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Seeds
of Life Cast a Golden Hue
The village women sit cross-legged, patiently shelling
corn; production-line workers filling woven baskets with
tumbling grain. Ordinarily there would be nothing to differentiate
this moment from countless others in the seasonal cycle
of life and work in the foothills outside Baucau on East
Timor’s central, north coast.
The crop has been harvested, the women, young and old,
are now doing what they have always done — yet the
whole scene depicts a farming revolution. The grain, being
prized off the cobs by a blur of callused thumbs is yellow.
Plus there’s a lot more of it.
This new, high-yielding yellow maize is one of the more
visible changes beginning to pervade a way of life that
has effectively been unchanged in East Timor’s rural
areas for hundreds of years.
Independence has opened the door to modern agriculture
— something that is going to be crucial for food
security and for the country’s long-term aspirations
for sustainable agriculture.
The new yellow maize is being grown on a farm run by an
Italian priest, Father Locatelli. The farm, at Fatumaca,
near Baucau, is attached to an agricultural high school
run by the Silesian missionary order. It has proved the
ideal site for crop trials being undertaken by a former
CSIRO researcher, Dr Brian Palmer. Already his yellow
maize, provided by CIMMYT, is yielding up to six tonnes
a hectare of ‘corn’ compared with the indigenous
white maize’s average 1.5 tonnes.
If these high yields can be replicated across the country
for staple crops like maize it will free up land for more
commercial ventures such as vanilla, soybean, peanuts
and candle nut (for oil).
Significantly, much of the terrain is similar to Australia’s
far north-west and prone to erosion so higher yields will
also reduce the need to farm unsuitable land.
This is one of the crucial elements behind Palmer’s
work as project leader for the $1.2 million ‘Seeds
of Life’ program set up by the Australian Centre
for International Agricultural research (ACIAR).
He is determined to help East Timorese farmers avoid causing
long-term environmental damage as they respond to the
urgent need to not only increase basic food production,
but exportable surpluses.
"Getting more produce from the land, through the
new varieties introduced under the program, will also
create space for diversification into agroforestry and
livestock," says Palmer.
The new high-yielding crops include beans and cassava
from CIAT, sweetpotato from CIP, rice from IRRI, maize
from CIMMYT, and groundnut from ICRISAT.
Palmer says his main focus has been to take the germplasm
provided by the research centres and improve the selection
for East Timor’s four main ‘agro-ecological’
zones.
"Once we feel we have the lines that are well adapted
to East Timor we then have to determine if they are acceptable
to the farmers. For example the new high-yielding maize
is yellow, which has a different taste and texture to
the traditional white maize."
He believes the key to farmers adopting new varieties
and farming methods is ‘participatory planning’.
"To me this means offering them (the farmers) technically
sound options from which they can choose. Some aid organisations
simply want me to give farmers what they ask for. Well
until they’ve been exposed to a range of viable alternatives
that’s not giving them the options to move forward."
He particularly rankles at outside pressure being put
on East Timor farmers to go ‘organic’ and not
to use the chemical fertilisers that he advocates.
Palmer says the nature of the landscape and soil profiles
makes fertiliser essential if higher yields are going
to be sustained.
At his trial sites he applies a small dressing of nitrogen,
phosphorous and potassium: "At the end of the day
it doesn’t really matter whether farmers use chemical
or organic fertiliser. The issue is which is the most
economic.
"The amount of fertiliser we’re using equates
to the cost of two or three packets of cigarettes or a
bet at a cockfight — in other words a cost of about
A $3.38 per 100 square metres — so it’s an accessible
choice. It still might be too much for some farmers, but
it has to be weighed up against the time and labour needed
to produce the volume of equivalent compost."
Contrary to the pessimism that some observers have expressed
about East Timor’s economic progress, Palmer is confident
the country will achieve food self-sufficiency and in
the longer-term establish a sustainable agricultural economy
— regarded by the government as crucial to its future.
"The progress we have already made and the willingness
of the international agricultural science community to
be involved makes me pretty optimistic," he says.
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| Brian Palmer and local farmer
at Fatumaca, East Timor |
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The Seeds of Life program, overseen by an Australian agronomist
Dr Colin Piggin, is now changing from a humanitarian operation
in 1999 to an agricultural extension program focussed
on sustainable production and the development of commercial
crops.
The program’s genesis was in the unrest after East
Timorese voted for Independence in September 1999. Much
of the seed for the next harvest was either burned or
stolen. The ACIAR contacted the world’s five leading
crop research centres for suitable seed and by December
the first crops were being sown, averting a potential
famine.
Brian Palmer was in the first wave of helpers to go to
East Timor and has been there ever since: "I had
spent 20 years as a research scientist. Now was a chance
to put it to real use," he explained, showing off
to a group of admiring farmers a plump bunch of groundnuts.
By Brad Collis
CGIAR News thanks the author for contributing this feature
article.
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