Confronting Food Crisis and Climate Change

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Over a hundred participants from 22 countries in Asia and the Pacific (including two from Europe and one from the US) representing peasants, small farmers, agricultural workers, women, indigenous peoples, fisherfolk organizations, and health, environmental and consumers CSOs attended the three-day Conference “Confronting Food Crisis and Climate Change” organized by Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific, in Penang (Malaysia) on 27-29 September 2008. The conference culminated with a Unity Statement declaring the participants’ commitment to claim people’s right to food, to work together in regenerating nature and society, as well as, to further strengthen and consolidate the movements in advancing food sovereignty, gender justice and climate justice. Beej Bachao Andolan was represented at the Conference by Vijay Jarhdhari and Renu Thakur (ARPAN, Pithoragarh). Jarhdhari made a presentation “Food and Climate Crisis in Central Himalaya, Uttarakhand, India”. Renu presented the women’s perspectives on climate change at the various workshops held during the Conference.

Article on Barahnaja

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V.P. Sati
Mountain Forum Bulletin
July 2009

India’s Garhwal Himalaya is an agrobiodiversity hotspot. The traditional system of cultivating “Barahnaja” (literally, ’12 seeds’) together in cropped land is a centuries-old practice: a cropping pattern involving 12 or more food crops grown in “synergetic” combinations (Singh and Tulachan, 2002). This is practiced under a “Sar system” of crop rotation that characterises the cropping pattern together with a vertical distribution of crops — in valley regions, mid-altitudes and highlands — and supports the maintenance of agrobiodiversity. Three quarters of the people in the region depend on this system for their livelihoods. The traditional agricultural systems are the reservoirs of many crops and cultivars, most of which are still little known to mainstream societies and are better adapted than modern agricultural systems to environmental and social conditions (Altieri, 1995; Ramakrishnan and Saxena, 1996). Recently changes in the cropping pattern have taken place as “Barahnaja” has decreased, particularly in the mid-slopes and low-lying areas. [more]

Women and work in Garhwal

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By: Pankaj H Gupta

New production relations and out-migration are creating an unforeseen gender dynamic in Garhwal.

It is May, the wedding season in Garhwal, and the mountains reverberate with the sounds of drums and Scottish pipes. Colourful wedding parties can be seen winding their way through mule tracks. The wheat crop has just been harvested, and is now being threshed. Celebration is in the air.

Against this backdrop, 72-year-old Bachni Devi has been asked to recollect her own wedding. What was it like coming, as a young child bride, to the village of Jardhargaon? She is both surprised and amused by the question. “My wedding? Oh, it was so long ago,” she says. “I was only 13. Now I am 72.”
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Case Study: The Baranaja System

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People in Conservation
Volume 2 Issue 1, January 2009

Jardhargaon is a village at a height of 1500 metres situated in the hilly district of Tehri Garhwal in the State of Uttarakhand in North India. Jardhargaon has pine forests, village grasslands (Civil Soyam Forest) and dense Reserved Forests covering an area of 429.5 ha consisting primarily of oak and rhododendron trees. Cultivation is the main livelihood of the people of this region.

This is part of the Garhwal region where the Chipko Movement took place. The Chipko Movement started in the early 1980s as a spontaneous local protest against tree felling by contractors and it spread rapidly across the region. The Movement resulted in a 15 year moratorium on commercial felling at altitudes over 1000 metres in the Uttarakhand region. Jardhargaon, too, came under the influence of this Movement, primarily through the active involvement of one of its residents, Vijay Jardhari.

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