Photography and Participatory Methodology for CSA

Phew, finally got to the end of the photovoice process - at least the practical part - and it was a hectic last week. With hindsight a two week window between the discussions and the exhibition would have been more manageable, especially considering the 16-hour round trips involved.

I travelled back to My Loi on the Tuesday night bus with Hamy and Trung, and all I could think with every jolt and shudder of the bus was that the prints we had in the hold were going to get wrecked, so it was a real relief when, at 4.30am, we pulled them out unscathed in Ky Anh. We crashed a couple of hotel rooms occupied by ICRAF staff already there and after an hour or two rest it was time to get busy with final day of prep in My Loi - setting up all the stands and photos, inviting the farmers who would present to come and practice (and trying not to get in the way).

Thursday saw the event itself, hosted by ICRAF (World Agroforestry Centre) together with the Farmers Union, and it was bigger than I'd expected - a big outdoor stage with sound system, a canopy-covered seating area, dancing and singing performances.

In terms of CSA, the main presentations were the photovoice exhibition, and presentations on 3D models made by groups of farmers over the previous few days. The event was covered by local TV and other news media and from what I can gather, the response seems to have been positive. You can see a news report here.

Probably the most severe and oft-cited impacts of climate changes here in Ky Son province were the impacts of drought and heat, and severe rainfall events - with several participants reporting loss of formerly productive lands. Some participants pointed out the influence of forestry practices on slopes (clear-cutting of acacia) and the need for landscape-scale bank stabilisation, using bamboo, for example. I found the following image and caption particularly striking in relation to landslides and soil loss:

Some feedback on the event:

... that requires an ability to manage—not control—ecological relationships".

That's farming, according to Freya Yost of A Growing Culture. Later this year, the organisation plans to open a Library for Food Sovereignty, storing and making available a repository of 'farmer innovations from around the world'.

30% of the farmers in My Loi that attended the photovoice training had smartphones, and judging by their responses to our questionnaires, they are ready and willing to take lead roles in generating and disseminating knowledge.

This sort of enterprise really seems like a step in the right direction, building from the ground up. It might still be out of reach for many (access-wise), but there is little doubt that connectivity will only rise in the coming years. Having said that, a shortage of knowledge is hardly ever the real problem - communicating pathways that make economic sense and align with people's life ambitions are equally important so that they have incentive to utilise and act on the knowledge that is available. Hopefully, this will be one library that will not be a silent zone.

The interview with Yost is here.

The distinction between climate-smart agriculture and agroecology is a somewhat blurry one. In a recent reprise of a 2015 article, Michel Pimbert takes a fairly hard line in support of agroecology, linking it with food sovereignty, and the re-identification of many people around the world as peasants ('re-peasantisation' if you really, really must).

It's an interesting question, and if it's presented as a choice between a climate-smart agriculture in the pockets of Monsanto et al, and a 're-peasantising' movement aimed less towards commercial expansion than buen vivir, then I know which side I'd be on. I guess it's not that clear-cut though, and so far my experience with organisations promoting CSA here in Vietnam has not led me to view them as peddling 'industrial food and agricultural technologies that allow for economies of scale'. In fact, the current photovoice project - and other activities I've come across - more neatly fits with the 'agroecological' tenet of valuing local knowledge and locally appropriate technologies than promoting a greater dependency on the inputs of 'the corporate version of CSA'.

You can find the Pimbert article here:

https://www.ileia.org/2017/06/26/agroecology-alternative-vision-agriculture/

On Wednesday, I paid a visit to the Vietnamese Bee Research Centre (BRC). It’s located in the same district of Hanoi (Tu Liem) as the IRRI office but tucked away on a quiet street beyond a river and a green interlude in the urban intensity, it feels a world away from the dust and traffic of 6-lane Pham Van Dong.

After hearing of bee losses and empty boxes from some of the farmers in My Loi, I was interested to do some fact-finding on the state of beekeeping in Vietnam. Turns out it’s a big industry here: Vietnam is one of the world’s largest honey exporters (largely to the USA), exporting $75million worth of honey in 2016. The country hasn’t yet managed to establish a brand for itself (think Manuka), and most of the honey is exported on a low-margin, high volume basis. (Despite the non-descript nature of the exports, it's possible to find lots of different honey varieties here - coffee blossom, longan, lychee, acacia etc - and Cat Ba Forest Flower honey, a speciality of Cat Ba island fetches high prices.)

For small farmers, beekeeping on a scale of maybe half a dozen hives can be a profitable side-enterprise, and at that scale does not require migrating colonies to follow nectar sources. It is also suitable to keeping the native Apis cerana, notwithstanding its tendency to abscond. Commercial beekeepers tend to use bees of European origin, Apis mellifera.

The BRC have developed what seems to be a really thorough and well thought out participatory system for training farmers, and have already worked in a neighbouring districts of Ha Tinh province, where beekeepers suffered large colony losses last year due to flooding. Maybe it’s something that could be integrated with the CSV model in My Loi?

For more on participatory beekeeping training, see the following interesting youtube video:

Paul Hawken’s (ed.) new book on the options for reversing global warming seeks to overcome and reorient the ‘game over’ feelings of hopelessness that sometimes set the tone of dialogue about humanity’s and the planet’s current situation.

Recognising a gap in the literature - there’s no plan - Hawken assembled a team to develop one, focusing on the most promising practices and technologies that could be employed to ‘reverse the buildup of atmospheric carbon within thirty years’.

There’s some marketing speak here. Clearly, there are a multitude of plans for mitigating climate change, but perhaps not a single one that incorporates all the little pieces. In the blurb on the website, the Drawdown team acknowledge as much: ‘All solutions modeled are already in place, well understood, analysed based on peer-reviewed science, and are expanding around the world.’

There has also been some criticism of the book in that it is not sufficiently detailed, or laid out in a project management sense, to call itself a plan at all. I'll come back with my verdict on that when I get to the end of it.

In the meantime, you can order the book yourself from the website, and here’s an interesting interview with Hawken about the project:

https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2017/06/06/paul-hawkens-plan-to-fix-the-climate-with-or-without-paris-pact/