November 23, 2011

Return of the dragon: Homegardens of Kerala

The agriculturists of Kerala have been playing GOD for some time now...increasing crop diversity by releasing new crop varieties by conventional breeding, then trying again using "bio-technologies". Hunger has been addressed to a large level. Thanks Borlaug and his followers....But chemical agriculture soon showed us how correct Rachel Carson is.......I had a revelation some time back. Our AF is the only viable and long term answer. 

Now, in this era of C emissions and REDD+, the onus is on conservation and organic products. But long back itself, our dining table has been invaded among others, by the once rare "english vegetables". Now our breakfast menu is stuffed with corn flakes, noodles....we select only "cool season" vegetables! The flower of the plantain and the petiole of the Colocasia sp..what is that? A few decades back, pazhankanji (1day old rice porridge) and mango pickles were a breakfast delicacy. That was when Kerala was a big homegarden. 

That mixed dense assemblages of  a horde of herbs, shrubs and trees along with livestock and domestic birds rendered a typical aura to our ancestral home. We lived in a jungle, right? We lived off this jungle..yup...Our women did not even go to the markets....they were not there then. There was also no need to shop (we did not have so many shops anywhere, just a few tea stalls and an odd grocery shop) except perhaps getting Sodium chloride. Our homegarden had everything. Jack, mango and other fruit trees provided us fructose. The coconut was our Kalpavriksham, what not could it give! Milk could be drank directly from the udder (a bit preposterous, I know). Go around and hunt down the egss, for you know not where she would have laid it. Once in a while, the cock would appear in either curry or roasted form to satisfy our fetish for exercising our own canine (parotta was not "invented" then, nor was beef fry so frequently available). Our homegarden was a big treasure pool. There were many species as our ladies were mini Linnaeuses. They just stocked everything. Just go around, grab something and we have an organic and sumptuous meal. 

With the break down of the joint family system and with the gulf boom, came our passion for nuclear families. We started a "building culture". With it came land fragmentation, the homegardens were cleared and we killed our trees, animals and birds. We threw away our dioscorias. And went to built the supermarkets and shopped for Maggi, Milma and Lays. 

And now we want organic products. We want food security. We sit in the classrooms and wonder the multi-functionality of our extinct homegardens!  They were really wonderful practical farming systems. We must wonder at the ingenuity of our forefathers and the culinary skills of our grandmothers.Our homegardens were such a rich and varied sustainable system which kept us away from the shops and hospitals. Through various ecosystem services like varied food products, small timber, manure, clean air and water. A great micro-climate, devoid of pollutants.   


It is time for this dragon to return.