Crops

Why didn’t anybody say it was the International Year of the Potato? Tut, tut to RMAP’s South Asia specialists, as a third of all potatoes are now grown in India and China (so I am informed).

It defies belief that an all-year event like this should pass unnoticed at RMAP until the ninth month was upon us. But, indeed, a search of our site reveals only that some trifling outrage was referred to as a ‘hot potato’, which is I believe a metaphor.

Good grief, there’s even a photo competition sponsored by Nikon.

Bush icon or giant dog’s visiting card: the Big Potato at Robertson, NSW.

- The new international research frontier was the title of last week’s conference organised by the ATSE Crawford fund.

Keynote speakers at this national event were: The Hon MP Tony Burke, The PM Kevin Rudd’s Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Minister, Ms Katherine Sierra, Vice President for Sustainable Development at the Worldbank and Professor Ross Garnaut (on wikipedia), Climate Change expert from the ANU/Uni Melbourne.

While most speakers were very interesting and informative, my personal highlights were the presentations by Ms Frances Seymour and Dr Trevor Nicholls. Ms Frances Seymour is the Director General of CIFOR who visited the ANU for a presentation on Indonesian forests a day after the conference. She defined the issue with forests and CC as the 3 C’s: which are

1. CAUSE - ie deforestation in particular of peatland forests,
2. CASUALITIES - simply put a forest is gone means less rain, more droughts, more fire, more forests gone…
3. CO-BENEFITS - standing forests provide long-term livelihoods, and are a biodiversity hub.

Dr. Trevor Nicholls is CEO of CAB International which offers IPM (Integrated Pest Management) solutions to smallholders in developing countries. They have an extensive database which provides a linkage between research and practioners. The good thing about the pesticides CABI develops is that they are non-chemical solutions. These biopesticides are used in fighting invasive weeds for example, or root disases by using specifc fungi and other microorganisms.

The ATSE Crawford Fund was established in June 1987 by The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. It was named in honour of the late Sir John Crawford and commemorates his outstanding services to international agricultural research. The last conference I attended was in 2006 on Water for Irrigated Agriculture and the Environment.

See also a blog entry on the conference on Hendra’s blog.

Btw, did you know that CIFOR also can stands for Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response…?

Maybe a simple question with which I am currently dealing but for which I find contradictory answers in the literature…

To set the scene: 19 century Bali, the highly sophisticated irrigated rice terraces have long been established.

But were it the kings who invested into large dam structures to enable such systems and benefit from the usufruct or were it the farmers all by themselves, everynow and then paying some tribute to the(ir) lords?

And what about the trade in those days: Were it only the elites who engaged in such activities (after 200 years of successful slave trade), selling the little surplus that pawns made on royal land, or were it farming communities who actively participated not only in the local but regional and even inter-island trade to sell their produce from their own fertile lands?

Those who argue for the former it seems then are kind of saying that these communities serving the lord have no thinking of their own, they are mere pawns on a chessboard awaiting the orders from somewhere above to move. ‘Inward’ people as Geertz called it focusing on subsistence only. On the other hand, the latter argument of an almost acephalous organisations of farmers that manage it all by themselves purposfully cultivating goods for the market is somewhat unimaginable too.

So finally, it probably comes back(at least partially) to the question of equality or hierarchy? Both Geertz and Lansing have attempted to answer this (among many other issues) in their respective books Negara (Geertz 1980) and Perfect Order (Lansing 2006). I can’t make up my mind yet…

Mike Bourke (Argument Moderator)

This was an excellent Argument with all speakers making compelling cases. As well as the panel, Janelle McGufficke, Manager of Environmental Programs at Ricegrowers’ Association of Australia and Deborah Kerr from the National Farmer’s Federation, gave short presentations, making a strong case for irrigated rice production in Australia. The event was recorded and is available as podcast, if you were not able to be there.

From left: Barney Foran, Eric Craswell, John Angus and Mike Bourke.

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