Talking to farmers

In the last week I've been having a really interesting time interviewing farmers about seeds to collect case studies to use in Progressio's campaign against terminator technology.

Its fascinating getting to quiz people all about their daily lives, how and what they produce, how much they make, what the problems are etc. I love that kind of work. On Thursday I was sitting in the back of a pickup truck travelling back from a little community in the jungle having had a fascinating conversation with almost all the female side of a huge extended family (the men are away doing money work whilst the women farm) and grinning as the banana trees whizzed by, feeling amazed that somehow I was there in that place so far from Edinburgh, and that this was part of my job!

First I spent a couple of days in Cuenca which is high up in the Andes like Quito, but further south. I went round peoples farms and the markets in the city with Juliette, the lovely French Progressio development worker there. I was back in Quito for one day and then headed out to Tena which is low down in the Amazon and a totally different world.

In Cuenca people are growing much the same crops as you'd grow in the UK: root veg, chard, lettuces, kale, cabbages, tomatoes etc (plus some exotic fruits that you couldn't manage in Britain and guinea pigs for meat, chickens and lots of medicinal herbs). People's land looks a lot like market gardens or allotments in the UK- small plots with a real mix of produce. The people work hard all day everyday in the fields.

Agroecological producers at market in Cuenca


In Tena, people's farms looked to me like jungle. It wasn't till they pointed individual crops out to me that I could see yucca, cocoa, coffee, plantain, bananas etc. and various medicinal and sacred plants. There, it is hot and steamy and the people were very laid back. They told me that they basically work when they have to and in groups- when something really needs doing they set a day and everyone puts in a concerted effort for a morning or a day.




Nelson Ramon Mamallacta Alvarado at his farm near Tena

They welcomed me into their houses and cooked for me and were the ideal anthropological subjects/interviewees, being willing to talk about every detail of their lives in huge detail.(In Cuenca in contrast we stood outside or under people's porches in the rain, but were never invited in and people answered my questions politely and willingly in a few sentences then stopped to see what else I wanted to know).

The famous stereotype of closed mountain people versus open gregarious jungle/coast people seemed to hold very true. Amazing what the climate does to people- arriving in Tena at 10pm it was hot- I was sweating sitting still in a t-shirt and looking out the bus windows it was a real culture shock to me to see people out in the streets eating and laughing and joking, women in hotpants and strappy tops, men in shorts, some without t-shirts, everyone with bare feet or flip flops. Lots of bare skin and lots of lounging around in the open, laughing.

The other huge contrast with Quito was hearing the constant noise of insects and birds- the air always seems to be humming with life. Waking up to a cacophony of bird racket made me realise how fews birds you hear in Quito (and being eaten alive by insects made me love how few bugs there are in Quito).

Now I'm back in Quito, in the office its strange writing the interviews up- the realities of people's worlds here are so far away from London and the UK government and the EU and the people who might hopefully read the little stories I am writing and think briefly about the impact GM seeds might have on these people's lives. Most of them had no idea what 'genetically modified seeds' were let alone terminator technology.

The decisions of some international meeting on biodiversity about whether to permit the commercialisation of terminator seeds seems on the one hand utterly irrelevant to producers who are thinking at the level of growing enough to eat and maybe a little more to sell to be able to buy other bits and pieces...But then on the other hand, the possible impacts are chillingly relevant and its scary to think how little decisionmaking power or influence these farmers have over the big decisions whose impacts will eventually reach them.



If you're interested you can see some video clips of interviews