Green “Evolution : Revolution : In-Between” – Notions of authenticity in human-nature relationships through seed culture of wheat in an Indian context
Kitchen is a site of meanings, a site that links us back to the environment. Food that we eat everyday lies at the core of the human-nature relationship. We have transformed the world & environment around to provide us with our three meals and more. This raises the question that: How authentic is our relationship to nature when we connect the dots between us, our food preferences, and our ways of acquiring/producing food? This research started with this larger question, by looking at “Roti” that is produced in my Kitchen. It can be said that I or per se even my family has a very intimate relationship with “Roti”. Our regular diet is not complete without it and there is a sense of satisfaction that lie within this food habit. This can be the result of geographical as well as occupational influence as we belong to a farming community and an area known for wheat production. Thus, not only roti but products made from wheat influences our food habits. Wheat if looked at in an Indian context is a second most important crop and forms a staple of individual’s diet after rice. It in fact has a place in worlds most important crops, being used for making different kinds of daily consumed breads as well as an unseen ingredient in many other food and industrial products. Due to increasing population and food demands, the global wheat consumption is increasing, this has led to changes in agriculture paradigms and seed cultures of wheat. But the questions remain of “How ethical are these changes and innovations?”, “How authentic is the wheat that comes to my kitchen?”, “What are the various relationships that exists
between human and wheat?” & “How authentic is this human-wheat relationship?”.
This research will dwell upon these questions by studying two distinct agricultural paradigms that exists today. The first is industrial agriculture, which has been designed and developed by the “poison cartel” of chemical companies and factories that emerged during World War II and that was in control of the production of chemicals used in explosives, as well as the mass extermination of human beings. After the war, they repurposed these very same chemicals as agrochemicals — pesticides and fertilizers — and they convinced us that we can’t have food without these poisons. The second paradigm is the agro-ecological system that evolved over 10,000 years and works together with nature according to ecological principles. There are two alternative futures of food and farming after each paradigm. The first leads to a dead end: a lifeless, poisoned planet as a result of chemical monocultures while the second paradigm leads to the rejuvenation of the planet through the restoration of biodiversity, soil, water and small farms that produce diverse, healthy, fresh, ecological food for all (Vandana Shiva 2018, 60). These paradigms, the first started as “Green Revolution” and the second which I term here as a “Green Evolution”, the former foster radical, the latter incremental change. As per the experts, the world is going to need “Second Green Revolution” soon, to feed the increasing population. This research is relevant at this point as it will discuss the situation that is today in agriculture through
seed cultures of wheat in an Indian context. The challenges as well as the repercussions of the changes in the seed cultures will be discussed to place this research in the current phase of transition. It will try to bring various voices together proving the need for rethinking the ethical food production and will contribute at a micro level for the upcoming future.
The paper will trace the journey of wheat through various points in history of food production. I will be supporting the text with various illustrations as well as snippets of newspaper articles for better understanding and to paint a vivid scenario of present seed culture of wheat. In reviewing this literature, I seek to draw out the multifarious relationships and notions of authenticity that emerges between multiple stakeholders and wheat in each of the topic. This will be discussed through various human-wheat interactions: I-wheat, farmer-wheat, scientist-wheat, policymakers-wheat, and conservationistwheat. Through these interactions, the research will culminate the seed culture issues as too complex and involving too many stakeholders for government or any single entity to address by themselves. The need for virtual seed exchange lab will be discussed as a platform with a multi stakeholder approach. The primary moto of this platform will be to ensure that the voices of all relevant groups are heard — particularly marginalized groups such as small farm holders and people who play a critical role in safeguarding agrobiodiversity.
Origin, domestication & journey of wheat to India
“Neolithic Revolution” that happened about 12,000 years ago is a major turning point in food history of humans, this is the point when humans invented “Agriculture”. Domestication and cultivation of plants started with it. But who first replanted the seeds and why? Was it a conscious approach or an accident? When was wheat domesticated? If we look at the historical evidence, in hunter and gatherer societies, man was the one going for hunting in herds and the woman use to go for gathering the plants. This means the first farmer must have been a woman but there is no evidence of replanting of seeds being a conscious approach. Wheat once was basically a wild grass but acquires a place among the “big three” cereal crops today. Domestication of cereals took over a millennium, the earliest cultivated forms of wheat are known as “landraces”. These varieties of wheat were selected from wild population probably for their superior yield and other characteristics by farmers, an early and clearly non-scientific form of plant breeding. The first cultivation of wheat occurred about 10,000 years ago with diploid (einkorn) and tetraploid (emmer) variety; their genetic relationships indicate that they originated from the south-eastern part of Turkey. Whereas einkorn and emmer clearly developed from the domestication of natural populations, bread wheat has only existed in cultivation, having arisen by hybridization of cultivated emmer with the unrelated wild grass Triticum tauschii (also called Aegilops tauschii and Ae. squarosa) (P. R. Shewry 2009, 15371538). These domesticated varieties of wheat unlike their wild relatives, have non brittle
ears that stay intact after maturation and are dependent on farmers for reaping, threshing, and sowing.
Thus, the ecological long-term process of breeding, improving, and cultivating of landrace variety is what I term here as “Green Evolution”. The improvements have taken place through a long-conducted process, here farmers have selected from year to year on which seeds to plant. This selection occurs at both individual as well as at an environmental level, the evolved varieties thus are adapted to agroclimatic conditions of an area of cultivation. Farmer selection typically takes place at the population rather than the varietal level, as farmers choose the best grain from a harvest to use as seed, resulting in land-races that have considerable genetic and phenotypic variation (Jessica Barnes 2016, 92). The new adaptive traits of wheat suitable for new environments were selected during the process and spread of domesticated varieties. In addition to carefully selecting seed from their own crops, farmers have also long sourced seeds from other farmers, forming networks of seed exchange that have been central to the development and maintenance of varietal diversity (Pautasso et al. 2013). All these efforts clearly state a very intimate relationship between the farmers and wheat. Authentic as per dictionary means “known to be real or genuine”, here the notions of authenticity are seen in the creative ideas and processes of farmers. Farmers have treated the wheat seeds as their child and at the same time have looked at the nature as their mother. The
processes followed by them where extremely sensitive, patienceful, ecological and emotional. These processes are original and have become a part of knowledge system of the community with time. The result is development of farming practices that does not exploits but expresses the nature. Thus, the relationship that exists here between the human-nature as farmerwheat can be considered as ethical. Here the authentic is evidently equivalent to creatively ecological forms of food production.
Wheat in India in terms of production and area occupies a fourth position in world and second among food crops in the country. The vast IndoGangatic plain provides a most suitable climate for wheat production. But how did wheat reach India? What is the story of its migration? What was its route of spread across the country? Which variety of wheat was grown in ancient India? According to Hosono (1954) there are three possible routes of migration of wheat (Fig, 1.1, 1.2). The first one is called the Silk Road, running from Turkestan through Sinkiang, skirting Mongolia to reach north China. Along this route, wheat reached China in 2400 B.C. (Liu, 1927) and from there it spread across the ocean to Japan in 300 B.C. (Kihara, 1969). The second route started from Afghanistan, through the Khyber pass to cross the plains of Punjab and the basin of Ganga and Yamuna, skirting the Himalayas to enter upper Burma, crossing the Yunnan and the Szechhan to reach the Yangtse valley. Over a large part of this route, wheat became a staple food of the human race. The third route started possibly
from western India, crossing Pamir or Nepal to reach Shensi or Szechhan. This route could not be sufficiently recognized due to lack of data. If we reconstruct the path of spread of wheat in ancient India, as per the available evidence. From Mehrgarh, wheat moved east, reaching Chirand 3500 B.C. through the vast plains of Ganga and Yamuna. The movement of wheat to central and south India seems to have been mainly restricted by forests and the ranges of Vindhya and Satpura hills until one or two centuries before the beginning of the Christian era when it crossed over these barriers along with the moving caravans from east to south. Its diffusion into central India and Maharashtra did not take place through Rajasthan (VishnuMittre, 1974). In the centuries that followed, wheat moved farther south (V. P. Kulshrestha 1985, 65-66) (Fig. 1.3).
The north western end of Indian subcontinent, the fold between Hindukush and Himalaya, is regarded as the secondary centre of origin of hexaploid wheat (Vavilov,1926). T. sphaerococcum seems to have originated as a result of spontaneous mutation, estimated to be c. 2500 B.C., in Afghanistan or north western parts of the Indian subcontinent from where it moved eastward (Zeven, 1978, 1980).
T. sphaerococcum was the wheat of ancient India as proved by Vishnu-Mittre (1974) by reexamining the charred grains discovered from various archeological sites of Mohenjodaro, Nevadatoli- Maheshwar, Ter and Chirand. According to Percival (1921), T. sphaerococcum originated as a mutant among the progeny
of an early hybrid of wild emmer with Aegilops cylindrica or A. ovata. Varieties of T. sphaerococcum were under cultivation in parts of Punjab until early forties of the present century (Ellerton, 1939; Singh, 1946, 1959), when agriculture was largely a matter of subsistance. This species is now completely wiped out of cultivation and is replaced by better yielding cultivars of T. aestivum. Before the scientific wheat improvement in India that
started in the beginning of the present century, varieties of landraces of T. aestivum (bread wheat), T. durum (macaroni wheat) and T. dicoccum (emmer wheat), which were selected by farmers through generations dominated Indian fields. The farmers mainly selected it for appearance, capacity of the plant to stand the adverse environmental conditions and of course, the yield (V. P. Kulshrestha 1985, 6364).
Green revolution & genetically improvised-modified wheat
All of us know that green revolution happened in 1960s, it was the second turning point in food history of humans. But why was is needed? What changes were brought with it? How did the human-wheat relationship change with it? 90% of Indian population living in 6,00,000 villages depended on agriculture for their livelihood, during independence in 1947. For few centuries, Indian agricultural practices remained devoid of proper technology and land reforms. This combined with frequent droughts brought India to the verge of famine in mid 1960s. As a response to this situation, Green Revolution with “high-yielding variety technology (HYVT)” was initiated to increase the food production of the country. It initiated the use of high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice and farmers adapted new agricultural practices involving the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, controlled water supply to crops and new machineries. The genetically improved varieties of wheat were developed by Norman Borlaug (father of the Green Revolution) and others at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT), Mexico (Fig. 1.4). One key feature of these high-yielding varieties was their incorporation of “dwarf” characteristics. The value of a short, stiff stem means the wheat is able to support a large head of grain without lodging, enabling farmers to apply more fertilizer to promote higher yields. The origin of this feature was in Japan (Jessica Barnes 2016, 93). The international breeding program of wheat made use of Akakomugi and Daruma varieties of Japan to produce the HYV’s. These varieties were transferred to India in 1960s
Article Source: https://thewire.in/agriculture/paul-ehrlich-norman-borlaug-green-revolution
Figure 1.5
Article Source: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/agriculture/two-gmvarieties-of-wheat-developed-by-indian-co-registered/printarticle/5380094.cms
for cultivation and by 1974 India’s wheat production tripled making the country selfsufficient in food.
Norman Borlaug made use of natural mutation process for developing the HYV. But soon his successors with advances in science brought a very artificial ways of mutations through scientific breeding. These HYV’s were developed in laboratories by scientists trained in plant breeding and were cultivated on experimental plots. These varieties were then patented and sold by the agro-industries like Monsanto. This quest did not end at development of genetically improved wheat. With the development in scientist’s ability to look at the genetic level of seeds gave rise to genetically modified form of seed development. While all forms of breeding change the genetic makeup of a seed, the difference with genetic modification is the level of specificity at which the selection can take place. Rather than transferring a whole set of genes from a promising parent to an offspring, in genetic modification, breeders select specific genes to be implanted in the new variety (Stone 2010). Wheat, because of its unwieldy hexaploid genome, has largely missed out on the GM revolution. The first GM wheats have only recently been approved for use, their principal advantage to the farmer being socalled “no till” cultivation—the planting of seed directly into untilled soil saves fuel and topsoil (Fig. 1.5).
Thus, Green Revolution brought a very radical change in seed cultures of wheat. The
development and cultivation of genetically improvised and modified varieties of wheat displays various modes of human plant interactions involving various actors:
1. Scientists-Wheat: Scientists looked at the seeds of wheat as an object of experiments, without any emotional attachments. Their primary moto was to alleviate world hunger by developing HYV’s of cereal crops. The development of HYV of wheat brought a major change in context of food production from necessity driven to commodity driven approaches. It has given rise to chemical monocultures by affecting the genetic biodiversity of the crops and ecological practices of wheat production that existed in indigenous knowledge systems. The high use of fertilizers and chemical pesticides leads to soil degradation with time. Thus, the humannature relationship here as scientist-wheat relationship in context of ecological and sustainable food production can be considered as unethical. But in terms of human-human relationship, green revolution can be placed as the only ethical way of approaching the issue of famine.
2. Policymaker-Wheat: During Green Revolution, the policy makers also played a vital role for promoting the use of HYVT in agriculture. The primary moto here was to influence the farmers to change and replace their indigenous practices with a modern one that provided better yield. Thus, various policies were designed offering subsidies to farmers
adapting the HYV’s of wheat and new farming technologies. But these policies privileged certain forms of knowledges over others, including certain actors while marginalizing others. The design lacked in bridging the gap between the traditional agricultural practices and high yield modern practices. Due to this gap it was only the large-scale farmers who got benefited from the “Green Revolution”. Unable to withstand the increasing expenses for farming and debts small scale farmers sold their lands to large commercial farmers and left farming restoring to other occupation. Also, the policy makers did not look at the importance of fostering biodiversity on field and ecological ways of food production. Thus, here also the human-nature relationship as policymakerswheat interaction in context of ecological and sustainable food production can be considered as unethical.
3. Farmer-Wheat: The intimate relationship between farmer and wheat changed during this period. Originally, the farmers where the ones who were the decision makers for breeding and improvement of seeds on field. They followed a highly ecological approach. But with the industrial and scientific breeding of seeds, they must now be dependent upon the agro-industries for their seed production. The sense of ownership towards the plant they grow seemed to have faded with the rise of this donor-driven context. This might be the reason for them to shift towards unsustainable farming practices to obtain higher yield. The sympathetic relationship that existed between
farmer, wheat and nature has degraded with the rise of profit-based relationship. Thus, here also the human-nature relationship as farmerwheat interaction which was once ethical has been shifted to an unethical one due to the influences of various external factors, changes in farming practices and development of new knowledge systems.
Though the human-nature relationships are stated in each of these interactions as unethical, there are notions of authenticity that exists here also. The green revolution is the only reason that today India is not only selfsufficient in its food production but is also an exporter of wheat. The ideas and efforts that are placed by all three actors are original. The scientific breeding is original, the policy designs for adaptation of modern farming practices are original, the efforts of farmers on fields with the new technologies is original. All of them are creative at their individual level and it is because of these creative approaches, the country and people living in it were able to survive the famine. Thus, here authentic is evidently equivalent to creative efforts for sufficient food production.
Agro-biodiversity & sustainable wheat future
The green revolution brought standardization in agricultural production systems of the world; this has led to emphasis on mono-cropping practices. The tradition farming systems that existed before this period made use of traditional crop varieties. These crop varieties were more genetically diverse at the population level than the modern crop varieties known for their high yielding capacities. They are better resilient and adaptive to local conditions (especially marginal farming environments) than the modern varieties. There is a clear decline of biodiverse traditional farming systems in favor of monocultures which leads to loss of crop diversity. Agro-biodiversity is considered as repository of genetic resources, loss in this is a clear loss of genetic diversity. This means that this genetic data will no longer be available to farmers and plant breeders in the future. Genetic material from traditional crop varieties and their wild relatives has contributed many key traits to breeding programs for modern crops, including higher yields, pest resistance, drought tolerance, as well as adaptation to low temperatures and poor soils (Seth Cook 2018, 11). Thus, it is necessary to conserve these genetic resources for improving modern crop varieties to respond to the upcoming environmental changes. Agro-biodiversity thus is an integral component of sustainable agriculture and is vital for the functioning of agroecosystems.
Wheat landraces developed by the ecological practices of farming contains wider genetic
diversity than the varieties developed through most of the breeding programs. This diversity includes adaptation to different environmental conditions as per the place of its origin. Landraces are the sources of once existed lost variability and provides new genes or alleles, which could be introgressed into modern varieties by hybridization. The challenge for wheat breeders is to increase genetic gains in productivity at a rate not lower than growing demand, in combination with appropriate agronomy to minimize yield gaps and guarantee environmental sustainability (Marta S. Lopes, Ibrahim El-Basyoni, Peter S. Baenziger et al. 2015, 3478). It is fully understood that landraces provide a rich source of genes, but at the same time plant breeders, who want to create new high-yielding varieties, tend to make crosses among elite lines where they have the highest likelihood of developing new varieties (Baenziger and DePauw, 2009). Similarly, although modern durum wheat varieties are more productive with a higher harvest index (Royo et al., 2008; Fayaz et al., 2013), less photoperiod sensitivity and fewer vernalization. requirements (Motzo and Giunta 2007), and with better overall end-use quality than landraces (Nazco et al., 2012), the nature of landraces, evolved and mixed through natural and artificial selection processes (Zeven, 1998), makes them the most genetically diverse of the cultivated lines. Thus, the conservation of landraces and wheat varieties that are being replaced by modern ones is necessary for conserving the gene pools. Conservations of sources of genetic
diversity, should be considered as priority for sustaining food security and coping with current and future climate change effects.
The philosophy and practice of industrial agriculture, which perceives seeds and soil as nothing but resources that can freely be exploited in order to maximize profits, is rapidly depleting the earth of its ability to regenerate itself. The alternative, ecoagricultural farming, which for many centuries has been feeding a majority of the global population, is based on diversity, reciprocity and a maintenance of the organic relations between humans and their natural environment (Vandana Shiva 2018, 66).
Conservationist like Vandana Shiva, Lakshman Yapa, etc. have talked very frequently about the issue of agro-biodiversity and are working towards promoting sustainable food production practices. These conservationists through movements like “Seed Satyagraha” and “Seed Freedom” is making us rethink about the food future that we want to create for ourselves (Fig. 1.6). The notions of authenticity are seen in this creative movement and approaches of these conservationists. Thus, the relationship that exists here between the human-nature as conservationist-wheat can be considered as ethical. The ideas presented by them of organic farming, conservation of agro biodiversity and relooking at seed cultures for more inclusive and sustainable future are very original. Here authentic is evidently equivalent to creative conservation of crop diversity.
Article Source: https://roarmag.org/magazine/seed-freedom-future-farming/
