Diversity in mountain agriculture One of the major negative consequences of the Green Revolution agriculture in the highly transformed agro-ecological zones in India is the emerge of monocultures. It is now self-evident that erosion of biodiversity or maintenance of monocultures leads to an increase in ecological vulnerability and unsustainability. Due to high degree of inaccessibility, however, some marginal areas, for example mountains of the Himalayas, could not be brought under Green Revolution cover and hence still harbour a very high magnitude of biodiversity. Achieving sustainability In recent years, sustainability has been the focal point of discussion among agriculturists. Negative side-effects of the conventional approaches to development have generated a need for searching ways and means for achieving the goal of sustainability. Bio-diversity is the most potential option for sustainability. The agriculture that came into being nearly 10,000 years ago, in a sense, was an art of manipulation of nature's diversity by man. Farmers have managed genetic resources ever since the beginning of plant and livestock husbandry. Farmers selection, breeding and continued maintenance of crop varieties and livestock breeds have gone in accordance to meet environmental conditions and diverse nutritional and social needs. The immense diversity as reflected in the traditional farming systems in mountain areas, such as Garhwal, is the product of farmers innovations evolved through their informal experimentation. Treating bio-diversity as a common property resource and several species and seeds as sacred, and free exchange of germplasm within the farming communities have been crucial in diversity conservation. Biodiversity based mountain farming systems and farmers central role in their management must be appreciated rather than overlooked as "traditional". Traditional can indeed be an important tool for evolving "modern" approaches of sustainable development. A closed system The natural diversity existing in the mountains has been and is being utilised by the local farmers for their sustenance and for developing diverse food production and livelihood systems. This diversity can be gauged through farming systems, farming situations, cropping systems, plant species and genetic variability within species. The mountain farming system, as typical in Garhwal, comprises forest, cropland, livestock and household as the four components (or subsystems) in organic linkages with each other. No input from outside the system is required. This traditional system is closed, self contained and self reliant. Forest biomass flows into cropland (cultivated land) in the form of organic manure via livestock and human beings. This diversity-rich multi-component farming system is altogether different from the one operating in the plains under Green Revolution cover. In the latter, organic linkages among various components are virtually missing. Forests are almost absent and work animals have been replaced with fossil fuel powered machines. Inputs in the form of chemical fertilisers and synthetic pesticides to be used massively in crops are supplied from outside. This agriculture is bound to strongly depend on the free capitalistic market system. Solar powered Traditional mountain agriculture is truly a solar-powered ecosystem in which the kinetic energy received from sunlight is stored as organic molecules by green plants, which, in turn, is used for plant growth and maintenance. Additionally, the cropland constantly receives a "subsidy" from natural forest eco-systems (which are also solar-powered). Therefore, such a farming system may conveniently be termed as "natural subsidised solar-powered agro-ecosystem". Green Revolution agriculture, on the contrary, is a "fossil fuel subsidised solar-powered agro-ecosystem" in which petroleum based inputs are to be used inevitably. Relying completely on renewable sources of energy (inexhaustible sunlight, forest biomass and crop residues, human and animal muscle power, and microbial decomposition processes in the soil) the mountain farming system is controlled by ecological principles. Such a farming system must embrace the characteristics of sustainability. The Green Revolution agriculture, contrarily, relies on precious and finite energy sources and such a food production system cannot guarantee sustainability. Site diversity The performance of the mountain farming system will be influenced enormously by the measure of diversity stocked in various components. The conditions for rich biodiversity are created by microclimatic variability, hence the farming system in the mountains exhibit varying degree of diversity even within short distances. Varying site factors, like altitude, slope direction, temperature, humidity, rainfall, availability of irrigation and distance from the snowline or plains are the driving forces for the diversification of agriculture into various farming situations. In Garhwal Himalaya there are eleven different farming situations. Each situation is characterised by a specific niche, vital for specific botanical composition, cropping patterns, and for specific activities and products. Traditionally, four cropping systems are maintained in Lesser Himalaya in Gahrwal. These are: - a kitchen garden around the homestead in which seasonal vegetable and some fruits are grown for home consumption; - an irrigated land cropping system in which rice and wheat are the main crops; - an upland or non-irrigated cropping system, dominantly occupied by millets and pulses; and - a summercamp cropping system, mainly devoted to pseudocereals (amaranth and buckwheat) and beans (mainly kidney bean). These diverse cropping systems have been designed by the farmers in tune with varying micro-ecological niches suiting to the cultivation of specific crops and crop combinations. Food diversity An enormous diversity of plants, both cultivated and wild, offering edible products, is one of the most outstanding features of the mountain flora. For example, total number of food providing plants in Henwal Valley of Garhwal Himalaya is as large as 127. These include 24 wild fruits, buds, flowers and seeds obtainable from forest ecosystems. There are 14 types of vegetables which occur wild and are consumed by the villagers. There are 18 types of fruit species people cultivate on their private land. The number of different kinds of vegetables cultivated mostly around homesteads) goes upto 32. Nine types of spices and condiments, both wild and cultivated, have also become part of the local diet. The number of cereals, millets and pseudocereals being raised is 12, of pulses 10, and of oilseeds 8. Apart from these, 15 species of fodder (mostly trees and bushes) are fed to domestic animals which after being converted into milk and milk products, also contribute to human diet. The people in this valley of Garhwal thus have access to as many as 142 types of food-yielding species. Compared to the "food poor" areas of the plains, the Himalayan food production system is truly "food rich", seen from a diversity point of view. A single village in the Henwal Valley of Tehri district in Garhwal cultivates an many as 126 varieties of rice, all of them indigenous. Hundreds of strains of tea plants originated from one species, Camellia assamica, found in the Himalaya region. In 1930, the famous Russian scientist Vavilov identified important centres for the origin of cultivated plants. One fifth of all cultivated plant species originate from the Asian continent, including central China, South East Asia and the Himalayas, according to Vavilovˇ¦s theory. The existing biodiversity at all levels in the Himalayan mountains is a wealth for the future, not only for this region but also for the areas where it has been annihilated due to mal-development. The diversity in the mountains needs to be protected, preserved and enriched and this region must be saved from negative development intervention. Vir Singh, GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Hill Campus, Ranichauri, Tehri Garhwal 249 199 UP, India. ILEIA Newsletter Vol. 12 No. 1 p. 16 << country/story review