Troubles victims build bridges for peace

(Dungiven, Northern Ireland)- As a peace journalism trainer, I’ve led heart wrenching conversations about reconciliation and forgiveness in conflict zones like Kashmir and South Sudan. Yet in no place I’ve traveled Is the pain of conflict, and the threat of violence, so close to the surface as it is here in Northern Ireland.

Conflict induced pain, and the hope for a more harmonious future, were on display at an event Sunday night in Dungiven titled “Having Difficult Conversations.” The panel discussion was organized in conjunction with Lyra’s Walk (see link below), held to honor the memory of journalist Lyra Mckee, who was killed during a protest in April in Derry.

Six panelists discussed their experiences during and after the Troubles (link below). Especially inspirational were panelists Jo Berry and Richard Moore, both of whom suffered incalculable loss during the Troubles yet have overcome bitterness and hatred to lead peace movements.

Berry’s father was killed by an IRA bomb in 1984. A few years later, she reached out to and eventually met the bomber. She said, “I didn’t need an apology...I wanted to see his humanity, that he cared.” She said that he did eventually apologize because she learned to “challenge him without making him wrong and me right.” She founded and runs an organization called Building Bridges for Peace.

Moore’s journey of forgiveness, if it appeared in a movie script, would be dismissed as implausible. At age 10, during the Troubles, he was blinded by a shot to the face by a policeman. He also met his attacker, and they have since become friends. “The greatest thing in my life is the presence of forgiveness,” he said. Moore has since gone on to launch Children in the Crossfire, which helps children in conflict zones around the world. During his travels, he met the Dalai Lama, who labeled Moore “an indomitable spirit” and “my hero.”

The best audience question at the event cut directly to the most contentious issue: Is there any point in having difficult conversations if the sides don’t want to talk? Berry said one can’t launch difficult discussions with the intent of changing opinions. Instead, she said such discussions, properly handled, can create spaces where people will feel safe if they decide to change their minds. 

The discussion concluded with an examination about how Northern Ireland can move forward after Lyra Mckee’s murder as well as the long history of sectarianism here. Moore’s advice was, “You’ve got to instill compassion...You not only respond with the head, but with the heart. All groups can justify what they’ve done (during the Troubles), but we have to draw a line in the sand...and play a new game—learning from the past, but not using the past.”

Moore, Berry, and co-panelists Linda Ervine, John O’Doherty, Kathy Wolff, and Michael Culbert left me inspired and hopeful. Yet, neither I nor the other 150 attendees left wearing rose colored glasses. The historical animosities, “tribalism” as it was labeled by several panelists, were apparent in audience comments made during the event.

Even 21 years after the end of the Troubles, it’s clear that Northern Ireland’s peace is still a work in progress. But one can’t help but be encouraged after hearing the panelists tales of courage, integrity, forgiveness, and determination. If anyone can make peace happen here, it’s Jo Berry, Richard Moore, and their colleagues.

LINKS

Lyra’s Walk

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/taking-the-long-road-to-lasting-peace-in-memory-of-lyra-mckee-38150535.html

The Troubles in NI-brief history

https://www.history.co.uk/history-of-the-northern-ireland-conflict

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Turning violence into peace

(Dungiven, Northern Ireland)- Remarkable panel discussion yesterday with violence survivors who are now peace activists. Still processing this incredible experience, held to honor recently murdered journalist Lyra Mckee. More details to follow in a few days.

Media and reconciliation in Northern Ireland

(Belfast, Northern Ireland)-Should the media play a role in reconciliation? This key question was on the front burner at Friday’s peace journalism workshop at the George Mitchell Center for Global Peace, Security, and Justice at Queen’s University-Belfast.

The session began with an overview of the elements of reconciliation, followed by a discussion of what role if any media should play in reconciliation—a particularly salient issue here in Northern Ireland, which is still healing 21 years after the Good Friday accords. I noted that peace journalism would encourage reporting that leads a productive societal discussion about reconciliation processes and issues, without taking a position on the desirability of reconciliation or advocating for any one reconciliation process. 

The journalist/participants agreed that media have a vital role to play in reconciliation. They noted several deficits in reconciliation coverage from Northern Ireland’s journalists. These include a gender bias that marginalizes women, over use of elite voices and under reporting about the marginalized and voiceless, and a lack of background and context in reports about reconciliation.

I mentioned that journalists everywhere struggle reporting reconciliation issues since they are complex and occur over many years. Journalists are geared to cover breaking news—accidents, disasters, violence. Reconciliation, in contrast, doesn’t break, it oozes.

Despite the struggles, we discussed several positive examples of reconciliation reporting in Northern Ireland including The View magazine and Shared Future News online.

Friday’s session concluded with a discussion about social media as a tool for peace.

The project here in Northern Ireland is sponsored by a US Embassy-London grant. It will continue this week with public lectures and meetings with journalists. 

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Social media, reconciliation in NI

(Belfast, Northern Ireland)-How can social media be a tool for reconciliation in Northern Ireland, where the search for a lasting peace continues more than 20 years after the “troubles”?

This discussion was featured in today’s peace journalism workshop for social and online media professionals at the Mitchell Center for Global Peace, Security, and Justice at Queen’s University-Belfast.

I presented a list on how to apply social media principles for peace journalism, including using SM to fact check, to broaden societal conversations, and to connect peace journalists. The participants added two important items: 1. Use social media to seek opinions outside your ideological bubble; 2. Use social media to tag those with opposing viewpoints, as a way of engendering conversations.

We also discussed an interesting fact checking initiative directed by workshop participant Allan Leonard called factcheckNI. His perspectives on fact checking as a reconciliation tool were fascinating. He said factcheckni.org is not about changing minds, but instead seeks to engage viewers to ask, ‘Do you think that the data presented constitute a basis for investigating the accuracy of a claim?’ Leonard said he believes that enough people thinking critically about a given issue could even prevent violence in Northern Ireland.

The project here is sponsored by a US Embassy-London grant. It will continue with public lectures and workshops for journalists. 

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PepsiCo vs Potato farmers -- Protecting Indian farmers from predatory patent laws

Pic courtesy: The Hindu

When the multinational food and beverage giant PepsiCo filed a case for patent infringement against nine potato farmers in Gujarat it was obviously for reasons of strengthening its seed monopoly. Of the nine farmers, four were slapped each with Rs 1.05-crore lawsuit this year and another five had been served each with a Rs 20-lakh legal case last year. These farmers were accused of ‘illegally’ cultivating and selling PepsiCo potato variety FC5, which is used for making chips. 

And when the company announced the withdrawal of the lawsuit after a social media uproar, and after having discussions with the Gujarat government, it actually managed to seek the same assurance from the government what it was trying through the legal route -- to persuade farmers from growing the registered variety of potato without prior permission, and if they do they must sell the produce to the company. Although this goes against the very tenets of farmers rights enshrined in the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act (PPVFRA) 2001, the ‘ amicable solution’ that the Gujarat government reached ended in blatantly upholding PepsiCo’s patent claims, which in reality do not exist.

As per media reports, the Gujarat government sought in future a tripartite agreement to be signed between PepsiCo, farmers and the state government so that ‘the government remains in the know of development if any controversy erupts and can also have a say in it’. If the underlying intention is to uphold the company’s position it defies the very objective of the PPVFR Act, which makes it mandatory for the state to protect farmers’ rights. After all, the PPVFR Authority that has been primarily constituted is not only meant to register crop varieties, including farmer’s varieties, but is required to uphold farmers’ rights. Gujarat government should therefore make its stand clear. It cannot brush aside the law which it is under obligation to protect. 

The newly formed Beej Adhikaar Manch, an association to protect farmer’s seed sovereignty makes it abundantly clear: “The Government of India had maintained an ominous silence on the legal situation in the country on farmers’ seed freedoms, taking cover of the matter being sub judice. Now it must make it amply clear that such litigation is not acceptable. ” The Gujarat government therefore must come out openly to convince farmers of its intent to protect their rights which are under threat from the multinationals. The Centre too must stand by its own law.

The farmers’ right that the PPVFR Act tries to protect makes the Indian law unique in the world. At the time when the World Trade Organisation (WTO) through its Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights Protection (TRIPs) agreement wanted the member countries to either have patents or a sui generis (meaning one of its kind) system of protection for seeds, India had witnessed a very heated and acrimonious political debate across the spectrum. Being a very sensitive and emotive subject, a joint parliamentary committee headed by the late Sahib Singh Verma was constituted. The committee travelled to various places in the country, met almost everyone concerned with seeds, law, and farming, and after a very exhaustive set of deliberations incorporated a chapter on farmers’ rights in the proposed law.

Section 39 (i) of explicitly states that “notwithstanding anything contained in this Act”, and further in Section (IV) adds; “a farmer shall be deemed to be entitled to save, use, sow, re-sow, exchange, share or sell his farm produce including seed of a variety protected under this Act in the same manner as he was entitled before the coming into force of this Act: provided that the farmer shell not be entitled to sell branded seed of a variety protected under this Act.” Reading both the sub-sections of this chapter together makes it abundantly clear that the Gujarat potato farmers had in fact not violated the Indian law. As long as they were not selling the produce as FC 5 seed, which they were not as per media reports, these farmers were within their rights to use PepsiCo’s variety.

Knowing the low level of education and awareness of the farming community, the PPVFR Act further absolved them under Section 42 (i) of the consequences of any infringement by a farmer who at the time of such infringement was not aware of the existence of such rights. In other words, Section 39 and 42 of the Act provides immunity for farmers against any infringement of patent rights claim of any seed company. As long as farmers are not selling the branded seed, they are operating perfectly within the provisions of the law. Why the Gujarat government should appear to override the protections enshrined for farmers in this law and instead side with the company, remains a big question. A constant vigil by the civil society and farmer unions therefore is required to ensure that the governments do not start backing the company’s commercial interests.  

Since then, the pressure from seed industry has been to suitably amend the law as per the provisions of the widely accepted International Undertaking on New Plant Varieties (UPOV), which actually is for stricter patent control over new crop varieties. Although India has so far refused to join the UPOV treaty but pressure is building up to amend the PPVFR Act with certain provisions for extending the period of protection at par with the UPOV. The civil society has already submitted a signed letter to the Minister for Agriculture and the chairperson of the PPVFR Authority warning of the consequences.

The implications of the PepsiCo controversy therefore are very clear. It is just the beginning of a similar kind of assault on farmer rights that the country will increasingly witness in the years to come. India offers a huge seed market, which is enough to sustain the profits of seed multinationals. More so at a time when US Senator, Bernie Sanders, who has announced his candidature for US Presidency next year, is promising to protect farmers from the predatory patent lawsuits from MNCs, India cannot afford to push farmers under the yoke of seed companies. It is important to know that in the US, Monsanto alone has 80 per cent patent control over corn varieties, and 90 per cent over soybean varieties. Such a monopolistic control over seeds in India will be patently wrong and suicidal. But equally more important is that the predatory patent policy on seeds is withdrawn globally. #

Farmers' Rights in Peril. Orissa Post. May 25, 2019
http://www.orissapost.com/farmers-rights-in-peril/

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Ease of Doing Farming

     

    Farmers queued up for selling wheat in a Madhya Pradesh mandi 

--web photo

*     * Nearly 144 farmers from Araria district in Bihar have been waiting to receive the compensation promised under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna (PMFBY) for the paddy crop loss they suffered in 2017.

        * Onion farmers in Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh are suffering silently for the low prices they are getting this year. Even at a low of 50 paise a Kg there are not enough buyers. Most farmers have dumped their produce in the fields. 

         * In Punjab, farmer widows are waiting endlessly for the promised compensation of Rs 2 lakh each. Elsewhere in the country, farm widows have been running from pillar to post seeking the relief they are entitled to.

         * At Itarsi in Madhya Pradesh an irate farmer calls up the Deputy Commissioner to complain about the faulty weighing of his crop produce at the local APMC mandi. He is arrested, probably because the DC is annoyed at a farmer calling him directly. 

There is no end to such glaring lapses or bureaucratic hurdles that farmers encounter almost every other day. From the governance perspective, these may seem insignificant to those who live on assured monthly income that is credited to their bank accounts unfailingly on the first of every month. The suffering that daily wage workers have to undergo has only to be realised when studies show only 32 per cent of labour charges that were due to them upon completion of the works have been paid to them on time in the first two quarters of 2017-18 . Take the case of sugarcane farmers, who expect payment only once in a year when the crop is brought to the sugar mills. Even then, till mid-February this year, more than Rs 23,800-crore of the cane payments remains outstanding. On an average, a sugarcane farmer has to wait for at least two years before being paid.

The hardship that farmers and farm workers experience at every step is simply baffling. It is difficult to even visualise the trauma and human suffering a farm family has to undergo after being denied the rightful price of the produce forcing the farmer to throw tomato, potato, onion and other vegetables on to the street. What happens to the farming family whose standing bumper crop is destroyed by cattle and wild animals. To see the standing crop being damaged by strong winds or untimely rains is nothing short of a hammer blow from nowhere. I have seen people in the cities being casually dismissive about such reports saying this happens now and then in agriculture. But if their own salaries get delayed by a month or two, they resort to loud protests and the dharnas.     

In fact, much of the agrarian distress that is prevalent across the country is an outcome of a massive governance failure by way of denial of physical, social, natural and human capital that is essential to create a conducive environment for agriculture. When Rajiv Gandhi said that only 15 paise out a rupee reaches the rural beneficiaries, he was only referring to the huge loss of economic resources that are pocketed by the bureaucratic chain on the way. In addition, there are innumerable hurdles and obstacles that farmers and farm workers confront at the time of production, harvesting and marketing of the crop that makes farming a losing and an unattractive enterprise. Even loan disbursement and recovery comes laced with a number of problems that farmers face. According to the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) almost 80% of farm suicide cases were related to bank recoveries.

That makes me wonder why we can’t come up with a sustainable index on ease of doing farming. Sound and efficient regulations are not only critical for business enterprises but are absolutely essential for a thriving farming sector, ending extreme poverty and hunger and at the same time meeting the targets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). After all, in a country where 600 million people are directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture, a set of reforms will not only help remove the bottlenecks but also create a favourable environment for attracting public and private sector investment and wooing entrepreneurship in farming. On the lines of the World Bank Group’s Doing Business Index, which was launched in 2003, a similar kind of ease of doing farming index can be prepared that will usher in prosperity where it is needed most, and at the same time propel millions of farm livelihoods into a profitable and attractive enterprise.

At present India is ranked 77 among 190 countries, in the ease of doing business index. Just because the World Bank has been pushing it, a number of institutes and universities all across have been coming up with their own index that have helped fine tune the index to enable business competitiveness. On the other hand, while much of the talk for doubling farm income is bogged down in productivity details, initiating an ease of doing platform, followed by a time bound action plan, will lay out a strong foundation for revitalising agriculture. More so as a time when the country is moving from jobless to job-loss growth, reviving agriculture is the only way forward. I am not seeking an ease of doing index only for agribusiness enterprise but for farming as a whole. National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) could be the promoter and numerous agricultural universities/institutes; NGOs, farmer organisations as well as mass movements could be roped in to help develop the index.

Roughly about 7,000 big, small, medium and nano steps have been taken on ease of doing business, the then commerce and industry minister Nirmala Sitaraman had informed in 2017.  Earlier, soon after the NDA government was sworn in, the CII had presented in August 2014 a list of 60-points regarding green clearance norms. In six months time, the government came back with an action plan for 29 of the listed points. The urgency with which the government has moved on making it easy for business to operate is what is required for reforming agriculture and moving it out of the economic mindset that fails to treat farming as an economic activity. Agriculture alone has the potential to reboot the economy, and an ease of doing farming index will unleash the immense potential it carries.

After all, if 7,000 steps can be laid out for ease of doing business imagine the rural transformations if another 5,000 steps are initiated for ease of doing farming. The face of Indian agriculture will change for the better, forever. #

Ease of Farming Index. The Tribune. May 15, 2019
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/ease-of-farming-index/773003.html  

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Northern Ireland media: A Primer

As I’m making my final preparations for my Northern Ireland peace journalism project, sponsored by the US Embassy in London, I thought I’d assign the class some reading to get you up to speed on the media situation there.

First, take a look at the mainstream media in Northern Ireland. These include the Belfast Telegraph https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ and Irish Times newspapers https://www.irishtimes.com/ . It will be interesting to visit with journalists from these outlets about how they perceive their coverage, and particularly to what extent it’s colored by sectarianism and bias.

An online outlet, Slugger O’Toole-- https://sluggerotoole.com/ , “takes a critical look at various strands of political politics in Ireland and Britain. It tries to bring its readers ‘open source analysis’ from both the mainstream media and the blogosphere.”

The site is full of interesting and deeply analytical reporting about Northern Ireland. For example, in an article analyzing Derry’s central role in the dissident republican movement titled “Why Derry,” writer Steve Bradley has an interesting postscript:

“It has taken three attempts over eight months to write this article – from the time of the July rioting in Derry last year, to the murder of (journalist) Lyra McKee at Easter. What has prevented completion on those previous occasions was concern at the response it would provoke. Some will seek to dismiss this article as providing excuses for Dissident activity (it does not). Others will brush it off as just ‘Derry whinging’ (as if there isn’t sufficient weight of evidence for people there to justifiably complain). Others still just don’t want to hear the fact that Northern Ireland’s second city has been cut adrift from the rising tide of post-Troubles prosperity. But I believe that each significant outburst of Dissident activity in Derry makes the case for this article stronger, and proves that the issues and questions it raises can no longer be brushed aside…”

I’m excited that my sponsor at the Queen’s University in Belfast has arranged a workshop for me with the Slugger O’Toole staff. It will be fascinating to discuss their approach to journalism. 

Finally, take a look at a different kind of outlet called Shared Future News-- https://sharedfuture.news/ --This is “an online publication dedicated to providing news, information, and personal stories on the topics of peacebuilding, reconciliation, and diversity. Posts are published at least once weekly to an audience interested in the history and politics of Ireland and Northern Ireland. We believe that it is important to spread the news of those working for a shared future in Northern Ireland.” 

I hope to be able to arrange a meeting and/or workshop with their staff. Their approach sounds very much like peace journalism, and I’ll be interested in hearing about their successes and challenges.

I’ll be enjoying Scotland and Ireland for the next few weeks, but will be ready to plunge into Northern Ireland later in May. Stay tuned for details.

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Produce more, waste more

Photo courtesy: jagran.com

In the midst of the general elections – the biggest festival of democracy – the wheat harvesting season has been on a full swing. While the official data of how much wheat is produced in the food bowl – comprising Punjab and Haryana – will take some time to be finalised, initial estimates point to an expectation of a record harvest of 310-lakh tonnes.

Punjab is expecting an output of 180-lakh tonnes of wheat while neighbouring Haryana is anticipating a bumper harvest of 130-lakh tonnes. With an extended winter, the wheat harvest was certainly delayed but it helped increase crop productivity. Punjab is expecting a record yield of 52 quintals per hectare this year, against a national average of 32 quintals. But the excitement over a bumper wheat crop stands dampened because of an acute shortage of adequate and proper storage. Spilling over the outer rim of the mandis, heaps of wheat grain is stacked along the highways as you drive through parts of the food bowl. Such is the heavy arrival of wheat every day that hundreds of unopened bags of the grain are kept in the open waiting for procurement operations to begin.

At the peak of the wheat harvesting season, Punjab has hardly any covered storage available for the new wheat stock. Already, 12-lakh tonnes of previous year’s wheat stock is lying in the open, technically called as ‘covered and plinth’ (CAP) storage, which means grain bags stacked under the open sky and covered with a black tarpaulin cover. Punjab has a total of 158.5 lakh tonnes of covered storage capacity, of which 143-lakh tonnes is already occupied with rice and wheat procured in the last crop season. Additionally it has 75 lakh tonnes of CAP storage, of which 12 lakh tonnes is occupied from the previous stock. Further, it is expecting the arrival of 20 to 22 wagons of milled rice from rice millers. Rice being vulnerable to storage losses is always stored in the covered space or in other words will always get a first preference for being stored in godowns or in silos. 

The story is the same year after year. With an expectation of 132-lakh tonnes of wheat to be procured, much of the purchased stocks will lie in the open this year. Last year too, about 20-lakh tonnes of carryover stock of wheat was already lying in the open when the fresh arrivals began to pour into the mandis. I remember at the peak of the procurement season nearly 70-lakh tonnes of the fresh arrivals were to be kept in the open under CAP storage. This was primarily because of the inability to move out previous year’s purchase of rice and wheat. In other words, roughly 90-lakh tonnes of wheat were kept in the open last year, of which 12 lakh tonnes is still lying in the open.

The situation may ease a little as the effort is to move the stored grains out of the state as quickly as possible. “We are hopeful of vacating storage space by the time the procurement season ends,” said K A P Sinha, Principal Secretary, food and civil supplies, Punjab, as quoted in a newspaper. I can understand the bureaucratic hassle that the state administration has to face every year, and that too twice in a year – once at the time of wheat arrivals and the next storage crisis emerging a few months later at the time of paddy procurement. Still more damming is the fact that the grain storage crisis has in reality been worsening with each passing year. At least for thirty years, I have seen how severely mismanaged food storage operations have been. Setting up yearly targets of food production has been a policy agenda but managing every single grain of wheat and rice procured has been the lowest among the political priorities.  

This strange paradox of plenty – bumper harvests and mounting food wastage – defies all laws of what constitutes food management. I don’t know how policy makers can keep their eyes closed to the mammoth food wastage that it results in. Somehow I have always felt that reducing food wastage is a task that is expected only from a farmer; for the government, wasting the precious foodgrains procured appears to be an unfettered right. The callousness with which food quality of stored grain is allowed to deteriorate, often rendering it unfit for human consumption, is a matter of national shame.

After all, it doesn’t require any rocket science to build grain storage, including silos. Every time I hear the government investing money to build infrastructure, strangely I find it invariably ends with bulk of the money being pumped in to build super highways. I am not against expanding the network of highways but there are numerous other areas which are crying for public sector investments. It was in 2017 that the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced an economic stimulus package of Rs 6.92-lakh crore for building 83, 677 kms of roads by 2022.  

If only he had kept aside Rs 1-lakh crore out of the Rs 6.92-lakh crore that he allocated for building roads, and instead pumped in this money to build foodgrain  storage capacity, he would have solved the long pending problem of colossal food wastage accruing from lack of proper grain storage facilities. Earlier, the UPA government had constructed panchayat gharin each of the nearly 2.5 lakh panchayatsacross the country. Even at that time, I had sought adequate investment in building food silos across the country. After all, the television images of food rotting in the godowns or food bags lying in pools of water in the mandis is an unforgivable sight. More so, at a time when India ranks 103 among 119 countries in the Global Hunger Index. Nearly a fourth of the world’s hungry population lives in India, in a country which allows abundant food supplies to go waste for lack of adequate storage. I still don’t know why finding a permanent solution to address the monumental problem of food wastage has never been a political priority. # 

रिकॉर्ड पैदावार के अनुमानों के बीच खुले में बर्बाद होते अन्न की कहानी. Amar Ujala. May 7, 2019

https://www.amarujala.com/columns/opinion/the-story-of-wasted-food-in-the-open?src=foryou&fbclid=IwAR1lGfQ6cEHD9dAdvmCh7gDdZOs1ZaQY9Ao4f1ode_BUX3VKbzlzA963gqU

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Prepping for PJ in Northern Ireland
I'm eagerly anticipating my upcoming peace journalism trip to Northern Ireland. My project, funded

Queen's University-Belfast

by the US Embassy-London, is titled, Peace Journalism and Reconciliation in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland. My partners at the Queen's University in Belfast and I are working now on finalizing the program, which will include seminars for professional journalists and university lectures.

The task of discussing peace in Northern Ireland is daunting, yes, but no less so than in other places I've been like Kashmir or South Sudan.

Stay tuned to this blog for details about the project, which begins May 22.

Peacebuilding Ambassador
As an offshoot of my duties with the Center for Global Peace Journalism, I am also active in Rotary, where I've started a new position as Peacebuilding Ambassador for my Rotary district, which consists of the Kansas City area plus roughly the northern half of Missouri.

Below is a brief column I wrote for the district newsletter introducing myself and the peace ambassador concept.

Peacebuilding Ambassador: Important, but hardly glamorous
When District Governor Elect Marc Horner asked me to be District 6040’s Peacebuilding Ambassador, I imagined that, as an ambassador, I would hobnob with glitterati, attend swanky receptions and high-brow cultural events, rub elbows with the rich and famous, and advise powerful government officials.

It wasn’t until I was stuck behind a stinky semi on my way to Jeff City for the state conference that cold reality struck.

My name is Steven Youngblood, and I am breaking in the new job of district peacebuilding ambassador. While my new job isn’t exactly glamorous, the opportunity to work with my fellow Rotarians on peacebuilding projects is nonetheless exciting.

As district peacebuilding ambassador, my duties will include:
1. Educate Rotarians and Rotary Clubs about the concepts of peace and peacebuilding through presentations (in person, via Skype) and through online resource materials;
2. Work with Rotarians and Rotary Clubs to develop viable projects that promote positive peace, conflict prevention, conflict resolution, and post conflict reconciliation both locally and globally;
3. Work with Rotarians and Rotary Clubs to locate peacebuilding grant opportunities, and serve
as a resource person during the project development and grant application process.

As my first official education duty, let me quickly fill you in on a rich peacebuilding opportunity: the Rotary World Peace Conference 2020. The conference will be held in Ontario, California Jan. 17-18, 2020. The two-day conference will have six general sessions, 13 tracks of breakout sessions for a total of 104 breakout sessions, two special dinners, a House of Friendship, and a concert. 150 expert speakers will be discussing peacebuilding issues and solutions. I am honored to be one of these speakers. You can learn more about the World Peace Conference at https://peaceconference2020.org/ .
After you’ve checked out the peace conference, I ask that you begin a conversation in your club about peacebuilding. Are there peacebuilding opportunities in your community or worldwide that you feel need to be seized? If so, let’s discuss your ideas, and work on formulating a plan or project. If your plans require grant funding, I can help with that, too. (I’m writing a Global Grant now, in part to become more familiar with the process) Finally, feel free to invite me to your club to speak about peacebuilding. This may be in person or via Skype.

If you’d like to learn more about me, my short bio is pasted at the end of this article.

Despite the dearth of champagne and lobster puffs, I genuinely look forward to working with each of you to advance Rotary’s peacebuilding mission.

Steven Youngblood Bio
District 6040 Peacebuilding Ambassador Steven Youngblood is the founding director of the Center for Global Peace Journalism at Park University in Parkville, Missouri USA, where he is a communications professor. He has organized and taught peace journalism seminars and workshops in 25 countries. Youngblood is a two-time J. William Fulbright Scholar (Moldova 2001, Azerbaijan 2007). He also was named U.S. State Department Senior Subject Specialist in Ethiopia in 2018. Youngblood is the author of  “Peace Journalism: Principles and Practices” and “Professor Komagum.” He edits “The Peace Journalist” magazine, and writes and produces the “Peace Journalism Insights” blog. He has been recognized for his contributions to world peace by the U.S. State Department, Rotary Club-Parkville, and the UN Association of Kansas City.

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Towards an Organic Future

Its high time to move to agro-ecological farming systems. 

Pic -- from the Web

At a time when global temperatures are soaring, a latest study by a French think tank – Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) – has shown that agro-ecological farming alone has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Europe by 47 per cent and thereby keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees.  

This study comes at a time when the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) is already talking of green direct payments to organic farmers who opt for sustainable farming practices. At the Regional Symposium on Agro-ecology for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems for Europe and Central Asia, 2016, one of the policy recommendations was to shift 30 per cent of the European budget on agriculture to green direct payments. The IDDRI study in addition shows that a transition from intensive farming to agro-ecological farming will bring down the pesticides consumption by 380,000 tonnes per year in European farming.

And yet I find that most climate mitigation studies point to more crop intensification, which will expectedly lead to freeing up larger proportion of cultivable lands and thereby claim to ensuring there is no drop in food production. In other words, it is push for a hyper-intensive farming system that leads to more toxic soils, more water mining sucking the remaining aquifers dry, and leading to more contamination of the food chain. This flawed assumption was essentially behind the launch of the New Vision for Agriculture at the World Economic Forum 2009 aiming at increasing food production by 20 percent, decreasing greenhouse gas emissions per ton by 20 percent, and reducing rural poverty by 20 percent every decade.

The 17 agribusiness giants that would spur the launch of New Vision for Agriculture includes Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), BASF, Bunge Limited, Cargill, Coca-Cola, DuPont, General Mills, Kraft Foods, Metro AG, Monsanto Company, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta, Unilever, Wal-Mart, and Yara International. In other words, it is more of the same leading to more catastrophic outcomes in the future.

The IDDRI study provides a lot of hope at a time when the UN-sponsored TEEB initiative – The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity – for agriculture and food, has in its latest study warned of a significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions emanating from farming practices. Accordingly, the entire farming production systems, stretching from cutting down of forests for making land available for cultivation to food waste dumped in landfills, account from 47 to 51 per cent of the global gas emissions. This factor alone plays a prominent role in world’s climate going topsy-turvy, and which returns to haunt farming community reeling under the terrible impact of climate change. The challenge therefore is how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, which becomes a surer form of mitigation for farmers from the chaotic implications from climate aberrations haunting them in the years to come.

What is therefore of paramount importance is to bring in policies that help farmers to transit to a more climate resilient agriculture. Before apologists for Green Revolution kind of farming systems raise on uproar over declining food production from a shift to organic farming, it is important to know that in its earlier study along with the UK-based Soil Association, the IDDRI has in a report entitled ‘Ten Years of Agro-ecology in Europe’ clearly showed that it is possible to feed Europe a healthy and sustainable diet by transiting to natural farming systems. Earlier, an International Assessment for Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) report, which was ratified (India included) during an intergovernmental plenary in Johannesburg, April 7-12, 2008, had warned that ‘business as usual’ is not the way forward.

Over the years, an emerging consensus has developed around agro-ecology, which alone has the potential for an inclusive approach, and has immense ability to reduce the damage being done to the planet. In India, a major initiative was launched when village elders in Punnukula village in Khamam district in Andhra Pradesh came together to stop the use of chemical pesticides. This was way back, more than 15 years ago. This local initiative, and exemplary testimony to the richness of available local knowledge, led to the introduction on Non-Pesticides Management (NPM) under the Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA) expanding to 3.6 million acres without the use of pesticides. After the State’s bifurcation, and driven by the enthusiasm shown in adopting NPM practices, Andhra Pradesh launched Zero Budget Natural Farming aiming to bring its nearly 60-lakh farmers under the fold of non-chemical agriculture by the end of the year 2024.

Surprisingly, there is no drop in crop productivity. Just a year after the introduction of ZBNF, a study by Rythu Sadhikara Samstha  (RySS) based on crop cutting experiments showed that crop yields in fact had gone up from 10 to 69 per cent – 10 per cent in irrigated paddy and the highest 69 per cent in brinjal. Since wheat is not grown in south India, it is not possible to know the impact on wheat yield when grown without chemicals but I am sure suitable farming practices can be evolved that keeps productivity at par. More so in a state like Punjab, which ironically being the country’s food bowl still imports a significant proportion of its wheat atta requirement. Much of the attathat is imported is from Madhya Pradesh considered to be free of chemicals. I fail to understand why can’t instead Punjab focus on organic wheat production within the state if the domestic demand is so heavy.

This will require a paradigm shift in the way agricultural research is being conducted. All these years for instance crop varieties have been evolved based on its response to chemical fertilizers and pesticides. It’s time to move to organic breeding, developing future crop varieties responding to organic manure, less water and needing no chemical pesticides. This has to be followed by adequate reforms in agricultural markets, providing a higher price for organics and also providing for exclusive procurement of organic produce coupled with policies that encourage farmers to make the transition. With soaring demand for safe and healthy food, mainline agriculture research has no option but to keep pace with the changing times.

According to Friends of Earth, in Europe alone, climate change has taken the lives of more than 115,000 people since 1980, causing an economic loss of Euro 453 billion. In the global south, floods, drought, heatwaves and other extreme climate related events/disasters results in hundreds of thousands of people dying every year. Instead of just blaming the weather gods, the time has come to urgently reform the prevalent farming systems so as to move away from intensive cultivation that has denuded soils, mined groundwater and is increasingly leading to desertification. #  

Towards an Organic Future. The Tribune. May 1, 2019

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