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It’s 10:35 p.m., and I’ve just arrived at my quarters after another long work day. At this hour of the evening, the streets are empty, except for the ever-present cows, who slowly turn their heads towards me as I race by on my trusty purple Rainbow-brand bicycle. It’s the 3rd day of Rongali Bihu, the biggest festival of the year here in Assam – a month-long celebration of the arrival of spring and the start of a new planting season for rice.
Today unfolded much like any other day. It started early with a cup of chai, fragrant with fresh ginger and cardamom, in my room, followed by a couple of hours of quiet time working on the plan for a small bamboo building to house our new compost tea production unit. I drafted up a flyer that explains the goals of our project and put the finishing touches on the training program for the coming 9 months. Then off to the Adarsh Seuj Prakalpa office to meet with the three college and university students from Vancouver Island who’ve been volunteering with our NGO - Fertile Ground:- for the past 10 weeks.
My husband Kel and I made our first visit to Assam in 1998 and fell in love its lush green hillsides, rich cultural diversity and wonderful food. We returned a year later and inspired by a fair trade coffee project established by another non-profit from our home town, I located a supplier of organic tea grown in the Karbi Anglong region and helped World Community Development Education Society set up a small fair trade tea project.
Since that time, revenues from the sale of the tea have helped cover the cost of producing resource materials in the Assamese language, purchased tools and provided growers with hands-on training in the preparation of compost and use of botanical formulas for improving the soil and controlling insect pests.
In 2002, with the support of CIDA, COG and volunteers from our community, a young agricultural development officer, Monalisha Gogoi, traveled to Vancouver Island to attend the 14th IFOAM Organic World Congress. For Monalisha, it was a rare opportunity to meet with farmers, educators and researchers from many different countries, including her own. Assam is geographically and culturally isolated from the rest of the country. Insurgency and social unrest has destabilized the region for the past 20 years, and it’s a part of India that few travelers – Indian or international – venture into.
Initially, I worked with a small group of young Assamese tea growers who wanted to learn how to grow tea organically. However, by 2003, appalled by the quantities of chemical pesticides and fertilizers tea companies and market gardeners were applying to their crops, and aware that there was virtually no information or support for traditional or organic farming practices, a group of friends from the Comox Valley helped me establish a new organization - Fertile Ground: East/West Sustainability Network.
For the past two years, our volunteers have worked side-by-side with the people of Digboi, a small town close to the India/Burma border, to develop Adarsh Seuj Prakalpa - a demonstration garden and resource centre promoting sustainable agricultural practices.
It’s located on 2 acres that housed the families of workers from the local oil refinery until layoffs resulted in demolition of their living quarters. The land was littered with building debris and garbage, and before work on the garden could begin, a small mountain of broken bricks, rocks, old shoes, glass and disintegrating plastic bags had to be removed from the site.
Today, the land is lush and green. There are papaya, mango, guava, custard apple and peach trees, and rows of raised beds where a wide variety of vegetables, herbs and flowers are growing. A large area has been set aside for stock-piling straw, cow dung, leaves and other discarded plant material, and to add biomass and nutrients to the soil, our two gardeners, aided by the volunteers, have prepared several 15 foot long rows of compost and two vermicompost bins.
Last year we completed a small building that houses a library, office and open-air classroom, and hired a project manager and outreach worker from the local community to continue developing the project site and provide training and support to farmers, women’s self-help groups and small-scale tea growers.
Since our arrival in early February, our volunteers and staff have met with over 400 people from Assam’s Tinsukia, Dibrugarh and Jorhat districts.
Most are farmers, tea growers, or members of self-help groups or NGO’s. Some of the people who’ve visited our site or attended training sessions are teachers, tea garden workers, or college students – and some have turned up just to find out why this group of foreigners have come here and what information they have to share.
A group of women farmers traveled 3 hours to visit our project. They’re determined to find alternatives to the pesticides and fertilizers recommended by the Agriculture Department’s field staff, who along with visiting “agri-business specialists” regularly visit self-help groups and farmers throughout Assam, promoting hybrid and high-yielding seed varieties and a steady regime of chemical inputs.
A group of young men from a farming community have started a nursery to collect and grow some of the local citrus varieties which are at risk of being lost forever. There are no longer any local seeds for sale in the market, and people seemed resigned to the fact that most of the traditional rice varieties are no longer being cultivated. And as each year passes, I see more signs of people sacrificing their kitchen gardens and the surrounding jungle to extra money selling green tea leaves to the local bought-leaf factories – destroying the biodiversity of the region and depressing the already low prices paid for tea leaves.
Fertile Ground has lots of plans and dreams – but the shortage of skilled, resource people and the limited amount of time we’re here each year are significant challenges. With our support, a new course in Organic Horticulture will start next month at a local college. Project advisory members here in Digboi have approved construction of a small “green shop” at the garden where we’ll sell organic vegetables, vermicompost, local seed varieties, sticky traps, plant-based formulas for controlling insects and improving the soil as well as local food and handcrafted items.
And we’ve starting work on a plan to locate and propagate local seed varieties. Pompy Ghosh, our project outreach worker, made a register to take on visits to village areas, and Kaylin Henry, one of the 3rd year Environmental Technology student from Camosun College designed a sign for the garden that explains why saving local seeds is so important. Already people are coming forward to identify traditional varieties of seed they’re willing to share.
Many people here know about work being done by Canadians like Dan Jason and Mary Alice Johnson, and they recognize the faces of several organic growers and members of Comox Valley Growers & Seed Savers from the videos and slide shows we’ve presented.
This year, Fertile Ground received assistance from faculty members and students at Malaspina and Camosun Colleges, and we’d love to find more ways Canadian Organic Growers members and post-secondary institutions can help projects like ours – something to follow up on when I get back to Canada.
Peggy Carswell is the coordinator of Fertile Ground, a Canadian Organic Growers member and community development worker from Vancouver Island who lives and works in Assam for several months each year.
To read more about Canadian Organic Growers, please visit their website: www.cog.ca
It’s 10:35 p.m., and I’ve just arrived at my quarters after another long work day. At this hour of the evening, the streets are empty, except for the ever-present cows, who slowly turn their heads towards me as I race by on my trusty purple Rainbow-brand bicycle. It’s the 3rd day of Rongali Bihu, the biggest festival of the year here in Assam – a month-long celebration of the arrival of spring and the start of a new planting season for rice.
Today unfolded much like any other day. It started early with a cup of chai, fragrant with fresh ginger and cardamom, in my room, followed by a couple of hours of quiet time working on the plan for a small bamboo building to house our new compost tea production unit. I drafted up a flyer that explains the goals of our project and put the finishing touches on the training program for the coming 9 months. Then off to the Adarsh Seuj Prakalpa office to meet with the three college and university students from Vancouver Island who’ve been volunteering with our NGO - Fertile Ground:- for the past 10 weeks.
My husband Kel and I made our first visit to Assam in 1998 and fell in love its lush green hillsides, rich cultural diversity and wonderful food. We returned a year later and inspired by a fair trade coffee project established by another non-profit from our home town, I located a supplier of organic tea grown in the Karbi Anglong region and helped World Community Development Education Society set up a small fair trade tea project.
Since that time, revenues from the sale of the tea have helped cover the cost of producing resource materials in the Assamese language, purchased tools and provided growers with hands-on training in the preparation of compost and use of botanical formulas for improving the soil and controlling insect pests.
In 2002, with the support of CIDA, COG and volunteers from our community, a young agricultural development officer, Monalisha Gogoi, traveled to Vancouver Island to attend the 14th IFOAM Organic World Congress. For Monalisha, it was a rare opportunity to meet with farmers, educators and researchers from many different countries, including her own. Assam is geographically and culturally isolated from the rest of the country. Insurgency and social unrest has destabilized the region for the past 20 years, and it’s a part of India that few travelers – Indian or international – venture into.
Initially, I worked with a small group of young Assamese tea growers who wanted to learn how to grow tea organically. However, by 2003, appalled by the quantities of chemical pesticides and fertilizers tea companies and market gardeners were applying to their crops, and aware that there was virtually no information or support for traditional or organic farming practices, a group of friends from the Comox Valley helped me establish a new organization - Fertile Ground: East/West Sustainability Network.
For the past two years, our volunteers have worked side-by-side with the people of Digboi, a small town close to the India/Burma border, to develop Adarsh Seuj Prakalpa - a demonstration garden and resource centre promoting sustainable agricultural practices.
It’s located on 2 acres that housed the families of workers from the local oil refinery until layoffs resulted in demolition of their living quarters. The land was littered with building debris and garbage, and before work on the garden could begin, a small mountain of broken bricks, rocks, old shoes, glass and disintegrating plastic bags had to be removed from the site.
Today, the land is lush and green. There are papaya, mango, guava, custard apple and peach trees, and rows of raised beds where a wide variety of vegetables, herbs and flowers are growing. A large area has been set aside for stock-piling straw, cow dung, leaves and other discarded plant material, and to add biomass and nutrients to the soil, our two gardeners, aided by the volunteers, have prepared several 15 foot long rows of compost and two vermicompost bins.
Last year we completed a small building that houses a library, office and open-air classroom, and hired a project manager and outreach worker from the local community to continue developing the project site and provide training and support to farmers, women’s self-help groups and small-scale tea growers.
Since our arrival in early February, our volunteers and staff have met with over 400 people from Assam’s Tinsukia, Dibrugarh and Jorhat districts.
Most are farmers, tea growers, or members of self-help groups or NGO’s. Some of the people who’ve visited our site or attended training sessions are teachers, tea garden workers, or college students – and some have turned up just to find out why this group of foreigners have come here and what information they have to share.
A group of women farmers traveled 3 hours to visit our project. They’re determined to find alternatives to the pesticides and fertilizers recommended by the Agriculture Department’s field staff, who along with visiting “agri-business specialists” regularly visit self-help groups and farmers throughout Assam, promoting hybrid and high-yielding seed varieties and a steady regime of chemical inputs.
A group of young men from a farming community have started a nursery to collect and grow some of the local citrus varieties which are at risk of being lost forever. There are no longer any local seeds for sale in the market, and people seemed resigned to the fact that most of the traditional rice varieties are no longer being cultivated. And as each year passes, I see more signs of people sacrificing their kitchen gardens and the surrounding jungle to extra money selling green tea leaves to the local bought-leaf factories – destroying the biodiversity of the region and depressing the already low prices paid for tea leaves.
Fertile Ground has lots of plans and dreams – but the shortage of skilled, resource people and the limited amount of time we’re here each year are significant challenges. With our support, a new course in Organic Horticulture will start next month at a local college. Project advisory members here in Digboi have approved construction of a small “green shop” at the garden where we’ll sell organic vegetables, vermicompost, local seed varieties, sticky traps, plant-based formulas for controlling insects and improving the soil as well as local food and handcrafted items.
And we’ve starting work on a plan to locate and propagate local seed varieties. Pompy Ghosh, our project outreach worker, made a register to take on visits to village areas, and Kaylin Henry, one of the 3rd year Environmental Technology student from Camosun College designed a sign for the garden that explains why saving local seeds is so important. Already people are coming forward to identify traditional varieties of seed they’re willing to share.
Many people here know about work being done by Canadians like Dan Jason and Mary Alice Johnson, and they recognize the faces of several organic growers and members of Comox Valley Growers & Seed Savers from the videos and slide shows we’ve presented.
This year, Fertile Ground received assistance from faculty members and students at Malaspina and Camosun Colleges, and we’d love to find more ways Canadian Organic Growers members and post-secondary institutions can help projects like ours – something to follow up on when I get back to Canada.
Peggy Carswell is the coordinator of Fertile Ground, a Canadian Organic Growers member and community development worker from Vancouver Island who lives and works in Assam for several months each year.
To read more about Canadian Organic Growers, please visit their website: www.cog.ca