How I write. Team ICRISAT award in my mind
Frank A. Hilario
December 27, 2009
To end 2009 with my own version of The Big Bang, as you shall be surprised to see towards the end of this essay, I have decided to show you examples of how my mind works when confronted with vague technical terms running one after the other, both modern and ancient, each one of which makes me feel uncomfortable. Notwithstanding, truth to tell, I almost always find my unease the beginning of my creativity. All is well that ends well.
You could get indigestion if you try biting into and swallowing hard science for meal or snack. Not me. With a paradigm shift to fuzzy logic - another excellent approach to creative thinking - you can make science talk sense to the layman or, at least, get him to ask some intelligent questions. Any questions?
Translating the technical to the popular, let us examine the record with some examples below (in italics), all of them from one annual ICRISAT report, and that I shall number, each to which my translation follows. You will probably note that when I'm not so sure of what to say, I beat around the bush and get away with it anyway. Take #1:
(1) Integrated Genetic and Natural Resource Management (IGNRM)
An IGNORAMUS on IGNRM, I will put it this way, simply as "Resource Management." Management is management, and to me everything is resource, except humans - they are the ones who the manager expects to work on the resources instead of him.
(2) Genome sequencing
I don't understand the term that much either, so if you ask me to discuss it, I will concentrate less on the meaning and more on what happens after genome sequencing. In sweet sorghum for instance, if you know which gene comes before and which after, you may be able to tell the one associated with, say, drought tolerance in a wild sorghum species, and that may be the gene you may want to engineer into the sorghum variety that you are developing for planting in water-stricken farmers' fields. You come up with a GMO, I'm not sure. GMOs have always been a difficult subject for me.
(3) Rapid degradation of watershed slopes
I suppose it simply and literally refers to soil runoff on hills. It can also refer to clear-cutting of forests (following the market mandate), which is a faster process than selective logging (following the legal mandate).
(4) The crop's multiple-use and sustainability attributes
My translation and enumeration: "The pigeon pea has many uses: food (dried peas, flour, and green vegetable), windbreak, fence, fodder for poultry and livestock. This ICRISAT variety also addresses the need for sustainability in two ways: (a) This pea doesn't need any fertilizer; it can sustain itself and in fact enriches the soil with nitrogen as it is a legume. (b) This pea is an excellent protector of the soil against erosion with its widespread canopy (protecting the soil from the impact of rain) and widespread tiny roots (firmly holding the soil particles in place)." I call it Designer Pea.
(5) Improving water retention in the field
Translation: "We are experimenting with multiple cropping and earth check dams. Multiple cropping insures that the soil is continually covered with vegetation, thus minimizing evaporation of moisture from the soil. Earthen check dams create little reservoirs of water that last into the dry season. Mulching and green manuring are also techniques for retaining soil moisture."
(6) The poor have negligible savings, and correspondingly
little chance for upward mobility.
Translation: "The poor don't save and, therefore, they can't invest to earn more. But with some assistance, the poor can be successfully taught to save and be their own entrepreneurs."
(7) Fish catches are significantly smaller than
they were 10 years ago, and fishermen are forced
to spend more time in the water.
Translation: "The fishermen have been overfishing, that is, harvesting even the young ones and the fertile females; they have also been careless, inadvertently destroying the habitat of commercial species. It's like a bank account - if you withdraw the interest as well as the principal, if it be slowly, your bank earnings will dry up sooner or later."
(8)
Inexpensive, small earthen dams convert eroded gullies into
seasonal reservoirs that recharge depleted wells and
make extended-season irrigation and cropping possible.
Translation: "The dams are inexpensive because they are made of earth and they are small, not massive. In two words, "eroded gullies," the redundancy provides the visual impact of the soils of fields eaten away by running water gathered from the rains. While the earthen dams are not removed after the planting season, they become seasonal reservoirs because they collect water only during the rainy months. Much of the trapped water in those gullies percolates through the gully beds and replenishes the underground water, the same which is tapped by artesian wells. With the recharged underground reservoir, there is water to irrigate crops even beyond the usual, rainy-season cropping."
(9)
Minimum or no-till relay cropping keeps the soil protected
during flash rains, shading the soil to reduce evaporative
losses and providing better growth conditions for
soil fertility-enhancing organisms.
Translation: "The least or zero cultivation is a lazy man's dream because he can save on his energy as well as on animal power (cattle) or mechanical energy (tractor big or small) that otherwise would have been spent for plowing and harrowing the field. Since the soil is undisturbed, the canopy of the vegetation growing on it shields the ground from the impact of raindrops, and the thousands of tiny roots hold the soil particles in place. There is little or no soil erosion; there is little or no soil water evaporating into thin air. All these conditions insure that earthworms, bugs, fungi and bacteria do their thing and cause the decay of organic matter (dead plant parts as well as other organisms), and in so doing release substances and compounds that enrich that soil."
(10)
Diversified and higher-value crops reduce risk,
increase farmers' incomes, and provide an incentive
for investing more in land improvement and intensification.
Translation: "Diversified or multiple cropping works at reducing a cultivator's risk of farmer failure by growing several crops at the same time in the same field. If a crop fails, the other crops will save the farmer's skin. Higher-value crops reduce risk in the sense that even in the event of a crop failure, the harvest should earn more than enough to break even because the harvest brings in more cash per unit crop. Once the farmer realizes all that, he will invest more in his farm for soil development by resorting to the least or zero tillage (to save on cost), as well as to the growing of more crop per unit of land (to save on space)."
(11)
By unleashing the power of women to turn the grey tropics green, ICRISAT and its partners are not only improving the livelihoods of today's generation. They are seeding the Grey to Green Revolution for decades to come.
That needs no translation, does it? ICRISAT has two mantras that I shall now try to combine into one motto: "(From) Grey to Green Revolution (through) Science with a Human Face."
(12)
Through generous supplementary assistance from the Dutch Government and the Asian Development Bank, practical applications of these exciting research findings are being rolled out jointly with national and local partners in community watersheds in Ethiopia (Ginchy), India (Kothapally in Andhra Pradesh and Lalatora and Solsinda in Madhya Pradesh States), northeastern Thailand, and northern Vietnam (Thanh Ha watershed in Hoa Binh Province).
Translation: "We have gotten generous funding from the Dutch Government as well as the Asian Development Bank to support the practical applications of the research findings mentioned above. The findings are transformed into technologies for diffusion, that is, for adoption or adaptation by farmers in the field; this is done by ICRISAT jointly with national and local public and private partners in community watersheds in Ethiopia (Ginchy), India (Kothapally in Andhra Pradesh and Lalatora and Solsinda in Madhya Pradesh States), northeastern Thailand, and northern Vietnam (Thanh Ha watershed in Hoa Binh Province)."
Historically, it was the success of the Adarsha watershed community in Kothapally with their watershed-building enterprise that resulted in the generation and packaging of what I like to call The Adarsha Model and the subsequent introduction of the whole concept and process into Ethiopia, Thailand, Vietnam, in other places in India itself, and elsewhere.
And now, a note on the discovery Adarsha model of countryside development itself. In forestry, the fate of the watershed is effectively controlled by the logging concessionaire who, unfortunately, has little or no interest in the waters stored on the site and which provide headwaters for streams and rivers. In agriculture, as in the case of the Adarsha community, the watershed can be effectively and efficiently controlled by the members of the community itself who have much stake in the maintenance and development of bodies of water above and below ground.
The Adarsha story is quite interesting and illuminating. It was at first a supply-push event (that was, "technology is the answer, and here it is"). Then Team ICRISAT (including partner groups) learned a lesson from the Adarsha people and it became a demand-driven concern (that was, "villagers' needs come first, and it is livelihood"). After those mutual-learning encounters, Adarsha became a thriving community; today, it has become a model for the rest of the world to learn from. (For more details, see also my "Water Lessons of Adarsha," ICRISAT Watch, blogspot.com.)
Now then, as far as I can see, with ICRISAT's success in Adarsha, considering climate change and the concomitant severe droughts in many a country and countryside, suddenly the community watershed has become the first and minimum goal and, thereby, the first unit of measurement of successful countryside development. Success is defined as dividing the liabilities and multiplying the benefits among the members of that community. This is a Team ICRISAT accomplishment, with partners; now then, considering other achievements, I believe Team ICRISAT deserves the World Food Prize, which is non-sectarian, or the Right Livelihood Award, which is non-ideological. There should be no drought of awards for significant climate change changers. " Success in countryside development should no longer be measured on a project basis but on a community basis, all resources included, from the trees on the hills to the water underground. Team ICRISAT's Adarsha story has forever changed the human face of science in the countryside.
The last paragraph above is the proper ending of this essay, but I wanted to point out how it came about: Serendipity. I didn't plan on it. Horace Walpole tells us in so many words: Serendipity is the phenomenon of a happy thing happening when you're not asking for it. As often happens when I write, there comes a point when out of nowhere I gain an insight from the materials I'm working with - as the lead sentence of that paragraph shows: "Suddenly the community watershed has become the first and minimum goal and, thereby, the first unit of measurement of successful countryside development. Success is defined as dividing the liabilities and multiplying the benefits among the members of that community." The text is mine; the triumph is Team ICRISAT's. May their tribe increase!
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