Part III: A Short Detour to Look at Corn Production In Nepal and Get A Glimpse of Some Sustainable Agricultural Concepts

It was typical to see small groups of women and girls, or pairs like this one, carrying these baskets of freshly picked ears of corn from the fields back to their houses where they would shuck the corn and remove the kernels and dry them. This traffic went on from very early morning until late afternoon. I arrived in Nepal during the corn harvest and close to the beginning of rice planting. The two crops overlap in their growing cycles. Rice and corn represent about 90 percent of Nepal's agricultural harvest and the two grains are equal in importance as well as in the size, or amount, of the harvest. They are the country's "staple" crops and the basis of the country's food system and diet. Other items in the diet include barley, wheat (in western Nepal), and some green vegetables. The diet in the areas where I visited in Nepal included a limited amount of meat, usually goat or buffalo. The corn harvest goes on at about the same two or three week period when the rice has to be planted and is dependent on the arrival of the Monsoon, so, as in other agricultural areas around the world, it is a busy, labor-intensive time.

Watching this procession each day and meeting some of the women as they walked back to the corn fields gave me my first impression of the role of women in Nepal and how hard they work, and how little they receive from their hard work. They put in long days and everything they do involves large expenditures of energy possibly at about the same rate as running a long race, or climbing a difficult mountain. This form of agriculture, the intensive manual labor by women, and the growing of only two crops with the resulting lack of diversity and the huge impacts on the soils, brings up some interesting points. Is this a sustainable form of agriculture? What are the variables that make it more sustainable than other ways agriculture might be practiced in Nepal now and in the future, and how do some variables make it less sustainable?

A woman on the way to the fields in Rampur to harvest corn. She's holding a "corn knife" which most women carry tucked into the back of their saris.

The absence of a mechanized, petroleum-fueled agriculture, one that is more subsistence-based for home consumption, very dependent on manual labor with additional power supplied by oxen, makes Nepali agriculture appear sustainable and relatively stable over long periods of time. It utilizes local, seasonal supplies of surface water that requires little additional energy (mainly gravity) to move to the crops in the field. About 50 percent of the yearly supplemental nutrient applied to crops is from locally produced organic fertilizer derived from composted animal manure. These features represent facets of a sustainable agriculture seen in the context of a small country with a small population to feed, but I want to explore whether that is a valid assessment of Nepali agriculture in general.

The concept of sustainability, as I have been using it, represents a continuum of perspectives and practices. It consists of many, many variables. It's usually boiled down to a few axioms that are useful but not accurate. It has also become a "buzz word" which further blurs its meaning. What's sustainable in Nepal might not be any where else. Or what is sustainable for one individual may not be seen as sustainable by another individual. As a continuum, sustainability is a measuring tool that gives us a way to compare practices, impacts, rates of adaption and eventually allows us to make decisions that promote the health of the soil, the water, the plants, the Planet, and each of its inhabitants. Sustainability equals reduced stress in living systems which, on the flip side, translates to greater, or optimal health of living systems. As I mentioned before it is really a broad organizing concept that helps pull information into a central heading for closer (better?) evaluation and decision making.

In the early 1960s with the advent of the IBM Fortran 1640 computers the field of Ecology, as a substantial field of science, became modernized in a brief period of time. The word "ecology" was suddenly on everyone's lips, used in advertisements for myriad consumer items. The term "sustainability", congers up some of the same ideas Ecology does about the interrelationships between the environment and the seeminly infinite numbers of living things inhabiting those environemnts. One really sound measure, today, of whether what we humans are doing is sustainable or not, is the fate of the biodiversity within those environments as it is represented by the fauna and flora on our planet. All of us are probably aware that the biodiveristy index is shrinking astonishingly quickly (tragically) almost on a daily basis.

Those early IBM computers made it possible to collect and store enormous amounts of precise data and organize the data into a more comprehensible picture of the Earth's ecological systems then what had existed before. By the way, those computers were as slow as molasses, as big as automobiles, and made really strange, scary noises late at night in the college laboratories they inhabited.

Ecology suddenly became a very important science for helping us understand the complex interrelationshhips of all things, everything that makes up the natural world here on Earth, and the human impacts on those systems.

In addition, computers changed the way we use language to define things. Computers created a language of their own that change the way we perceived the Earth and the living systmes and one spectacularly related phenomenon, the Apollo Space Program, which was computer "driven" created a revolution in how we perceive the Earth. That was when in 1969 American astronauts made the first moon landing and immediately began sending back photographic images of the Earth. In an instant most people on Earth near a television suddenly saw their home as a gorgeous, brilliant blue, white, brown, green marble hanging precariously in the blackness of space. Those images revolutionized the way we thought and talked about the Earth.

This woman is selling "Moki" by the side of the road. It is roasted corn and what we ate for breakfast and snacks most of the time I was in Nepal. You sip your chia while you wait for the roasted corn cob to cool off. Then you pick off kernels of corn individual and chew on them. It's yummy and a great breakfast with that provides a lot of energy that lasts for hours. Nutrition-wise it's the same idea and probably a little healthier than corn flakes.

We've latched on to the word "sustainability" as an expression of hope and commitment. We, started fairly recently to critically measure all impacts humans have on the planet particularly those which pose a serious threat to the "sustainability" of the Earth where sustainability means survival. Right now, as I write this in April 2009, sustainability is most often used in conjunction with the terms "biodiversity" and "global warming", the two popular measuring tools of sustainability. Within those terms sustainability poses the critical question: "will the Earth continue to sustain life indefinitely? Will we be able to sustain our existence here indefinitely? These are post-modern questions and the first real indicators that something is terribly wrong. The first cues about the accumulated damage we've been doing to our planet initially emerged from books like Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" in which she reported the enormous damage done by the DDT and other pesticides. It was widely read and instantly a comprehensive, unified response by the US government which was to ban the use of DDT in the United States. That was an example of "sustainability" in action and one of the first of numerous warnings that reached a broad cross section of the population and created a consensus along with a "mindfullness" that we needed to be much more aware of what we are doing to the environment. Carson's book coalasced a broad response from conservation, preservation, and environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, The Audubon Society, and the Wilderness Society.

Back to corn: the history of corn in Nepal is fascinating. Corn originated in the New World emerging out of what's now Mexico, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. It grew there as a wild plant. Over, perhaps, a thousand years it was slowly bred out by people in that region and it gradually evolved into a food crop that farmers had control over. They could plant seeds in clearings they made by burning the forest and they would not fairly accurately when the corn would be mature. Calenders were created to determine what was the best time to plant the corn and how to predict the harvest in advance. Corn became an important food crop helping to sustain the ancient cultures of the Maya, Ayacomo, and other first people.

Beginning before the Christian era (2000 BP) corn began to "migrate" to the far corners of North and South America. A long list of Native bands from present day Canada and the United States, from ocean to ocean, have had corn in their diets for more than a 1000 years if not longer. It is now grown on every continent including Asia and Africa where it's a very important food source. It was introduced into Nepal in the mid-1800s and has, since then, offered a secure staple crop that would not fail if the rice crop failed. I am going to guess that corn was introduced to offer some insurance against famine. Corn, at the time it was introduced, had no known pests in Nepal and it grows well in the climate and soils of Nepal, and uses the same tools and labor force that rice does for planting, cultivating and harvesting.

There is a section in the blog below on rice cultivation but to compare corn and rice historically is interesting. The latest theories regarding the development of rice as a cultivated food say that it was first domesticated along the Yalu River in China beginning 7000-6000 years ago and that it took almost 2000 years to develop reliable domestic varieties. It began with wild varieties and over a painstaking period and process rice eventually emerged as a dependable food crop. This history parallels the development of other grains like buckwheat and wheat further east during the same period in human history.

Corn is not the most sustainable crop to grow. It's an anuual and like rice, is a "heavy feeder" meaning it removes a lot of nutrient from the soil particularly nitrogen but including other essential soil ingredients like sulphur, phosphorus, and potassium. (The three macro nutrients in the soil are expressed as NPK: Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium. There is a long list of essential micro-nutrients like iron, sulphur, manganese, magnesium, zinc, copper, etc). Corn produces a lot of biomass including the corn plus the corn plant. Nepali farmers utilize the entire plant first as human food and then fodder for the livestock. Only a small portion of the corn plant isn't used and what isn't used is plowed back into the soil at the end of the harvest where it adds organic matter and nutrients (small amounts) back into the soil.

I grow corn in my home state in the US which I sell in local markets. I made a point of talking to the Nepali farmers about their corn "practices" particularly how they compensate for the heavy loss of soil nitrogen by the yearly corn crop. The farmer in this photo told me that because of the large number of farm animals (water buffalo primarily) that are still used for field work there's a good annual supply of animal manures (farm yard manures=FYM) which are reapplied to the fields in a composted form. Corn loves manure and cows (buffalo, too) love corn! The variety of corn he's holding is what I saw most of the time in Nepal. It is most likely a variety called Rampur Composite which is a yellow, semi-flint, open pollinated variety (OPV) and it's close in color, size, number of rows, and taste to a variety that was popular in the US in the 1960s-1970s called "Golden Bantam". It's called a "good keeper" because it holds it's sugar content longer than some of the new "super sweet" hyrbrids like "Butter and Sugar" (popular in the US) which only keep their taste for a few hours after they're picked before the sugar turns to starch and the corn becomes less tasteful. Semi-flint refers to the hardness of the outer shell, or casing, of the kernels. There are several types of corn: Dent, Flint and pop corn, for instance. Dent has a softer shell and that means the starch is configured differently then Flint corn which as a super hard corn has more starch. One last note: Nepali's get most of their carbohydrates from corn. Most of the corn grown in Nepal is consumed at home, or in the village where it is grown.

Agriculture is labor intensive in Nepal and that's underscored by this picture where a family is busily husking a small mountain of corn. I saw this repeated everywhere as in the photos below and largely it was women who were doing the work.

Another family and another mountain of corn. The corn seen here is for home consumption. After the kernels are removed from the cobs they're dried on tarps when the sun is shining and then it is ground into a product like corn meal or hominy and stored for use by the family. During the harvest season everyone enjoys the corn roasted on open flames when it is referred to as "Moki" (moke-eye).

The labor issues around corn in Nepal are more complicated than the nutrient needs of the plants. Nepal is currently risking everything to become a world tourist country. It has sixteen, or so, national parks with different themes. Many of them are conservation areas around the high peaks of the Himalaya like Everest (Sagamartha), Annapurna, Mansalu, Kanchanjunga and Mansalu that create a governance for environmental protection and the ability to manage the amount of traffic. The others are primary tourist attractions as well as plant and animal sanctuaries particularly for endangered Asian species like the Bengal tiger and the Asian elephant. Because most of the infrastructure for this industry is located in cities like Kathmandu and Pokhara they tend to draw men off the farms with the hope for better pay and more money. It's that old story. So the population left in the rural areas to tend to the planting and harvesting of crops is largely in the women's and children's hands (and backs, etc.) Is that sustainable? The response has been to create an infrastructure to mechanize agriculture as much as possible. That means tractors, bank loans, tractor dealerships, tractor repair people, gas stations, tire stores, etc. It means jobs but it also means more capitalization by the farmer.

In 1919, in the US, 90 percent of the male work force was involved in some area of agriculture whether it was on the farm or working at a factory that made tractors and plows, or other implements, or fertilizer and pesticides (although there were few chemical pesticides in use at that time). In 2009 less than 10 percent of the entire US work force is involved in agriculture and most of that is within the golf industry. Golf Courses in the US now account for millions of acres (approximately 3,000,000 acres in 2009) of grass that needs watering, fertilizers, insecticides, specialized lawn mowers, etc. It is the largest sector of agriculture in the US at the present time .

First the corn is husked.
Then the kernels are removed from the cobs by hand and it is a tedious, time consuming job
.
Until the basked it filled. I tried to find out how many ears of corn would fill a basket but the sizes of the baskets varied so much that it was useless. This woman and I tried to keep count of the number of ears it took to fill this basket. Suffice it to say it was a lot of ears.

The baskets are emptied on cloth or plastic tarps. The corn is then spread out to dry in the sun.

The sun is sometimes unreliable, or rather, because of the Monsoon season arriving there is a chance of showers at any moment so someone stays close to the corn and makes sure it doesn't get rained on.

This photo incudes the unhusked corn on the left, husked corn cobs on the right and a some of the kernels in the wooden "boat" in the center.

This is a close up of the corn kernels. These will be ground into a coarse meal.

In the foot hills and mountains where the rivers run particularly fast it is economical to build a small grist mill like this utilizing a water wheel and the fast moving water to grind the corn mechanically.

Without a water powered grist mill the corn is taken to a centralized business, a miller, that grinds corn.

Here it's weighed to determine the price paid to the farmer. As I already pointed out almost all the corn harvested in Nepal is consumed in the same place it was grown, by the farmers and their families, or within the village. In other words, very little of it gets shipped to other areas in Nepal, or out of the country.

In the foot hills near Annapurna I watched this young woman quickly use the discared corn husks to make these mats which are used in the homes. She used her feet as much as she used her hands. When I tried to do this I failed miserably and became the laughing stock of the entire village. They probably still laugh uproariously when someone imitates me trying to learn to braid the corn husks.

It was really neat to watch her do this because of the way she used both hands and her feet and she did it astonishingly fast. She made it look easy. It reminded me of the Kumal who made their own fish nets which requires tying complicated knots over and over again but they could do it with blinding speed. I have watched Navahoe and Oglalla people make bows and arrows and arrow heads from scratch in this same way, with skill and confidence and incredible speed. These are lost arts, that indigenous knowledge that gets separated and disappears before anyone know what happened to it.

The very end of the corn harvest entails chopping down the corn stalks and transporting them to where the buffalo are fed.

Here again it is the women and children who are doing most of the field work. This woman and I had a contest to see who could pick up the most corn stalks in a single load and I said I was pretty sure it was a tie which amused her no end.

For the moment that is the end of the corn story but it gets repeated in myriad forms in Nepal in terms of the sustainability of agriculture and development of food systems. Within the conference setting which we will return to, there was fear that by adopting one path to economic development that Nepal would be forced by the World Bank and other lending agencies to change its food system and adopt that of the industrialized countries and, particularly, adopt a mechanization of food production. This had both positive and negative connotations for the farmers at the conference.