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Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 12:13:55 -0800
To: Recipient List Suppressed:;
From: Native Americas Journal <bfw2@cornell.edu>
Subject: The Machu Picchu Model: Climate Change and Agricultural Diversity

The following is provided from Native Americas special-issue on
"Global Warming, Climate Change and Native Lands," Vol. XVI No. 3&4.
Published by Akwe:kon Press at Cornell University's American Indian
Program, Native Americas keeps you informed of issues and events that
impact indigenous communities throughout the hemisphere. You can find
more information on this topic, as well as how to subscribe to Native
Americas at our website, http://www.nativeamericas.com.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------

The Machu Picchu Model: Climate Change and Agricultural Diversity
By Craig Benjamin/Native Americas Journal
© Copyright 2000

Above a small village on the steep slopes of the Andes, a Quechua
farmer holds a half dozen potatoes cupped in his hands. The seed
potatoes are red, blue, and brown. The translucent sprouts that have
started to emerge in preparation for planting are tinged with purple
and gold.

Four factors-geography, sunlight, temperature, and rainfall-and their
interplay are critical to farming. Global warming or any other form
of dramatic climate change will have a profound impact on this
equation.

The air is often crisp and cool when the Quechua farmer plants his
seed potatoes. But what would happen if the weather at planting time
was hot and humid or if heavy rainfalls were to wash away the thin
soil of his field? In fact, climate change is potentially
catastrophic for the farming traditions that are central to many
Native cultures, and critical to the livelihoods of the majority of
Native peoples in Latin America.

Public debate around global warming tends to focus on the large-scale
industrial farms of the North. The Quechua farmer and others who work
on a small scale and use traditional methods have been largely
ignored. However, as the world slowly comes to terms with the threat
of climate change, Native farming traditions will warrant greater
attention. This is owing to the fifth factor critical to farming: the
seed itself.

The Andean potato is one of the world's most important food crops.
Each year in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, roughly 50
billion acres are planted with potatoes descended from plants first
domesticated in South America 7,000 years ago. Along with other crops
first domesticated by indigenous peoples-such as corn from Central
America, squash, beans and tomatoes from the Andes, and rice from
South Asia-potatoes literally feed the world. And when these global
crops are no longer suited to the environment in which they are
grown, when their resistance to disease and pests begins to fail or
the climate itself changes, the best way to rejuvenate the breeding
stock will be to introduce new genetic material from the vast
diversity of crop varieties still maintained by indigenous peoples.

The spectrum of colors displayed in the Quechua farmer's potatoes
reflects the fact that each is genetically distinct. The genetic
diversity of the half-dozen potatoes he holds in his hands is roughly
comparable to the diversity you might find in a North American
supermarket. However, it is only a small sample of the 100 to 200
potato varieties planted each year on the Andean slopes. And even
this represents only a fraction of the total diversity found
throughout the region. From Colombia to Chile, it is estimated that
indigenous peoples cultivate at least eight potato species and more
than 3,000 varieties. The Andes also sustain at least 100 more wild
potato species.

The extraordinary genetic diversity of Andean potatoes and of other
Andean crops such as squash and beans is the product of millennia of
plant breeding. And much of this plant breeding has been driven by
the need to adapt crops to the extraordinary climatic diversity of
the region.

The Andes is one of the world's most complex and varied regions in
terms of geography and climate. Along the two axes of latitude and
altitude, the Andes encompasses fully two-thirds of all possible
combinations of climate and geography found on Earth, including cloud
forests, deserts, rolling grasslands, lakes, marshes, glacial plains
and the headwaters of the Amazon.

Add extreme weather occurrences to the wide-ranging geographical
variations and agricultural challenges become magnified. There are
many ways farmers can respond to unfavorable conditions and climate
changes. If rainfall is insufficient, they can use artificial
irrigation. If summers are too long and too hot, they can apply more
fertilizers to bring on early maturation. Or they can do as Andean
farmers have done over the millennia and adapt the crops to suit the
climate and conditions. Over thousands of years, Native peoples
introduced agriculture into virtually every ecosystem in the Andes
and adapted an incredible diversity both of crops and crop varieties
to these conditions. The most important of these crops, the potato,
has been adapted to every environment except the depth of the
rainforest or the frozen peaks of the mountains.

Today, facing the likelihood of dramatic disruptions to the climatic
conditions for agriculture worldwide, indigenous farmers provide a
dramatic example of crop adaptation in an increasingly extreme
environment. More importantly, Native farmers also safeguard the crop
diversity essential for future adaptations.

Downslope is the best known historical site of Andean culture, Machu
Picchu. Here the mountainside has been carved in all directions with
hundreds of terraces, some as narrow as a few feet in width.
Anthropologist Jack Weatherford, in his book Indian Givers: How the
Indians of the Americas Transformed the World, suggests that Machu
Picchu was not primarily a ceremonial site, as is sometimes assumed,
but the center of Incan agricultural research. He speculates that the
terraces were created as test plots mirroring the various climate and
soil conditions of key regions of an empire that spanned much of the
Andes. On these terraces, new varieties of food and textile crops
would have been bred and tested before being distributed to local
farmers for further adaptation.

To get a rough idea of the likely effects of climate change on
agriculture, imagine the terraces of Machu Picchu repopulated as a
kind of microcosm of contemporary farming in the Americas. In this
microcosm, indigenous farmers have access to only a few narrow
terraces representing the most difficult growing conditions. The
indigenous people continue to work the land, sustaining themselves
through their knowledge of the terraces and through the preservation
and continued improvements of crops adapted to these conditions.

Now imagine that a natural process such as erosion, which would
normally take place imperceptibly over thousands of years, is
suddenly accelerated so the impact is felt in a single generation.
Imagine that over a period of 20 years, the terraces of Machu Picchu
drop 500 feet or more closer to sea level. As altitude decreases,
temperature increases. But on individual terraces, the results are
more complex and variable. Precipitation levels, for example, are
also affected. The higher temperatures lead to increased water
evaporation. Rain strikes some slopes, and the water available to
some crops increases. Other slopes, however, are passed by. Some
experience increased cloudiness, while rainfall diminishes and
streams dry up. The world of insects and microorganisms is radically
altered.

One can imagine that the indigenous farmers initially would be able
to survive such changes. Natural weather cycles such as El Niño
already vary farming conditions enormously with droughts and floods.
Many indigenous farmers cope with these naturally occurring
fluctuations by conserving seed stock suited to a wide range of
growing conditions, by storing food in forms such as dried potatoes,
and by maintaining hardy wild foods that can be drawn on in times of
extreme weather conditions.

Eventually, on many terraces, conditions will emerge unlike any ever
faced by the indigenous farmers. Even if it were theoretically
possible to farm under these conditions, the pace of traditional
plant breeding would be too slow for the rate and extent of change
now facing the indigenous farmers. Adapting crops and knowledge that
had been so precisely suited to entirely different conditions would
require greater resources than those available to the indigenous
farmers. At this point, traditions of indigenous agriculture handed
down through the ages could well collapse.

Before this point is reached, however, non-indigenous farmers on the
richer neighboring terraces must confront a crisis of their own.
Pests and diseases that failed to gain a foothold among the diverse
crops of the indigenous farms spread rapidly through the monocultures
of the white and mestizo farmers with devastating results. Even for
those farmers who can afford them, increased pesticides will not
solve the problem. The crops themselves must be radically and quickly
altered. The wealthiest of these farmers have the technological
resources for plant breeding. What they lack are the "raw materials,"
the genetic characteristics for resistance. At this point,
conceivably, a new relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous
farmers might be negotiated to prevent the collapse of farming.

How realistic is this scenario? The fact is that traditional systems
of indigenous agriculture stand in sharp contrast to the system of
food growing that now predominates in the United States and Canada,
but the two systems are intricately linked. And this link may be the
key to how climate change impacts global agriculture.

In this industrial model of agriculture, one or two crop varieties
are grown over vast areas. Instead of trying to use local resources
of soil and water optimally and sustainably, the natural environment
is all but ignored and uniform growing conditions are fabricated
through large-scale irrigation and the intensive use of artificial
fertilizers and pesticides.

In the industrial agricultural system, a handful of basically similar
potato varieties, all of which require nearly identical soil
conditions, temperature, rainfall and growing seasons, account for
almost all global production. In fact, in the United States, the
Russet Burbank (the variety preferred by fast food restaurants and
manufacturers of potato chips and frozen french fries) accounts for
60 percent of commercial production. More money is spent radically
modifying potato-growing conditions with artificial pesticides and
fertilizers than is spent on any other crop.

As this industrial agricultural model expands throughout the world,
it is more and more often in conflict with the survival of the
indigenous peoples whose lands are being appropriated for plantations
and whose ecosystems are being destroyed by river diversions and
pesticide run-offs. Ironically, as the industrial model of
agriculture expands, it is also becoming ever more dependent on
indigenous peoples.

Monocultures-large, uninterrupted fields of uniform crops-create
ideal conditions for disease and pests to evolve and spread. Growing
these crops around the world in conditions that have been made
uniform by large-scale irrigation and use of artificial pesticides
and fertilizers further worsens the situation. When crops fail,
agribusiness responds by discarding the old varieties for new ones
bred for greater resistance either to the latest pests and diseases
or to the chemicals used to fight these pests. But because these
so-called improved varieties are again grown in global monocultures,
ideal conditions are once again created for new pests and diseases to
emerge or for the old pests and disease to evolve and overcome the
new defenses. It is a vicious cycle often compared to running on a
treadmill.

The inherent dangers of this approach to farming have long been
clear. In the autumn of 1846, nearly 90 percent of the Irish potato
crop rotted in the fields. Potatoes, introduced from the Americas
decades before, had become the staple diet of Irish farm laborers.
When the potatoes rotted, the laborers starved. By the end of the
next autumn and the second crop failure, more than 1 million people
had died in the "Irish potato famine."

The destruction of the Irish potato crop was caused by a fungal
disease known as "late blight," but it is linked to climate and
farming practices. The disease likely originated in Central America
near the present-day border of Mexico and Guatemala. Significantly,
although indigenous farmers in the region had apparently lived with
the blight for generations, there is no indication that the blight
had ever caused starvation before it was introduced to Ireland. The
indigenous farmers were likely protected against the blight by the
great genetic diversity among the potatoes that they grew and by the
overall diversity of their diet. In contrast, the Irish laborers were
almost wholly dependent on potatoes descended from two closely
related varieties. When damp weather in late summer gave the blight
its first foothold in Ireland, it spread quickly through these fields
of largely uniform crops with devastating results.

Potato farmers eventually recovered from the blight by breeding new
potato varieties with a more varied genetic heritage. Plant hunters
were also able to locate blight resistant varieties among indigenous
farm communities in Central and South America and recent breeding
programs have attempted to incorporate these traits.

Despite such lessons from history, the overall trend of industrial
agriculture over the last 100 years has been toward less, rather than
more, diversity. In North America alone, an estimated 97 percent of
commercial crop varieties have become extinct in this century, either
because seed companies have streamlined their inventories or because
the most important buyers-the food processors, restaurants, and
supermarkets-have no need for such diversity.

Seed banks may help stem this rate of extinction but they are by no
means a solution. No seed bank or network of seed banks could ever
represent the infinite variation in climate adaptation even within
plant varieties that occurs at the level of each community or
farmer's fields. Furthermore, plant varieties conserved only in seed
banks have had their evolution halted so that they no longer interact
and adapt to the constantly changing growing conditions found in
farmers' fields.

As a growing number of conservation organizations, government
programs and international agencies have come to recognize, true
conservation of genetic diversity can only take place in farmers'
fields. Unfortunately, the ultimate consequence of the industrial
model of agriculture is farm fields that in the words of the U.S.
National Academy of Sciences are "impressively uniform . . . and
impressively vulnerable."

This impressive vulnerability of industrial agriculture is key to
understanding how climate change will likely have an impact on global
agriculture and on the relationship between industrial agriculture
and indigenous farming communities. Faced with rapid and dramatic
climate change, the impressively vulnerable industrial farm can
conceivably continue to use large-scale irrigation and artificial
fertilizers to counter the effects of changing temperature and
precipitation. The cost would be high, no doubt much higher than many
farmers in the southern hemisphere or Third World could bear, and
probably higher than could be absorbed by most marginal to
medium-scale farmers in North America or Europe. At the same time,
these changes might be welcomed by the largest agribusiness
enterprises, which could afford the higher levels of industrial
inputs and could profit from this new advantage.

Ultimately, however, changes in temperature are not the only serious
challenge faced by the industrial farmer. Crop losses to insect pests
have steadily increased throughout this century despite-or perhaps
because of-ever-greater use of pesticides. Outbreaks of
famine-threatening diseases such as late blight are becoming more and
more frequent. Not only has industrial agriculture failed to
eradicate the blight, the blight has evolved into new and more
virulent forms. Insects and disease are able to spread amidst modern
plant breeding and industrial controls because of their vast numbers
and rapid rate of reproduction. Together these factors allow disease
and insects to quickly adapt and thrive in the face of agribusiness
controls or climate changes. Sudden, dramatic climate change will
inevitably catalyze new evolutionary pathways to which industrial
agriculture cannot possibly respond without drawing on the genetic
diversity preserved by indigenous peoples.

At the same time, the survival of Native farmers ultimately depends
on the concentrated research capacity of the industrial farm system.
Native farmers, who have successfully domesticated and adapted
countless plant varieties over the millennia, soon will be up against
the challenge of accelerating the pace of adaptation to bring about
substantial new adaptations within a generation. The fact is that the
scale of industrial agriculture, the wealth that it has generated,
and the ample support of publicly funded research have led to a
number of significant breakthroughs in just this kind of plant
breeding.

Take again the example of the potato. Most potatoes are grown from
sprouted potato eyes rather than from seed. As a result, the genetic
makeup of the resulting plant is identical to this single parent.
Furthermore, since the potatoes that produce these sprouts grow side
by side with their parents in the soil, disease is passed on from one
generation to the next and tends to build up over time.

Indigenous farmers in the Andes typically grow most potatoes from
sprouted potatoes. Andean farmers usually also grow some potatoes
from the "true seeds" that are sometimes produced above ground on the
potato stalk once its flowers have been pollinated. Potatoes grown
from true seed are highly random, almost unpredictable combinations
of the genes from the two parents. Producing a useful new variety in
this way requires both a keen knowledge of the plant and the patience
of a lifetime.

Scientists working for Northern institutions, transnational
corporations and the International Potato Center in Peru have made a
number of recent advances based on these traditional techniques. One
is the use of tissue cultures grown under sterile laboratory
conditions to produce sprouting potatoes from which most or all
soil-borne diseases have been eliminated. Another is a technique for
creating true potato seeds that, like the seeds of hybrid corn or
beans, produce consistent, uniform offspring. Finally, genetic
engineering has permitted the rapid identification and insertion of
specific genetic characteristics into potato breeding stock.

Current technologies, however, have not addressed the needs or
concerns of indigenous peoples. In the best case, tissue culture
technology is being used to maintain viability of potato varieties
that might otherwise be discarded. However, contrary to developments
with "true potato seed," this technology has been applied exclusively
to preservation and breeding of potato varieties for large-scale,
commercial monocultures. In the worst case, biotechnology is being
used, not to accelerate the results that could be obtained through
traditional breeding, but to create new and potentially hazardous
cross-species fusions that could never occur in nature. One such
example is the hybrid of potato and toxic bacteria created by
Monsanto that defends itself against pests by poisoning them. In
addition, with these new advances, the scientists are using the
Western intellectual property system to claim patent and patent-like
rights over the technology and its products, which allows them to
monopolize the profits and exert monopoly control over how the
technology is applied.

What is needed is a way to apply these technologies in a dramatically
different way. Scientists with the resources to accelerate plant
breeding must work in partnership with the communities and peoples
who maintain contemporary crop diversity. Local farmers must not be
prohibited from adapting the products of new plant breeding to their
own needs, but enabled to do so. Call it the Machu Picchu model.

Recent trends in international law would support this kind of
paradigm shift in agricultural research as a right of indigenous
peoples. The legally binding Convention on Biological Diversity and
ILO Convention 169, the moral principles of the Draft Declaration on
the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the UNESCO Model Provisions for
the Protection of Folklore-as well as the broader concept of Farmers'
Rights being developed within the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization, which would apply to any traditional farmer-all point
toward a new regime of collective rights over knowledge and resources
for the traditional innovators and knowledge keepers. The elements of
such a rights regime as it is emerging in the UN system would include
the right to prior informed consent of any use or elaboration of
indigenous knowledge or genetic resources, the right to a fair share
in the benefits derived from the exploitation of indigenous knowledge
and resources, and the right to participate as full partners in this
development.

Perhaps most significantly, the Biodiversity Convention recognizes
that information exchange and technology transfer should be two-way
exchanges. Although arguably intended to promote corporations' access
to genetic resources in the southern hemisphere, the Convention makes
explicit-and legally binding-the right of indigenous peoples to have
access to and share in the benefits of the scientific resources of
the North. The wording of the Convention suggests that these rights
are held not just at the international or national level, but by each
village or community.

As yet, there is no enforcement mechanism to back up this emerging
body of indigenous rights. In general, enforcement has lagged far
beyond the recognition of rights in international law. Five decades
after the recognition of the crime of genocide, the UN system is only
just now setting up criminal courts to try those accused of such
crimes. The enforcement of rights pertaining to indigenous knowledge
and biological resources is currently evolving at the
intergenerational pace of traditional plant breeding. But if the
effects of climate change are already upon us, the evolution of such
enforcement mechanisms must be dramatically and immediately
accelerated. The ability of future generations to feed themselves
depends on it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------
Craig Benjamin is a Canadian journalist and researcher with a special
interest in food and agriculture issues.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

"Nowhere else will you be able to find such powerful-knowledge filled writing."
--Wilma Mankiller, Editorial Board Member of Native Americas Journal

Native Americas Journal
Akwe:kon Press
American Indian Program
Cornell University
450 Caldwell Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-2602

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Native Americas Journal
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American Indian Program, Cornell University
        http://www.aip.cornell.edu

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