly six million litres of water for one acre of cultivation and makes farming less dependent on an extremely valuable and finite resource such as water. .
Millet based farming systems have the potential to make agriculture non chemical based, resulting in climate change compliant systems, even while offering healthier, more nutritious food and fodder, livelihood and ecological security.
A one acre millet farm supports 52 human working days in one farming season. Therefore if millet cultivation is linked to ongoing GoI programmes such NREGS, and create agrobiodiversity based employment in India.
Despite these critical advantages, India lost 44% of millet cultivation areas to other crops between 1966-2006, and we need to understand the core factors that are responsible for it.
Millets have traditionally been cultivated by many communities in northeast India. Millets mature very soon and can be harvested in a shorter period of time. In states like Nagaland, people who have less land and hence less paddy, grow millets to support their food stock. Millets are also grown in Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, on jhum lands and flood plains in the north east ( in Majuli by the Mising community) which increases its significance in the region. The versatility of millets makes it an answer to the growing problems of food security that are faced by many poor and marginalized communities in the region and country. Hence there is a case for a discussion and 'consultation' on the potential of millets in the context of the North east and the multiple implications from the food security, climate change, natural resource management, gender and human rights perspectives.
The Foundation for Social Transformation: enabling north east India has decided to commit support to the NE MINI Consultation because of the relevance of the issue in the context of promoting food security and climate change adaptability of this crop that has been cultivated traditionally in the NE region. The North East Network has agreed to be a partner in the Consultation, as the importance of the gender issue in the consultation needs to be flagged. Deccan Development Society (DDS) & MINI network, which has been spearheading the Millets campaign at the national level has the experience and expertise on this issue, will provide the technical support.