The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) Rio+20 takes place in less than two months, the 20-22 of June, in order to forge a future with reduced poverty, improved social equity, and enhanced environmental protection. With agriculture forming the basis of many developing countries, it will likely play an important role in the upcoming conference. Many organizations are making preparations, crafting messages, and developing recommendations. The following is adapted from Bioversity International’s newly launched campaign “On the Road to Rio+20,” which postures the “use and conservation of agricultural biodiversity – including crops, forestry and other components of agricultural landscapes” as a means of improving rural livelihoods.
Set against an imposing Himalayan backdrop, in the Kaski district of Nepal, Surya Adhikari and his wife, Saraswati Adhikari, manage their farm. They grow 152 varieties of plant species including medicinal herbs, fuelwood, grass, orange, coffee, and lemons. Surya’s farm has become a model for visitors from all over the world who come to find out how mixing agricultural biodiversity, the laws of nature and scientific knowledge together can benefit their own farming practices. Future plans include an agricultural college in the local area to encourage young people to follow in Surya’s footsteps.
But Surya’s story does not start here. Like many smallholder farmers in Nepal, Surya’s family has been engaged in farming from the time of his forefathers. Facing financial difficulties, exacerbated by steep medical bills after his wife was bitten by a snake, Surya had to sell precious farming land, leaving him and his wife with just 3 ropani (1 ropani = 500 square meters) of difficult wet terrain to cultivate. A mixture of hard work and applying knowledge about how to use agricultural biodiversity and plant breeding methods more effectively, has slowly turned the land into a profitable and productive enterprise.
An eagerness to better understand how science and nature can work together led Surya to take part in a participatory plant breeding and diversity management programme, run by Bioversity International with partners. This programme helped enhance his already extensive knowledge of local crops, and enabled him to use local diversity to breed new crop varieties, and pass this knowledge on to others. A recent trip saw him travelling as far afield as Skrang in Sarawak, Malaysia, to speak to local farmers about the importance of participatory plant breeding for improving rice varieties.
Read the complete blog entry from Bioversity here.
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