Day 2- Video

Hey,
So as promised, I have uploaded some sound of our trip so far and packaged it with a nice little video to show off the photography skill and videography skills of some of the people here. There are pictures from the diifferent types of fieldwork, our visit to the farmer's market and opur visit to the temple.
Hope you enjoy!
David

Knock knock

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Impatient dog.
Impatient do—
BOW WOW!

The tension was electric, my fear palpable as I entered Chandrashekhar Hegde’s courtyard. Welcomed by two dogs barking incessantly, snapping ferociously at a group of people who clearly had no idea what to expect; we made our way into the main roof of a rather bare yet elegant household. Chandrashekhar Hegde, our host for the morning, appeared, smiling warmly, in shorts and a t-shirt, hair perfectly well combed behind, sporting a thick mustache archetypal of the men in Karnataka. His wife and son followed shortly afterwards, shy, but enthusiastic about having us nose around.

After some routine questions about agriculture and land-use, we had the opportunity to tour Chandrashekhar’s house. The word ‘awed’ would be an understatement to describe what I felt my bare sole traversed the length of the cool mud, my nose inhaling the sweet smell of the earth, my ears alert for the whistle of the pressure-cooker and the peaceful mooing of the cows (ignoring the fact that the dogs’ annoyance was still audible). In the words of a classmate, ‘it’s amazing to see how these people are so…in harmony with nature.’ Harmony is the key word.

A completely self-sustained household, it was incredibly efficient at allocating its resources – right from water to electricity to fodder to manure, everything was reused and recycled. The lady of the house even managed to make the most artistic designs from cucumber seeds and apple-packing! Forget Kyoto, Copenhagen and Montreal – Hallusarige is where people walk the talk about minimizing carbon footprints. Not even consciously. How? By just being natural. Going totally ‘organic’ may well provoke much fury about the future of food security given that the rising demand for food is exacerbated by the decreasing natural yields, yet, to see this family sustain themselves so beautifully on the bounties of nature warms my heart.

But all is not halcyon in their world: Chandrashekhar is faced with the brutality of as much as 240% fluctuations in his betelnut prices, labor costs are increasing by the day as more people are opting to move out of rural areas, ironically, in search of greener pastures in the neighboring city of Bangalore. In his post about today’s household visit, my co-blogger David explores the struggle of these farmers to hang on, fighting for their survival. He signs off with an important question that I daresay no one has the real answer to: What is the future of these small local farmers in Sirsi? It is difficult for us, as observers, to introduce policy change in the Government. Not that I am going to attempt to answer in entirety, but one answer comes to my mind immediately when farmers like Chandrashekhar complain about increasing labor costs. If, for example, D-Lab’s Maize Sheller can be adapted and made viable for use at $2-3 a quintal, we stand a chance to apply our “technical expertise” to reality. Chandrashekhar pledges his acceptance to such a technology; we need to pledge our commitment to MIT’s motto: Mens et Manus – mind and hand. It is our natural duty, as MIT Beavers, to help feed the future generations of a man who, despite the little he had, fed us first.

Yes we can.

-Jesika

Day 3: Sustainability

The Agroforestry Survey

Today, I spent a lot of time estimating heights – and somehow, seemed to get them all consistently wrong.

This was my second day in the field, and as a part of team Vanilla, I was estimating heights, measuring circumferences, marking and cataloguing trees in the different farms of Hallusarige. The purpose of this agroforestry survey was to take stock of the non-agricultural trees in the area. Agroforestry is defined as that “which incorporates multifunctional trees into agricultural systems and collective management of nearby forest resources” (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2610163/).

The farmers of Hallusarige interspersed Mango, Nutmeg, Paramygnia (a citrus fruit) and coffee with the primary crops in the region.

Biogas, and the closed loop

One of the things that interested me the most, however, was the use of a biogas generator in the village. Manure from the cows is traditionally used as fertilizer for the plants (as an alternative to chemical fertilizer). At the same time, India has been swept by a revolutionizing “biogas technology” wave, which basically converts cow dung into methane gas for use as fuel in homes. The set-up is simple, easy to manage as well as energy efficient.

So, at such a small scale, an Indian farmer can actually be sustainable and have a “closed” energy use loop. This is something inspirational, especially to large conglomerate farms all over the world that have the potential to be very sustainable at a large scale, and the capital to invest in great technology that facilitates this.

(You can find out more about the biogas process here)

Signing off,

Anvisha

Day 2: What is this "fieldwork" you speak of?

The Mission 2014 Professor, Sam Bowring, managed for quite a while to keep us in the dark about what our “fieldwork” in India would entail. It was nice to finally be briefed on what we would be looking at as the piece de resistance of our trip here- and it sounded as exciting as it promised to be.

The Earthwatch member Indu briefed us on the three primary components of the fieldwork we’d be doing: land use surveys, agro-forestry surveys and household surveys, in the neighboring village of Hallusarige. The names are self-explanatory: we would be carrying out analyses based on Indian Institute of Sciences guidelines. We would be divided into three teams (named after the three primary crops in the area), and go through three fieldwork allocations over the next three days. Another Earthwatch team member briefed us on some precautions we would have to take, including guidelines on how to deal with snakes, leeches, and other species that I would rather not encounter. The fieldwork seemed important, but hard.

Over the next few days we’ll be blogging about our experiences in the field: our struggles, our successes, our sojourns with the locals and the Earthwatch team. Stay tuned to see what results and experiences we come up with!

Signing off,

Anvisha

Fieldwork...inside the house

So today team Betel nut was sent to do the Household surveys of farmers. In case no one has explained the teams, we have been split into three teams based on the crops grown in Sirsi: Team Betel Nut, Team Pepper, Team Vanilla. These teams are subdivided if we need smaller groups depending on the type of fieldwork that we are doing. I am in Team Betel Nut A, with Elise Hens as our group leader. Our task for the day was to interview a local farmer with the help of an interpreter to find out exactly how he used his farmland, what type of crops he used, what livestock he had, how he created energy to cook with and any other questions that we had for a typical farmer. This data is used to find out exactly how natural resources are used in a village ecosystem and to decide if natural resources are being degraded compared to the data taken five years ago. We spent out about two hours talking to the family. The entire family was amazingly hospitable and offered us tea, papaya, dried banana chips, jaggery ( a sugar syrup like molasses), coconut, betel nuts and a tropical fruit that no one knew the English name for. They gave us a tour of the entire house and explained how they produce biogas from manure to power their stoves. They let me record our interview for the Radio class, and I will post a soundclip later tonight after I have logged all of the days sound. As we were getting ready to leave, we asked his son about what his plans were when he grows up. He is currently a freshman in high school by our grade standards. He said that he wants to go to college and study mechanical engineering. It was really amazing to find someone that shares the exact same plan I do and wants to become a MechE. The interview ended on a somber note though. The owner of the farm told us that he wants his son to leave the farm and study engineering to try and make a better life--farming just isn't a viable way for this family to make their living anymore. There was a recent protest to try and establish a minimum price for Betel nuts and with erratic weather the yield for crops has decreased dramatically. The farmers in this region are really struggling to hang on. This really causes one to question: What is the future of these small local farmers in Sirsi?

The (belated) first day blog

Hey everyone!

My name is David Wise and I am one of the bloggers for the Mission 2014 trip to Sirsi India. We finally got to the Earthwatch location in Sirsi about 2pm local time this afternoon, and I am finally recovered enough from jet lag to be able to blog with the help of a few powernaps. We left the MIT Campus at 6pm on Friday so it only took about thirty hours of traveling spread between two busses and three planes. It finally felt like we were actually half way around the world driving through all the small towns between Hubli Airport and Sirsi. We are staying in a very rural region of India—about 100 Kilometers away from the nearest airport—located in the Western Ghat Mountain Range. We got to see all kinds of little shops, farms, the occasional monkey, and herds of cattle that frequently blocked the road and were in no hurry to clear a path. It is a nice change to be in such a warm place after battling a long Boston Winter at MIT. Most of our day was planned to give us a chance to recover and get used to being in India. The Earthwatch staff briefed us on what our itinerary would be this week, and helped us brainstorm to come up with what our goals are for this week. It seems like we are going to have a super busy week, but it will be a lot of fun. I am also in the Radio class carrying recording equipment with me and have a GPS to map for the class, so I will try and post some sound clips and GPS points so you can hear exactly what we are hearing and see where we are. I’m going to go to sleep now (Early morning tomorrow!) but there will be more posts coming soon!

David

How Can We Help?

Throughout the fall semester, as we sat 8000 miles away in the confines of MIT and attempted to create a constructive solution to world hunger, we felt detached and distanced from the problems occurring here in India. As we toiled through the early hours of the morning to finish our website on time or to perfect our presentation, we often wondered what would be the impact of our project, and questioned "how can we truly help to solve global food insecurity?"

While our solution did not miraculously cure undernourishment throughout the world, it did force us to think realistically and seriously about global food security, a problem I originally possessed little knowledge about.

Before we headed out to do fieldwork this afternoon, Bhushana Karandikar, an expert on food security in India, spoke to us about the challenges facing poor farmers and the complexity of India's hunger issue. After her presentation, many of the Terrascopers were curious as to how we, as American college students, can help with the food security problem in India. Karandikar responded with a simple, yet quite poignant statement that "New perspectives always add to the knowledge." Our project in the fall definitely equipped us with the tools to create our own perspectives; perspectives informed and cultivated enough to have the power to facilitate change in the future.

Karandikar also identified some of the particular factors hindering India's progress in the realm of food security. It was exciting to hear her mention some of the key issues we addressed in our solution, such as distribution problems, education, and ensuring the hungry have access not simply to food, but to the proper nutrition. However, as someone who has dealt with the problem first hand, she knows the realities of the situation, the limits they must deal with and the priorities they must address. Sitting 8000 miles away, we could only attempt to postulate some of the problems that may arise within the context of our solution, relying heavily on statistics and scholarly research to do so. The reality is, however, one must experience firsthand the issue in order to truly appreciate its complexity.

So how can we help? First and foremost, we must voice our perspectives and inform others of importance of the issue of food security. We did this effectively in our presentation but we must continue to do, using our experiences here in India to allow us to have an even deeper understanding of the realities food insecurity and the most pressing problems facing Indian farmers. As Dr. Paul Farmer said of his work with AIDS and TB in Haiti, "My big struggle is how people can erase, not remember," we should do our best to capture, to not "erase," and fully digest our experience here in India, so that we can pass what we learn onto others and truly "add to the knowledge."