Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 150
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 151
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
Interviews | Debal Deb, agrarian scientist and seed conservationist, interviewed by Rebecca George (TheWire.in)
Debal Deb, agrarian scientist and seed conservationist, interviewed by Rebecca George (TheWire.in)

Debal Deb, agrarian scientist and seed conservationist, interviewed by Rebecca George (TheWire.in)

Share this article Share this article
published Published on Oct 2, 2022   modified Modified on Oct 4, 2022

-TheWire.in

* Debal Deb began conserving indigenous varieties of rice in the 1990s after realizing that they were losing cultivation ground to other varieties preferred by the Green Revolution.
* In an extended interview with The Wire Science, he explained what makes a crop resilient, why farmers should be considered scientists, and the perils of technological solutionism.
* Deb also spoke at length about the problems with the Green Revolution and its troubled inheritance for an India facing a potentially disastrous climate crisis.
* He was also particularly critical of what he believes are the deceptively weak foundations of India’s food security and sovereignty and the rejection of diversity on several fronts.

The following interview was conducted by Rebecca George for The Wire Science. The video transcript, available below the video, was prepared by Prashanthi Subbiah, intern, The Wire, with minor changes to improve readability. The editor’s notes are within square brackets.

Rebecca George: Hello and welcome to a special interview with The Wire Science. My name is Rebecca George and today we have the honour of speaking with Debal Deb. Known as India’s ‘rice warrior’, Deb is both an agrarian scientist with his research published in over 40 journals, as well as a farmer based in Odisha. Deb began conserving indigenous varieties of rice in the 1990s after realising that these varieties were losing their cultivation ground to other varieties during the Green Revolution.

Today, on a modest 1.7-acre farm in Odisha, Deb conserves nearly 1,500 varieties of indigenous rice. His conservation efforts are not to preserve a record of the past, but to help future agriculture to adapt to future instabilities. Deb has documented scores of varieties of indigenous rice with properties like flood-, drought- and pest-tolerance, and he has shared these varieties freely with thousands of smallholding farmers. He has also documented indigenous varieties of rice that are supposedly more nutritious and climate-resilient than other patented varieties. Over the course of our discussion today, we ask Deb: What is it that makes these varieties evolve to be so resilient? With that, I would like to give a warm welcome to Debal Deb.

Thank you so much for joining us, Deb. Let me start by asking you, what does it mean for a crop variety to be resilient?

Debal Deb: The term resilience is born from the engineering discipline to describe a system which gets deranged after a perturbation, but then it has the capacity to return to its original equilibrium position. Once there is some kind of natural perturbation, like a drought or flood or any kind of climactic or even environmental disaster, like a pest attack or a disease attack, it will definitely get deranged. You know, the physiology of the plant will react to it. Maybe the productivity potential will be lowered and so on. But soon after a very short while, it can bounce back to its original capacity.

Please click here to read more.

Image Courtesy: Jason Taylor, please click here to access


TheWire.in, 2 October, 2022, https://science.thewire.in/environment/debal-deb-food-resilience-interview/


Related Articles

 

Write Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

Video Archives

Archives

share on Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Feedback
Read Later

Contact Form

Please enter security code
      Close