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Australian agricultural researchers help lift Timorese farmers out of dire poverty

Source
ABC Rural - April 29, 2016

Sarina Locke – Australia's longest-running agricultural aid project is coming to an end, having lifted East Timor's farmers from the ashes of the militia's destruction 16 years ago.

After the UN peacekeepers, Australian agricultural researchers were some of the first on site to assess the damage and see what they needed to develop. The work with Timor's farmers and agriculture researchers has reduced the so-called hungry season, almost doubled production, but still has a way to go with reducing malnutrition.

At a ceremony in Dili, the agriculture minister, Estanislau da Silva launched seven new seed varieties of food crops, including two sweet potatoes, mung beans, red beans, and cassava.

The new yellow sweet potato is rich in Vitamin A, essential to addressing Timorese eyesight problems. The other is a bright purple variety of sweet potato, found locally in the markets of Baucau in eastern Timor and found to suit all farming areas.

It brings to 19 the number of new varieties released, after 600 were trialled on 4,000 farm demonstration sites.

The crops have been produced with the help of international agricultural research stations (CGIARS) including; CIMMYT for maize and wheat in Mexico, to Tropical Agriculture CIAT in Colombia, and rice research IRRI in the Philippines.

With more than 16 years of work and $38 million of Australian involvement, the project is drawing to a close in June, handing over to the Timorese Ministry of Agriculture (MAF).

Food security crisis

The Seeds of Life Project began in the smouldering remains of the post-referendum violence, when Pro-Indonesian militia retaliated after Timor's vote for freedom.

"The place had been wrecked and families and whole groups and communities were totally disrupted, up in the hills, they'd fled," Seeds of Life team leader John Dalton explained. He said eminent Australian agronomist Colin Piggin was among the first to work on food security.

"They could see that there was a huge hunger problem and the varieties farmers were using were very old varieties and the world crop centres had much better varieties, much more productive," Mr Dalton said.

"So they went to the CGIARS and asked for the best varieties of the food crops; maize, rice, peanuts, sweet potato, and cassava. So they could provide us with the best varieties for Timor."

With the new crop varieties developed at the international research stations, they needed a way to multiply the seeds. Seeds of Life collaborated with other international aid groups.

"Some groups and charities just gave seed away to farmers and never knew what happened next," said agronomist Rob Williams who led the project during phase two up to 2011.

"But one group did particularly well, establishing seed production groups. They'd give seed, show them a way to store it, dry it, thresh it. At the end of the season they had more seed than they started with."

That work was pioneered by Buddhi Kunwar, a leading agronomist from Nepal, who has joined the project and become crucial to the success of Seeds of Life.

"The plan over the five years was to make 1,000 groups, but he did it over three years, so he did it really rapidly, across corn, rice, maize, beans and cassava," Mr Williams said.

"Some were so good they created commercial seed production, and they could sell it back to the government and be the new national seed growers of the country. So the Ministry doesn't have to buy seed in any more.

"They buy from these commercial seed producers and last year there was $400,000 that went around these 70 groups," Mr Dalton said. They're now becoming commercial farmers. That needs to happen, for farmers to get beyond subsistence."

Storing bumper harvests

Mr Dalton said the new improved seed varieties were all conventionally bred, not hybrid and not genetically modified, with no fertiliser applied, and yet the results have been dramatic.

Maize yields have been 40 per cent higher than traditional varieties, rice 20 per cent higher, sweet potato 30 to 130 per cent higher with a much shorter growing season. But there were more reports of weevils and rats eating the maize.

The project identified a solution; disused fuel drums at the Dili airport, and after a short trial, collaborated with the International Fund for Agricultural Development, to source and supply 48 gallon or 200 litre drums.

The project, worth over $5 million has delivered food security into the traditional "hungry season".

The household paid a co-contribution of $10 per drum, while IFAD paid $40 per drum. While some drums have been misused, cut open for water or left empty, when they are full the value of the grain stored has trebled.

Agricultural economist Phil Young calculated value for each household: No storage drums and no new seeds equals $336 worth of maize for the year. With storage drums and new Seeds of Life varieties, maize is worth $1,008 for the year.

Mapping the landscape

On our bumpy, skidding drive into the hills of Aileu above Dili it is easy to see why life is such a struggle for farmers.

The land is steep and rugged, carved into by the monsoonal rain which arrives in massive bursts of 200mm in an hour It scarifies the hillside made of loose alluvial soil, which is far less fertile than the volcanic soil of Timor's neighbours along the Indonesian archipelago.

At Fadabloco village the community has mapped the watershed and countryside, to see how to use the land better, and grow better perennial crops to hold the soil in place. It is also helping them identify precious crops to keep the livestock out of, the sacred houses, and important water sources.

The uncertainty of land ownership is a hangover from the Indonesian occupation, when the military suspected villagers of protecting the Falantil Army and marched people out to the cities.

"You have to tie up your animals, can't cut wood arbitrarily, and burn down trees," said the village chief of Fadabloco, through the Peace Corps translator. "And you have to contain your animals so they don't ruin other people's crops."

Empowering women with micro loans

The Seeds of Life's success has led to new local banks across Timor, run largely by the women, providing loans at low interest. Compared to money lenders who offer loans at 10 to 20 per cent per month, these community banks ask 3 per cent per month.

The turnover in the banks across Timor over two years has been $200,000, and highest in Timor's poorest province Oecussi. Research shows the money they borrow has been used to pay for children's education, to fix homes, and cover health costs and to a lesser extent develop their agricultural enterprise.

"Women have access to a loan then they can open a new business, they sell to the local market," advisor to Seeds of Life Wayan Tambun explained. "They observe in Venilale village, they observe lots of women more empowered now."

'O Sele the seed' an ode to the project

"An end of Seeds of Life survey has shown the project's success with about 50 per cent of farmers, that's 65,000 farmers, using one or more of the new varieties," Mr Williams said. "They're producing about $6 million more food in the country a year, $100 per household."

A champion farmer Francesca Magdalena Pintu is so happy with the new seeds she penned an ode to the Sele variety of corn, for a visit by then President Ramos Horta. "It's helped us in many ways," she continued through a translator.

"One is I can send my children to school, one is in university. We've been able to cement the floor of our house, buy a motorbike and we've been able to fulfil our obligations; weddings, funerals and associated ceremonies and we can help our family members.

"Seeds of Life is finishing, I hope the knowledge which is left to us will become like a symbol to us in Timor Leste and will result in us being self-sufficient in seed."

The outgoing Australian leaders of Seeds of Life have high hopes for the next phase to involve better agronomy and extension to the farmers.

Four hundred years of colonial rule by the Portuguese and then the Indonesians took Timor's wealth of sandalwood and timber. The next Australian projects hope to restore forestry and sandalwood to the mountainsides.

[Sarina Locke travelled as a winner of the Crawford Fund's food security journalism award.]

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-29/seeds-of-life-timor-lifts-farmers-out-of-hungry-season/7359522

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