From: owner-sard-room3
To: SARD-ROOM3
Subject: Paper 10. Virginia Nazarea Sandova
Date: Thursday, December 07, 1995 2:38PM
Summary
Cultural Alternatives in In Situ Germplasm Conservation
Dr. Virginia Nazarea Sandoval
In situ germplasm conservation, was intended to take the memory banking
initiative one step further in two parallel and complementary directions: 1)
transferring the main responsibility for documenting indigenous agricultural
knowledge from researchers to farmer-custodians and 2) moving the germplasm
collection even closer to the source by forging a partnership between
scientists and users in the establishment and maintenance of in situ
germplasm collections. Another objective was to document and compare two
novel approaches to in situ gene banking. One is through a male political
hierarchy based on traditional notions of power and control. The other is
through an informal network of migrant women based on a more or less
egalitarian camaraderie or informal networks.
After visiting several possible sites in Bukidnon and talking with the local
population to explore the possibility of establishing an in situ gene bank
for traditional root crops, tow sites Dalwangan in Malaybalay and Maambong
in Libona were selected. In choosing the sites de foremost considerations
were the possibility of comparing results on several dimensions and the
prospect of sustaining the project initiative at the local level. In
Dalwangan, the populations is predominantly composed of native Bukidnons who
cultivate three major cash crops -- corn, coffee, and abaca. Production of
root crops is less commercialized and the local farmers still reserve much
of their produce for subsistence. On the other hand, Maambong is populated
by Visayan migrants from Bohol and Cebu and many farmers are engaged in a
moderately commercialized production of sweet potatoes in addition to corn
which is the major crop.
The name of this project component is derived from a native Binukid term
meaning Livelihood for the People . The name was coined by the local
leadership to signify the incorporation of income-generating activities such
as goat, chicken, and swine raising into the maintenance of indigenous
varieties of root crops. This project component was based in Dalwangan,
Malaybalay and was organized and managed in collaboration with the local
male political leadership comprised of village chieftains ( datus ), council
of elders, and organized youth.
Eventually, the maintenance of the Dalwangan root crop gene bank became the
day-to-day responsibility of the female kins of the datu s brother s
household, with male participation mostly confined to land preparation.
When the long, dry season decimated the germplasm collection, one of the
women rescued a third of the varieties and established her own gene bank
in the form of a home garden. Other women followed suit, planting cuttings
of different varieties in their respective homegardens. These cuttings came
from the Dalwangan in situ collection, the nearby International Potato
Center (CIP) local gene bank, and the Maambong in situ collection which they
visited. Essentially, therefore, what started as a male authority-enforced
group curatorship disintegrated in favor of a patchwork of
multiple-curatorship, homegarden-style collections established and
maintained by the women of Dalwangan.
In Maambong, the local gene banking effort was pursued with a light-hearted
communal spirit from the planning up to the maintenance of the collection.
Men and children joined in the land preparation and planting, both of which
were completed in one day. Interest was sustained by the camaraderie that
prevailed among the women curators. The informal network that we started
with the migrant women comprising the Inahan sa Makugihan became more and
more complex with multiple links established among gene bank collaborators.
Lydia vda de Caceres, the donor of the land became a moral rather than a
political/organizational leader, encouraging participation mainly by example
and by enjoining neighbors, friends, and kins to fulfill their reciprocal
responsibilities.
We anticipated that the root crop germplasm collection in Maambong will grow
by flow and accretion of germplasm through different pathways such as
blood relations, ceremonial kinship, and exchange between market associates.
As it turned out, the main source of germplasm enhancement was exchange
between neighbors. Thus, any variety that was obtained by a participant was
shared until it spread among all or almost all of them (Prain and Piniero,
1994). The resulting redundancy constitutes a natural back-up system in
case of loss of cultivars in any of the rows of the in situ gene bank. It
also demonstrates that there is a well-entrenched cultural ethic of sharing
coupled with an active interest in soliciting when it comes to plant genetic
resources, at least in terms of food crops. Finally, it shows that communal
in situ gene banks do not compete with homegardens but rather that the two
forms of local germplasm conservation can actually enrich and reinforce each
other.
In situ gene banking is a promising channel of genetic conservation that
could prove compatible with ex situ gene banking and with development if it
is pursued with full regard to its historical, cultural, and institutional
context. It is a practice that already exists in the form of homegardens,
polycultures, and traditional agrosystems. The point is to make the
conservation component more systematic, sustainable, and intrinsic and to
link it to imperatives beyond the local, even regional, scale. Farmers have
historically nurtured diversity in the microenvironments they control and
thus may need institutional support but certainly not institutional mandate
to continue doing so.
One contribution that memory banking can make to the conservation of
biodiversity is that it will not allow us to forget that options are
available, that viable alternatives have existed through time and space, and
that local evaluation criteria, in addition to agronomic and scientific
ones, are also important and need to be seriously considered. The key is to
document agricultural knowledge in such a way that the local population has
the ultimate control over access - the authors who possess the copyright and
who will have a say in determining the terms of sharing and exchange. In
this manner, they can utilize conventions that exist in the global
marketplace to their advantage instead of being talked about and talked over
in negotiations that are supposedly for their welfare. Work is ongoing in
this direction. In the meantime, I am reminded of a line from a Bukidnon
epic, the Olaging:
If we pass there
This we shall pass
This we shall traverse again
Hopefully, the path - or paths - will be impact in the event that humanity
need to traverse them again.