Introduction and Abstract :

I am pleased to report on a series of farmer meetings held in Ecuador,Kenya and Sri Lanka supported by the CGIAR NGOC. The output of these meetings # were presented to a national meeting in Sri Lanka on the 2nd May 1998. This meeting included researchers and members of NARS, consequently it has gathered national momentum. The meeting was unusual in the fact that, it focused on the priority needs that the farmers perceived as supportive to their sustainability. The hypothesis was that, if educated in a way to articulate their needs, farmers could identify clear areas of priority for focused scientific research. The National meeting was preceded by group discussions with farm leaders at the community level and followed by the discussion of the document produced at the meetings held at the community level.

The Farmers expressed concern that the value of their support communities, traditional knowledge systems and personal belief systems were not being quantified in the evaluation of agricultural systems. They would request that the biotechnologies be used to produce seed that can produce optimally in low input agricultural systems. They are concerned that the fossil fuel subsidy has not been accounted for, especially in terms of climate change. They support the Chairman's call to place all acquisitions in 'public domain' but would like the legal scope of 'public domain' be better defined. Finally they would like to receive a clear definition of their roles in the drive for global food security. Will the drive be viewed as local to global or global to local ?

Statement:

The farming community of Sri Lanka as represented at this meeting extends their thanks the CGIAR for affording them an opportunity of convening at a national level to examine their role in contributing to research on agriculture and to consider aspects of food security that they can contribute to. The participants of this meeting also wish to thank the NGO Committee for their agreement to present the findings of this meeting to the Mid Term Meeting of the CGIAR to be held in Brasilia in May 1998.

We, the farmers of Sri Lanka would like to further thank the CGIAR, for taking an interest in us. We believe that we speak for all of our brothers and sisters the world over when we identify ourselves as a community who are integrally tied to the success of ensuring global food security. In fact it is our community who have contributed to the possibility of food security in every country since mankind evolved from a hunter-gather existence. We have watched for many years, as the progression of experts, scientists and development agents passed through our communities with some or another facet of the modern scientific world. We confess that at the start we were unsophisticated in matters of the outside world and welcomed this input. We followed advice and we planted as we were instructed. The result was a loss of the varieties of seeds that we carried with us through history, often spanning three or more millennia. The result was the complete dependence of high input crops that robbed us of crop independence. In addition we farmers producers of food, respected for our ability to feed populations, were turned into the poisoners of land and living things, including fellow human beings. The result in Sri Lanka is that we suffer from social and cultural dislocation and suffer the highest pesticide related death toll on the planet. Was this the legacy that you the agricultural scientists wanted to bring to us ? We think not. We think that you had good motives and intentions, but left things in the hands of narrowly educated, insensitive people.

We see the opportunity that the CGIAR has given us as a breakthrough in extending our voices and concerns directly into the international system. The gathering of the National Farmer Forum meeting with the members of the national research system was a novel experience for us. The issues that we discussed were pivotal. Now that we are being offered the opportunity of addressing the international research system, may we suggest the establishment of such mechanisms the world over to bring farmers to the negotiating tables ? We are so impressed with the openness of the process that is evolving that we would like this document to be taken to as many farming communities as possible. We thank the NeoSynthesis Research Center for funding and organizing a country wide sensitization and discussion activity to fine tune further our suggestions to you.

As this document is of historical significance to us. We have taken the voluntary step of having the contents of this document taken physically to farming communities throughout the land and obtaining the consent and agreement of the farming communities that the contents of this document does portray accurately our concerns and suggestions as to how to begin the job of rehabilitating farming communities and facilitating them to participate in the drive for global food security. In passing we would also like to point out that we see that the CGIAR has an NGO committee, a Private Sector committee , but no Farmers committee. Is this an oversight by an organization dedicated to agricultural pursuits ?

We believe that farming communities have not only been excluded from participating in setting of research agendas both nationally and internationally , but they have also been discounted by the current economic assumptions and models. For instance the forum clearly demonstrated that a farmer does not consider himself or herself as an independent production unit. The support and interaction with the other segments of rural society such as blacksmiths, medical practitioners, drummers, etc. is seen to be essential for the production of an agricultural crop that will yield the highest value in the local context. The replacement of this social element with a machine may improve the cash flow or profitability for the cash investor but the opportunity cost to the knowledge investor has not been appreciated. The results of such insensitivity will manifest as negative affects on traditional systems and will become a threat to regional and consequently global food security through a destruction of the local production base, a loss of traditional knowledge, a loss of biodiversity and a loss of the stability of local ecosystems. Here the question of the vision of food security, local to global or global to local becomes a critical consideration.

The following points are a summary of our discussions and findings presented at the multi stakeholder meeting convened by the NeoSynthesis Research Center (NSRC) Where farmer representatives were invited together with representatives of the national agricultural research system.

1. Farmers are concerned that the value of rural life in general and farmers in particular have been greatly discounted by the assumptions inherent in the economic models used to determine public policy. We are aware that a farmer accounts for only the value of his or her labour in current economic accounting and that the community is not even considered for evaluation in terms of the agricultural production system. Farmers wish to point out emphatically that they are not merely rural labour and that they do not grow food in a social vacuum. All current work in traditional knowledge systems and landscape management systems illustrate that such values are also not included in current economic models of agricultural production. However, the value of this knowledge is even been reflected in the current growth of intellectual property marketing. In the interest of farmers the world over, we would like the NGOC to request research that looks at the real value of a farmer, the value of the traditional knowledge system and the value of his or her support community rather than the present trend of economists and researchers setting value on labour only and ignoring the value of traditional knowledge.

2. Farmers have been, and still are, performing research on agricultural systems. The process while being informal in a 'scientific' sense has nevertheless produced all agricultural innovation for over three millennia. We would like the agricultural research agenda to consider farmers as valid researchers and help develop their capacity and communication skills to disseminate their findings. The concepts of participatory research needs to be integrated more into the research agenda of the CG system.

3. Farmers have used their community fields as gene banks to ensure the survival of the agricultural variety of seeds, that is presently held in international gene banks. We are aware of the cost and of the dangers involved in holding centralized stocks under artificial conditions. In addition to the potential of loss due to power failure, fires and human error , we know that such stock has no opportunity to adapt and evolve to the microclimatic changes that we experience every year. We are aware of large amounts of resources required to maintain these stocks in an environment of dwindling resources. We would like our farms and communities to be recognized as valid gene banks for effective seed storage and request the CGIAR system to build up our national and international capacity.

4. The call for agricultural systems with a better input/output ratio in food production and the need to reduce the levels of biocides in agriculture have been appreciated by farmers. However we are now victims of the processes of research that produced the current seed varieties that require large energy and biocide inputs to gain optimal production. We require research that produce seeds that are effective at low levels of external inputs.

5. The current economic evaluation of agricultural production does not account for the cost of adding fossil Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere or the environmental and social cost of pesticide and fungicide applications as well as the opportunity cost of biodiversity lost in high energy input production systems. It will be helpful to the drive for global food security to accurately identify these costs, as we believe that if such costs go unaccounted it will lead to subsidies being given to certain types producers while penalizing others.

6. The Farmers have been greatly heartened by the call of the CGIAR Chairman to place all CGIAR acquisitions in 'Public Domain'. We feel that the legal scope of public domain be examined and utilized to maintain 'open access ' so everyone can benefit from the work of the CGIAR.

 *In the translation traditional terms have been translated to the equivalent modern term. For example 'bitthara vee' meaning 'egg rice' refers to seed rice and is translated as 'the genotype'. Similarly ' bitthara vee bissa' or 'vee attua' meaning 'seed rice store' is translated to 'gene bank' etc...

# the reports of these meetings are available from the Chairman NGOC.