Heading South

We landed in Chennai (formerly called Madras) in the state of Tamil Nadu in southern India on Monday, Feb. 14, and spent a day resting up before meeting up with the first of our hosts for the second phase of our India travels. We planned to meet up with Crissan's husband, Bob, who was scheduled to give a talk and to meet with several project leaders, scientists, extension workers and farmers involved in research and trials concerning the world’s major staple food crop, rice. There is an extensive array of academic institutions, research institutes, NGO’s and governmental departments and agencies working to introduce more efficient and effective methods for growing rice in an increasingly challenging environment.  Bob is the Director General of IRRI, the International Rice Research Institute, which recently celebrated its 50^th anniversary. Its mission is “to reduce poverty and hunger, improve the health of rice farmers and consumers, and ensure environmental sustainability through collaborative research, partnerships, and the strengthening of national agricultural research and extension systems.” <http://irri.org>

The next few days would prove to be an intensive education in the culture of rice, and in the culture of southern India, a very different place than what we had encountered in Delhi, Lucknow and Agra. I was extremely privileged to be allowed a close-up view of life in small, rural Indian villages, and to meet many very dedicated people who have devoted their entire working lives to the development of sustainable food crops for some of the poorest people in the world. I was also very honored and humbled to meet many farmers themselves, people who must struggle every day to produce the food that their families need to eat, and who wish to provide their children with a chance for a better life, the same for people the world over.

In the course of our travels, we visited several Hindu temples, one a very ancient site carved out of huge granite boulders and slabs where they rose up out of the ground, others built as much as a thousand years ago but still very much in use as spiritual centers of the community today. We visited research sites, farms, university agricultural and medical programs, witnessed farmers using bullocks to level their paddies in much the way that their ancestors did, the barefoot driver standing on a narrow plank being dragged through the slurry of mud. We saw combines and machine planters in use across a simple dirt road from a flooded paddy where the women were transplanting seedlings into the field, easing their back-breaking toil by singing out in rhythmical call-and-response melodies.

We met with academic officials and ordinary workers, most notably some who had hoped to become medical doctors but in India’s higher education system were diverted into a choice of agriculture or engineering instead. These young people, men and women alike, were devoted to their work in helping the farmers to grow higher yields and to learn sustainable approaches to farming, and seemed to give no further thought to the fact that this path was not their first choice.

We were ceremonially greeted at every new stop with customary rituals and offerings of food and the fresh milk of a coconut. A small group of wizened old farmers met us at one site with a chorus of drumming on ceremonial skin drums. A women’s collective met with us to show their learning about putting moneys from crops aside and voiced their hopes to be able to fund their children’s education.  We were invited to attend temple and experience puja, a ritual cleansing, by one of our generous hosts, a gentleman who wished for us to experience a part of life he finds personally meaningful.

We traveled with a group of professionals who lead projects relating to rice production or are involved in reaching out to farmers to introduce new stress-tolerant seed varieties with the hope that they will prove themselves as hardy in the field as they have in the lab. Stresses such as drought and full submergence for a period of only a few days can wipe out a farmer’s entire crop and leave entire communities destitute, but there must be a delicate dance of trust to enlist farmers willing to take on a trial of something that is not certain to yield the desired results.                                                               

We heard evidence that some of these varieties are showing early encouraging results in the field. At the same time, we witnessed a community gathered around their rice harvest, piled in mounds at a central location in a village, in the process of being sold and sent to the mill, yet the farmers had sad and anxious faces because their whole crop was infected with a fungal blight which would make the rice inedible. What then? Sale at a much lower price for use as rice byproducts, and loss of what might have been. And dwindling hope for their future.

I have many pictures to share with you from this time. I will add them as I am able, and hopefully you can gain some sense of what life is like in this far corner of the earth.