[TimorLesteStudies] Article: IMPROVING FOOD SECURITY IN EAST TIMOR

[Jenny]

http://asaa.asn.au/publications/ac/asian-currents-09-07.html#3c


IMPROVING FOOD SECURITY IN EAST TIMOR

A team from the 
<http://www.anu.edu.au/index.php>Australian 
National University is researching influencers on 
the rate of adoption of new staple food varieties 
in East Timor. 
<http://rspas.anu.edu.au/people/personal/mcwia_ant.php>Andrew 
McWilliam* talks about the team’s work through, 
an Australian government-funded initiative, the 
<http://sponsored.uwa.edu.au/sol/index>Seeds of 
Life program, to improve food security in East Timor.

What is the Seeds of Life program?

This is a $10 million bilateral initiative 
between the <http://www.aciar.gov.au/>Australian 
Centre for International Agricultural Research 
(ACIAR) and the East Timor Ministry of 
Agriculture and Fisheries. 
<http://www.ausaid.gov.au/>AusAID is providing 
additional funding and the 
<http://www.clima.uwa.edu.au/>Centre for Legumes 
in Mediterranean Areas (CLIMA), at the 
<http://www.uwa.edu.au/>University of Western 
Australia, project management. The project is 
designed to improve substantially yields of key 
staple food crops such as maize, rice, sweet potato, cassava, peanuts.

The first phase, from 2001–05, involved testing a 
wide range of cultivars for desirable 
characteristics, such as drought tolerance, 
yield, fungal resistance and, importantly, taste. 
Prospective varieties have been gradually 
distributed to Timorese farmer households under 
an innovative participatory farming system to 
enable them to directly compare the yields and 
qualities of the new varieties with their 
existing crops under the same conditions. To date 
over 2000 farmer households have participated and 
the initial results are very positive.

How did you become involved?

I became interested during the project’s early 
phase of varietal testing from 2000 through 
lively discussions with Dr Brian Palmer, who was 
the initial in-country project manager. Professor 
James Fox, then Director of the ANU’s Research 
School of Pacific and Asian Studies, had also 
been a supporter. When a new implementation phase 
was planned in 2005, we pushed to have a social 
research component included, arguing that ANU was 
well placed to provide a socio-economic support 
role, given our strong research track record on Timor.

What has been the team’s most significant achievement?

Our involvement is principally designed to 
support training and mentoring of Timorese 
socio-economic staff in the Ministry of 
Agriculture. To that end, we’ve been able to 
demonstrate the value of social science 
applications. The baseline studies undertaken 
between 2006–07 highlighted key features of 
Timorese farming systems, including the 
importance of tuber crops and wild-food gathering 
for rural diets, and seasonal food shortages 
coinciding with high labour demand. We also 
highlighted the significance of cultural factors 
in the patterns of Timorese agriculture and the 
need to integrate these practices into agricultural planning.

How successful has the program been?

Agricultural development projects by their very 
nature tend to have long lead times, as 
innovations take years to be integrated into 
local farming systems. Survey results indicate 
strong interest in the new crop varieties, 
particularly in an irrigated rice variety known 
as Nakroma. This is proving to be very popular, 
with 40 per cent yield gains on local varieties, 
good taste and easy preparation times. Sweet 
potato varieties known as ‘hohorae’ are also 
widely sought, and more are appearing in local 
markets. But there are many challenges in terms 
of building stronger agricultural support and 
extension systems, and of sustaining quality seed 
production for distribution, and for policy settings to support poor farmers.

What are the plans for the program over the next five years?

With the completion of its second phase in 
September 2010, there are hopes the project 
partners will fund a new five-year phase. It’s 
important to consolidate and build on the initial 
gains in areas such as, wider distribution of 
improved seed varieties, continued testing of new 
varieties, agricultural extension services and 
improved post-harvest storage facilities. A 
future phase would look to integrating most of 
the program’s daily operations under Timor Leste 
Ministry of Agriculture management.

What is the longer term food security outlook for East Timor?

Timor Leste has a highly variable monsoonal 
climate with low soil fertility and poor post 
harvest storage technologies. This makes the 
near-subsistence agriculture precarious at best. 
Timor farmer families are highly resilient, but 
they’re also vulnerable to periodic crop failure 
and seasonal food shortages. Seeds of Life holds 
out the prospect of significantly improving food 
security and an opportunity to raise rural 
incomes through the marketing of surplus. 
Increased government funding to the agricultural 
sector generally is also welcome. So I’m 
optimistic about East Timor, and particularly the 
capacity of Timorese farmers to survive, and even 
thrive, under difficult environmental conditions.

I maintain a limited advisory role, but we’ve 
made significant contributions through the work 
of Dr Diana Glazebrook, who undertook field 
research and training between 2006–07, and more 
recently, Angie Bexley, who is finalising a PhD 
in the Department of Anthropology, and taken up 
an 18-month, full-time position on the project, 
working with the Timorese socio-economic team to 
complete intensive field evaluations.

What are your current projects with the program?

Our main objective is to research the factors 
influencing the rate of adoption of new staple 
food varieties. So our emphasis is on sustained 
field-based studies across the seven districts 
where Seeds of Life is operating. We’re working 
on agro-climatic calendars for extension and 
planning, baseline profiles of participating 
farmer households and an approach called ‘seed 
mapping’ that aims to document the production and 
distribution of new seed crop germplasm into 
markets or customary exchange systems. We’re also 
looking at the gender impacts of new varieties.

* Dr McWilliam is from the Department of 
Anthropology, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/easttimorstudies/attachments/20090723/d86f421d/attachment.html