Food sovereignty and uncultivated biodiversity in South Asia: essays on the poverty of food policy and the wealth of the social landscape

Based on a series of studies and practical experiments undertaken over several years in the drylands of Medak district in Andhra Pradesh (South India) and in the flood-plains of Tangail district in Bangladesh, this slim volume tells us some surprising facts about uncultivated foods.

The publication draws on information from about 75 villages in the Medak District Andhra Pradesh in the Deccan Plateau, villages with a total population of some 100,000 people. Most are small farmers with 1-3 acres of land gifted during the feudal period by their landlords or in the more recent era of government-led land reforms.The land supports a wide variety of agricultural crops including sorghum, a range of millets, pulses and oilseeds, all of which grow under rain-fed conditions. The Bangladesh-focused study  of uncultivated biodiversity draws mainly from communities in the District of Tangail, some 90 kms north-west of Dhaka. The District is in the central part of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta, an enormous flood plain ecosystem. Throughout the District old river ways have left their traces in moribund channels, now forming shallow, swampy areas where cultivation of rice is practiced. During the rainy season, the areas adjoining these water bodies are flooded, providing spawning grounds for numerous fish species.

The essays in this volume provide evidence to show that uncultivated plants are not just part of the coping strategy that the poor use during seasonal shortages or drought; they are part of the everyday sustenance and key sources of vitamins, minerals and proteins not just of the poor but also of the relatively well-off. These uncultivated plants living as "partner" plants alongside the cultivated ones inhabit a landscape unobserved by most researchers. They are neither "wild" (unattended) nor "domesticated" (tamed), but something in between community-managed. As the authors emphasise, this uncultivated biodiversity provides not just food security but food sovereignty. It gives people control over a basic need.