Профиль участника
Simoneta Negrete-Yankelevich
Организация:
INECOL
Страна:
Мексика
Область (области) знаний:
I am working on:
Food sequrity and soil conservation in traditional maize polycultures
Simoneta Negrete-Yankelevich
Dear moderators and colleagues, I am a researcher in Mexico and also part of the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative. I will summarize in the following paragraphs the examples from our work where: 1) a sustainable production system plays a key role for the conservation of the native crop and belowground biodiversity, 2) the historical transformation of such a system is playing a key role for the degradation of the such a biodiversity and their vital functioning, and 3) what we are doing to increase awareness of farmers, their organizations and decision-makers to raise awareness of the relevance of biodiversity and ecosystem services provided by soils for the food and agriculture production in small scale agriculture.
Land use intensification of naturally thin and nutrient poor soils has often been invoked as the prime explanation for reductions in food production and food security in tropical mountains. Little is considered the relative importance of cumulative land use legacies and current practices (like agrodiversity reduction) on soil functioning. For tropical mountains in Mexico where we have studied Milpas (the ancient Mexican maize-based polyculture that feeds the nation) the legacy of cropping years explains 8 to 22% of the variability in soil fertility and 5 to 22% of belowground taxa richness. The capacity of soils to establish mycorrhizal symbiosis diminishes with decreasing diversity of cultivated plants, while available P (Bray) increases with the diversity of crops. Compared to an introduced hybrid, some native maize landraces and their symbionts are much more efficient in obtaining P from very deficient soils. Many bacterial isolates from nitrogen fixing nodules correspond to bradyrhizobia closely related to native bradyrhizobia from the forest. The interactions of land use legacies with modernized current agricultural practices (monocultures with chemical fertilization) may be hampering the natural mechanisms that native diverse polycultures have to cope with naturally thin and nutrient poor soils and maize production has steadily decreased in the last 30 years, since homogenizing technological packages were introduced. The immense variety of locally developed crops benefits from symbiotic relationships with an equally diverse array of coevolved soil microorganisms. Understanding such a network is allowing us now to develop locally tailored technologies aimed at improving food security and conserving an invaluable indigenous below-above ground heritage.
The obstacles of sustainable agricultural production greatly stem from ignorance and the lack of a common language. It is urgent to innovate in communication strategies in order to create reciprocative links between farmers, scientists, consumers, and decision makers. We have created Soils! The underworld, a puppet show that is part of DeMano, our project for rural food security (http://www.fao.org/agroecology/database/detail/en/c/1043363/). Soils! focuses on taking care of the living organisms of the soil so it can produce nourishment for entire families. It reflects upon the complexity of the food security problems. All the actors in the problem go on stage. We show the great potential of integrating science and tradition in order to collectively face large-scale challenges such as soil deterioration, male migration, chronic malnourishment, and market inequity. We have found that puppet shows have a great power to sensitize everyone involved in the sustainable food security challenge; scientists, farmers, consumers, and authorities. It particularly appeals to audiences with low literacy levels and great empirical knowledge, a profile found in rural Mexico and several other places around the globe. We have experienced the vast convening power of the theater and puppet shows, much greater than any conference, workshop, or lecture. Farmers come to the show thinking it will be great for their kids, and leave the show as enriched and filled with ideas as their children.
I hope our experiences are useful inputs for this important forum, if details are required I will gladly provide corresponding scientific papers or other evidences available.
Best wishes,
Simoneta