Last week the Sunday Observer, initiated this new column aimed at resurrecting our indigenous knowledge in spheres such as farming, medicine and irrigation.
We pointed out that the COVID 19 virus has brought all nations to examine its self-sufficiency; mainly in agriculture and in medical science and highlighted that these two entities were seen as going hand in hand with our ancient heritage where our Hela Govithena and HelaWedakama were inter-nurtured, alongside our irrigation, as the co-pillars that sustained the wellbeing of the nation.
The aim of this column is to remind ourselves that we had a heritage where we were a robust, healthy nation, producing our medicine and our food. To remind ourselves that before pesticide, weedicide and agro chemical induced fertilizer were introduced to us, we used an advanced indigenous knowledge in cultivation, lost to most of us today.
Being under long drawn colonial rule, having allowed our age old agrarian systems that co-existed with the eco system and bio diversity to waft into oblivion, we had to traverse the long road to discover organic agriculture, formally resurrected in the 1980s. With globalization and active foreign agendas propelling us further away from our traditional farming methods that bound us so intrinsically to the earth we became pawns of the ‘Western model’ of education (suited very well to make us slaves of industrialization). The ‘scientific’ invaded our minds and we were ready to accept anything that came from this model without question. This included the methods adopted by the Green Revolution in the 1960s and the theory that chemical agriculture saved millions of people from starvation. While it would suffice to counter this theory by observing just one ordinary vegetable plant in a garden which could be seen as yielding enough for continued consumption, without much human attention and left to the vagaries of nature. Nevertheless we opted to buy the myth that agro chemicals, weedicide and pesticide were compulsory to get us (yes, us as we were labeled, poor, developing countries) out of ‘starvation.’ Somehow we never got round to thinking how we survived during the times of our kings when we had large populations, sustained by our intelligence, our age old knowledge systems and our commitment to the land.
Despite this heritage of ours, the tragedy is how we became beholden to the Green Revolution, remaining dumb in the face of rising diseases; from cancer to diabetes, watching in silence as our farmers became ‘addicts’ of poisonous substances that transform the earth into a graveyard for all other living beings that were traditionally part of the eco system that gets involved in the food production process.
This is what Ranjit Seneviratne, an engineer who is today 84 years old and who had worked closely with the organic cultivation renaissance of Sri Lanka in the 1980s and an expert on soil sustenance using indigenous methods had to say:
“My Father was a Nutrition Researcher at the Medical Research Institute (MRI) Borella and my interest in Nutrition led me to make friends with colleagues at the Nutrition Section of FAO. While having coffee with some of them, a senior Scientist who was to retire said that the “Green Revolution” was a “disaster waiting to happen to the world”. I argued that I was from a third world country and surely having two and three harvests by our farmers would be so beneficial. He turned to me and said, “Son read “Silent Spring” by Rachael Carson and “Small is beautiful” by Schumacher”. “I did read these books and I was appalled at my former stance,” explains Seneviratne.
He further continues:
“I contacted Mr. Ranjith de Silva of “Gami Seva Sevana” (GSS) as I was a member then and still serve on their Board. I sent him the books and the Rodale Institute’s magazine “Organic Farming and Gardening” and he helped pioneer the Organic Farming movement by training farmers at their Training Centre at Office Junction, Galaha. He in fact coined the word in Sinhala “Carbonica” for “Organic.” Seneviratne who cultivates his agro forest garden in the heart of Colombo, consumes primarily food he grows through the organic/biodiversity cultivation method and along with his wife is an enigma of perfect health.
Admitting that there is of course a better harvest when chemical fertilizers are first used, he explains that there is a gradual decline. This is because there is a die-off of the microbiota (Bacteria Funghi, Viruses, Nematodes, Worms and Insects) that sustains all plant life – which is what sustains the luxurious growth in a forest, where the leaves and twigs that fall of trees make up the rich dark nutrition for the soil that surpasses any artificial fertilizer.
“FAO earlier promoted the famous “Green Revolution” but you do not hear of it anymore,” points out Seneviratne. “FAO was forced to change its stance on chemical agriculture and in 2015 two United Nations experts on hazardous substance and waste and right to food called for worldwide phase-out on the use of highly hazardous pesticides in the backdrop of governments, businesses and others from around the world gathering in Geneva, Switzerland, for the fourth meeting of the International Conference on Chemicals Management in September and October 2015. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Hazardous Substance and Waste, Baskut Tuncak, was quoted then as saying that the risks are ‘particularly grave in developing countries’ ‘many of who import these highly hazardous pesticides despite having inadequate systems to reduce risks.”
We can see here in the comments of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Hazardous Substance and Waste, the danger to which we have fallen because we have not used our common sense, dulled in the stupor that any Western ‘discovery’ or ‘knowledge’ is superior to ours. If we examine the Sinhala word Krumi- Nashaka, we can see how this word differs with our philosophy of Buddhism; to ‘eliminate’ or ‘destroy’ another creature so that we can have access to food is not how our ancestors engaged in farming prior to colonization. We had our methods of protecting our crops from disease (there was a branch of Ayurveda called Wruksha Ayurveda) and we had particular substances we made by using diverse plants, roots etc., to prevent insects from destroying crops. We also had the age old tradition of keeping some portion of our harvest, be it paddy or fruit, etc., for the other inhabitants of our planet that co-habit with us who must also survive. Those who remember the role of the wee kurulla (now killed off as a result of agro chemicals and almost fully extinct) will recall the role of this bird in the paddy cultivation process.
Fortunately for Sri Lanka there are still a number of individuals such as Ranjit Seneviratne, Dr. Ranil Senanayake, Thilak Kandegama, and government officials such as those working in the Forestry Department who are doing everything within their limits to turn our people towards a nature based way of living and encouraging agro forestry methods. There are also thousands of farmers around Sri Lanka committed to biodiversity/nature based farming and rescuing our indigenous rice and vegetable/fruit varieties from extinction; despite these literally being buried under ‘imported seeds.’ In addition we could hail the efforts of the Ayurveda Department and many interested individuals to preserve our medicinal plants now getting extinct due to deforestation and general lack of public awareness.
At a juncture when COVID 19 has destroyed the Western economy as we knew it, the times we are in compels us to wake up to many facts. A key fact is that we have been wasting our precious money on imported rubbish and allowed a bunch of multinationals to brainwash us, monopolize our food needs and feed us poison. We have to now realize that this may be our last chance to revive our rural agrarian economy and to restore true independence to this status. It is time we gave respect to our farmers and liberated them from the vicious cycle of chemical induced agriculture that we as a nation had allowed them to be lured and coerced into.
It is time that our children learn about the varieties of kos (Jakfruit) known as our ButhGaha – Rice Tree of our land, the many native varieties of ala (yam), learn how our ancestors grew their herbs, our native fruits and our native vegetable varieties as well learn about our indigenous medical system; the Desheeya Chikitsa (HelaWedakama) that predates Ayurveda. It is time that we inculcate into our education systems, from school to universities a sense of independence of thought to produce individuals who will not scorn their own heritage of knowledge but will work towards the betterment of this country as per their ability and inclination. It is time we revived in each household the practice we had of growing commonly used herbs such as turmeric/ginger/Wada kaha (some may remember how these were grown infused with Dahaiiya in old basins).
We must understand the fact that any little action we take and prompt others to take, to be self- sufficient, is one small step towards protecting the sovereignty of the country.
On how the British colonial rulers destroyed our backbone, ruined our native methods of farming, outlawed our medical systems, our medicinal herbs and changed us into a species who blindly followed any foreign so called ‘expert’ over our own Lankan professionals, chapters could be written, but if one of many drastic examples could be cited, it would be how the decision to grow pine trees was recommended by Western ‘experts’ on mountain tops. The nod was given to cultivate pine trees that totally destroy the soil, as part of the re-forestation program in the 1970s dismissing the then Mahaweli Ministry advisor, ecologist, Dr. Ranil Senanayake’s comprehensive model of growing indigenous trees such as Kos, fruits and herbs in the regenerative foresting methods on mountain tops and linking them to the villages below. If this was done we could have tackled both our malnutrition/hunger problem in rural areas, encouraged family based agro industries, as well as provided a panacea for the climate change dilemma. Today, 40 years after his advice was shunned in Sri Lanka, Ranil Senanayake is one of the most sought after ecologists by the rest of the world and his concept of Analog forestry has been adopted by over 20 countries.
In these pandemic ridden days, when those in the Western world are dying in their hundreds because of grossly impaired immune systems that cannot fight viruses such as COVID19, clearly showing that their nutrition models have failed, we have been given one more chance, one more chance to rectify our past idiocy. How we turn this calamity into a great opportunity to unlearn and relearn is up to every single citizen of this country and every one of our initiatives in this regard could have a chain effect on how we reclaim our land and our indigenous knowledge.
References:
https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16510&...
http://www.ft.lk/opinion/A-journey-to-keep-the-land-forested/14-661038
The reference to Wruksha Ayurveda is from discussions with Ayurveda Doctor, D. H. Tennakoon, former head of the National Ayurveda Teaching Hospital.
About the author:
Frances Bulathsinghala cultivates trees in the Central Province using only indigenous methods and promotes indigenous knowledge in schools. She is currently working on an academic paper on Indigenous Knowledge and Mass Media as well as a book on the link between HelaWedakam and Agro Forestry. In 2018 and 2019 she introduced the concept of Edu Tourism linking it to indigenous knowledge and the Gurukula system, published as abstracts in the conference proceeding publication of the International Tourism Research Conference held in Colombo. She has opened up her collection of books, totaling to over 15,000 as a library in Kandy. She is a curricula writer and visiting academic at a National University in Sri Lanka and a writer affiliated to several South Asian publications.