Being wise on land

SUBSISTENCE agriculture is, or has been, an integral part of the lives of the majority of people in the Pacific region. However for many communities this is no longer the case.

Given that shifting cultivation (some

times called bush fallow or slash and bum) is the typical method of sus tainable agriculture and large amounts of land are required for its practice.

As a result of various pressures provoked through factors such as

population increase,

urban drift etc, it is now necessary to develop alternative systems.

If people are to con tinue to be able to sup port themselves through their own produce, tradi tional methods of agri culture need to be com bined with modem agri cultural techniques and

philosophies. A new project is about to commence in the Solomon Islands, appro priately titled. Integrated Kastom Agriculture it is an attempt to do just this.

Integrated Kastom Agriculture is a pro ject initiated by APACE (Appropriate Technology for Community and

Environment), a Sydney-based organisa

tion, and funded jointly by APACE and AusAID. Its objective is to develop new agricultural systems which allow villagers to continue to sustain themselves in the face of massive social and environmental

changes.

Changes which are currently making this practice, in many places, almost impossible. The reason traditional meth ods are becoming more impractical are numerous.

The population increase which has taken place in many countries is one sig nificant factor. To be ecologically sustain

able, shifting cultivation requires large

areas of land and low, often mobile popu lations. It is projected that much of the Solomon Islands population will no longer have enough land to practise sustainable shifting cultivation in the near future. At present 50 per cent of the population is under 14 years of age with the population expected to double in the next 20 years.

There is little doubt that this increase will decrease available gardening land and the overuse of available lands will result in

Large

logging

operations has had a detrimental effect on the land

diminished soil fertility and greater land degradation.

Changes in traditional land settlement patterns is another contributor to the prob lem. As a result of urban drift and people migrating towards community points.

churches, expanding vil lages and urban areas, the population has become much more geo

graphically concentrated.

In the past people would have been far more dis persed and therefore there would not have been the same build-up of pressure for lands as there is now in these new, highly populated locations. Plantation agriculture such as coconuts, cocoa and oil palm now take up a lot of the areas previously used for gardening by vil lagers. Large-scale log ging operations which

have taken place close to areas in which gardening activity exists has had a detri mental impact on the environment. Often resulting in soil compaction, erosion and invasion of introduced species these activ ities have a negative impact on gardens.

Now as a result of all these pressures shifting cultivation is itself becoming an environmentally destructive practice as

fallow periods shorten to critical levels and soil fertility declines. Today, steep sided slopes previ ously left forested and untouched forest are being cleared for gar dens to feed growing populations.

The idea of the Integrated Kastom Agriculture project is to address these issues by developing models of permanent agriculture as an alternative to shift ing cultivation. Land pressures mean that shifting cultivation in its present form is unsus tainable.

The project lists its objectives as; • increasing the local population’s awareness of the ecological consequences of current land use partners;

A growers’ network will preserve genetic crop resources

• teaching people ecologically sustain

able land management and soil conserva

tion practices;

• teaching people about modem tropi

cal ecologically sustainable agricultural systems and how these might best be

incorporated indigenous systems; and

• developing community gardens using the integration of these two systems.

In addition it is hoped that through pro viding these alternative scenarios there will be a greater conservation of bio-diver

sity.

There are also plans to create an organ ic growers’ network which will preserve genetic crop resources, create a seed bank and research which will preserve genetic crop resources, create a seed bank and agricultural methods such as chemical fer tilisers, herbicides and pesticides with their negative environmental impacts and high cost will be discouraged. It is intended that these objectives will be realised through a combined process which includes local training, the estab lishment of village models in which all these ideas are implemented and the set ting up of an organic farmers’ network.

The project will involve rural people, grassroots NGOs, educational institutions and government departments.

A training programme will be imple mented after an initial period of further research. The focus of this programme is to teach rural people, NGOs, extension workers and educational institutions about

permaculture, organic agriculture, bio-dynamic agriculture, Melanesian agricultural systems, seed saving and crop bio-diver sity conservation, inte grated traditional methods and organic certification and export growth poten tial. This training pro gramme will combine the knowledge, skills and teaching of Australian, local and regional experts.

A number of workshops will be conducted and five rural communities will be involved in an intensive training programme in alternative integrated me thods of subsistence agri

culture. These communities will receive ongoing support and their gardens will draw on agricultural methods explored in workshops but using local management

and innovation. The main project benefi ciaries will be rural people dependent upon subsistence agriculture (87 per cent of households) of which women form the majority directly involved in food produc tion. Wider effects will of course be felt by the community in general and the econo my through the process of improving the sustainability of subsistence agriculture in a country where the majority of people are directly involved in it.

It would hopefully slow down the process of urban drift, a widespread phe nomenon throughout the Pacific region, decrease land disputes, stimulate more economic activity, reduce food imports and at the same time strengthen indigenous knowledge and the capacity to adapt these local methods for the benefit of the com munity.

The document produced by APACE outlining the project and its objectives, specifically lays stress upon the impact it hopes to have upon women.

That is, as principle food producers, the project aims to strengthen the role of women. By increasing the ecological and cultural sustainability of subsistence agri culture it is believed that the position of women will be improved.

As sustainable agriculture declines and the community becomes more dependent on a monetary and the purchase of food, the women’s role is diminished and their dependency aggravated. There is little doubt that there is an urgent need to

address the problems of the impracticality of sustainable agriculture as it is currently

practised.

As it stands it is no longer an ecologi cally sustainable option. The pressure resulting from the increasingly limited available land are numerous. Land degra dation, soil erosion, declining soil fertility, loss of bio diversity, land disputes, urban drift and nutritional problems are only a handful of them.

It is likely that land disputes will become more common as land for gardens expansion becomes increasingly in short supply with population growth exacerbat

ed by cash-cropping and logging, decreas

ing the amount of suitable land available for gardening as is already happening in north and east Guadalcanal.

The project’s primary goal is to build models that reverse negative environmen tal impacts associated with the population growth and the shifting cultivation system.

It is hoped that its implementation will establish a system which can function independent of APACE’s support, with local people trained in developing alterna tive agricultural systems who will be able to develop their own village-based models.

The project stresses the continued importance of areas of traditional practice and that the implementation of this is not a wholesale introduction of entirely new and foreign ideas but a concerned attempt to integrate traditional practices and customs with new methods. A