Diversity: of eating and teaching

From a didactic point of view, a professor is always concerned about getting her students interested and involved in the topic/course of study. One way to do it is to call for discussion around current events in the field. In an Environmental and occupational health course I'm taking at the Graduate School of Public Health, we're blogging about and discussing recently published news articles. Here's my first post.

Crop diversity: Eat it or lose it is an article that appeared on the BBC website on Jan 6th 2009

There are many reasons for incorporating diversity into our diet: our own health, a healthier local farming community, and a healthier environment. Agricultural anthropologist, Jeff Bentley, argues that we’re also more likely to make it past a climate change crisis if we have a large crop gene pool--it’s likely that one of many possible cultivars will survive an environmental shock. All over the world, farmers are moving toward cultivating high-yielding varieties, effectively reducing our gene pool of cultivated crops. However, if demand for some of the older, traditionally consumed varieties existed, farmers may be more likely to grow them. It is up to us, then, to increase the variety of foods we consume, and to consciously make choices to buy traditional varieties of produce.

This is a ‘wicked’ environmental problem because there are multiple stakeholders with possibly different viewpoints. Farmers may be reluctant to grow traditional varieties until demand can be built up for those types of food, so farming of these cultivars may need to be subsidized even as people are educated about the virtues of consuming ‘older varieties’ of food. Seeds for traditional varieties may need to be made available in areas where these cultivars have been lost. People may have become accustomed to the ‘refined’ taste of rice or wheat, and may be unwilling to go back to eating quinoa, millets and other traditional foods. Furthermore, it may be important, in a world worried about climate change, to increase demand for traditional cultivars locally. Skyrocketing demand for purple Peruvian potatoes in Pittsburgh is less sustainable from the point of view of the climate, than increasing demand for these potatoes within Peru.

It will probably take deliberation between local governments, farmers, traders and consumers in order to build a market for traditional foods from the ground up. In Southern India, there is a group that is considering generating a recipe for millet cookies, and trying to replace the wheat-based, ubiquitously available 'Glucose biscuits' in village stores. This will take time, effort, and resources. Participatory approaches will have to be used to design policies that suit all the stakeholders.

I’m not sure if there are local, ‘traditional’ varieties of crops in the Pittsburgh area. May be older varieties of apple or squash? But we could all eat a more diverse diet sourced from local farmers, and in so doing, improve our own health as well as that of our community and our environment.

Doctors with Bags Full of Craft

This is an article from the October 2008 edition of Dishaa. You can also read about community-health workers, flood-relief efforts in Bihar, and a report on widows in Vidarbha in the newsletter.

In 1948, the World Health Organization (WHO) defined health as a “state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease.” Since 1993, Tribal Health Initiative (THI) has shown what it takes to achieve this level of health. Working in the adivasi, rural, Sittilingi valley (Dharmapuri District, Tamil Nadu), THI has brought infant mortality down from 150 in the 1990s to 32 in 2007; maternal mortality is now non-existent. Where women used to give birth outside their home – in the dirt – because of a belief that evil spirits are released along with child-birth, they now do so in the presence of a trained birth attendant, called a “health auxiliary” (HA; usually an older woman from their village). These HAs also make sure that women get check-ups during pregnancy and after childbirth. But health is not the only thing these ladies do – when asked what their most important task is, they said in a flash, “promoting organic farming.”

Farmer Thirthan with his Turmeric harvest. Photo: THI

When Regi and Lalitha George, founders of THI, undertook a padayatra to take the pulse of the valley in 2004, the overwhelming issue facing people was getting a good price for their farm produce. “Farmers who practiced chemical-intensive farming found themselves in debt unless they had a very good crop,” says Regi. THI organized multiple workshops on organic farming techniques; now, farmers in Sittilingi valley grow cotton, turmeric and, of late, even rice organically. The costs of inputs have gone down and they now make profits from their farms. “We are into organic farming from the health point of view,” says Lalitha: farmers are urged to intercrop, and brinjal, millets and onions are grown alongside cash crops, promoting food security in the family even as cash crops provide income.

The Lambadi community, with support of the Health Auxiliaries, is reviving its traditional art of embroidery, which has fallen out of fashion with the rise of the sari (the Lambadis are nomads who migrated to the region from western India many generations ago). On Lalitha’s urging, increasing numbers of people in these villages are now rediscovering their art. Embroidered craft items are now sold, and provide extra income for the family. They proudly call their line of craft items Porgai – which means “pride” in the local language. “Our relatives are often surprised when the two of us,doctors,enter their house with bags full of crafts,” laughs Lalitha. Maybe it takes doctors who sell crafts to make social well-being, a key component of the WHO definition of health, a reality.