ILEIA Newsletter • 1.4 • November 1985
"Farmers can solve the majority of their problems themselves when you help them to regain their self-reliance which has been destroyed in so many years of so-called 'development'. People who neglect their own traditional technology (developed through ages to survive in mostly very limited circumstances) put the time-bomb under their own existence".
Hans and Ana Carlier, Horticulturalist and Nutrionist respectively of the Organisation of Dutch Volunteers, have come to this conclusion after working for more than ten years with peasant-unions in Latin America. Their method of working is one which inter-relates farming, nutrition and health. It aims at both giving peasants more power over their own development, and helping them to revalueate their own culture and tradition. This article describes the way Ana and Hans work with peasants, not the mistakes, which were plenty, but the positive experiences, which can be useful for others doing the same job.
"When you visit a village, the people do put expectations on you, based on previous experiences with people from outside', like extension officers, doctors, teachers and quite a lot of university students. Mostly, these people seem to have a bad image, due to thousands of promises and the little real help given to the development of the poor. Your start also depends on ,the good or bad image of your counterpart-organisation among peasants and, of course, quite a lot depends on your ability for human contact in which language plays an important role. Still, when you're open and accept the local people as your teachers, their acceptance will be better and the work easier."
Beware of traps
A song made in a workshop will help to remember serious things in a pleasant way
What is the best way to start?
One should start very quietly; rent a modest room or house in the village and live there among the people with whom you want to work. We feel that it is very important to live in the same situation, in order to be able to understand their way of life. We always lived half of the time in the village and the other half in the town. Please stand the temptation to start with 'demonstration courses' or 'demonstration plots', but first try to get to know the people. Walk around and observe their gardens and try to help in their agricultural plots, they will teach you how to cultivate these and they will accept your mistakes, because you are new. Talk with the people. Moreover, listen well. Write your diary or field-book, because you will forget a lot of details. Try to come into contact with organised people and help them to reach more men and women. It is destructive to create parallel organisations.
When we need more detailed technical information about certain customs or technologies, we ask for 'local specialists': men and women with acknowledged position and skills with regard to traditional agriculture, curing animals or healing people with natural medicines. These specialists are the first persons in your project to work with. Beware that the wealthier farmers will try to win you and make you work for them. Do realise then, that also in the rural areas social classes exist and that the poor will observe your social contacts with suspicion. Discuss new techniques with a good friend and test these preferably on his or her plot or garden.
"Try to change it, and you will know it better" has always been a very important saying for us. Prevent the people from saying "he (or she) does not know a thing, because he (or she) is only asking!" They like to get to know you, your friends, your family, your technical, Social and political experiences. We consider development to have a political colour. Therefore we talked a lot with the organised farmers about the problem of technical assistance (e.g. machinery) being provided for the village, not for their needs, but to pacify their political activity. We hope that the discussions helped them to come to action and to a radical change of the structural injustice.
Education becomes communication
But how can you avoid being abused by others (or abuse others yourself)?
That is the reason why we grew from a teacher-student relation to a form of horizontal communication work. Now, we try to bring the people together in meetings and discuss the development-process. We always ask the groups: How was it ten or twenty years ago? How is it today? What has changed? Why did it change? Who is responsible for all this and why? What happened with the power?
One of our aims is to try to understand why the peasants unions do not fight for the development of natural medicines. Why healers who have always helped the people to survive? When they analyse this process of change, and their experiences with the modern way of life, e.g. in the form of theatre or role-plays, then they realise that they are just dreaming and that they do not have their ‘own programme’ directed towards their needs on development, food production, nutrition and health.
We also inform people about the problems we encounter in modern agriculture, nutrition and medicine in Europe, and we have made lists of chemicals and medicines which are forbidden in Europe and still for sale in Latin America. If people are not informed about the negative sides of western technology, they will not understand the importance and value of their own knowledge and technology.
Solving problems
How do you come to your conclusion that the farmers can solve the majority of their problems themselves?
This is based on our experience in Ecuador. In a centre we worked together with peasants, technicians and a priest on the development of the peasants’ unions. We helped to organise workshops on health, nutrition and food production. Normally, we had about 25 representatives from different groups of peasants, including men and women, old and young. Every one of them was asked to write down his or her five most important problems on agriculture. These questions were gathered on the blackboard and divided into 4 groups. Then the participants discussed in smaller groups how they themselves would solve the problems and how their ancestors would have done it. From the results of these discussions they (and we) learned that with a bit of communication and concentration, they could solve the majority of their problems. Investigation with other farmers who had more experience could probably solve the remaining questions and if this was insufficient, they would ask specialists from outside.
Farming, food and health
When you work in agriculture, how do you relate food and health?
We always work together: Ana more in the field of nutrition and Hans in agricultural production for better nutrition. In the first project in Peru, we worked with a co-operative. They asked us to help the associated villages in the production of vegetables for the market in town. But we wanted to help the peasants with the improvement of their own food production. So we specialised on working in family gardens. When we started, we did not have the slightest idea of their feeding habits and how they looked upon, and accordingly dealt with, health problems. For this reason we lost too much time on trying to introduce western type vegetables gardens, which had no link at all with their culture and way of living. We had to radically change our method of working -we started to analyse with the people themselves the value of their food crops.
We discovered that the peasants used vegetables as medicinal herbs: onions to cure cough, celery for stomach-aches caused by cold wind, tea of lettuce as a tranquilliser and so on. In our opinion, the peasants know very well the relation between certain foodstuffs and diseases. Their food theory is very similar to the macrobiotics of Japan and they taught us to classify foodstuffs in warm and cold (Yang and Yin). However, a lot of this kind of knowledge is disappearing.
Making science with people
Why do farmers lose their (agricultural) traditions?
For all the things a farmer does, he or she has his or her own reasons. Traditions get lost simply due to the silence around the experiences of the rural people. In universities, nobody talks about natural medicines, biological agriculture or traditional food systems. Even the anthropologists are not interested in the 'technology of survival' of the small farmers.
The culture of the peasants does not appear in the mass-media, in the agricultural schools and in the research stations. These are the main reasons why peasants lose their self-confidence, and consequently their traditions. Increasingly they get the feeling of being underdeveloped. Why are there no doctors who can help the traditional healers with the improvement of their work? The same story accounts for the losses in agriculture and animal husbandry, where a treasure of knowledge disappears with the death of every old man and woman, because they have no child who is interested in their knowledge! When you ask a farmer why he does a certain action, he will tell you -it is proved to be the best way- or because they (my ancestors) always did it this way. It is our task, to find out with the people why this is the best way, e.g. when you know that beans fix nitrogen in the soil, there is an extra reason for planting them together with maize and thus (when explained to the farmer) he can defend this reason against "specialists" who tell that monoculture is the best way. This 'finding out 'why' with people' is what we call making science with people.
Books
What did you do with the results of the investigations and meetings?
We completed each series of meetings with the publication of the results in a book for the local people. We made manuals on horticulture, nutrition and traditional medicines in Peru. In Ecuador, we published the results of the workshops, held with the peasant unions. These two books (see below) deal with their way of agriculture and animal husbandry. The last book that we made with the union, 'Nuestra Alimentacion', is a working book for the union with the results of a completed study among 227 families. The study -executed by the leaders of the union themselves- relates malnutrition, diseases and child mortality; the unequal distribution of .and, migration and the negative consequences for women; the decline of the health system and the bad drinking water; the integration in the (large-scale) market-economy and a lot of other themes. With this book, we helped the peasants to investigate how far they could improve their own development plans and actions. This is why you can see in the same book an evaluation of all their established efforts and programmes made to improve their situation, as well as a lot of proposals to the unions for projects made by the people themselves.
How do you see the future of the projects you left?
We have helped the people to rebuild a little bit of self reliance, self-confidence and independence, and because the programmes were based on traditional knowledge, we do not fear that this process will stop with our withdrawal.
Text: Hans and Ana Carlier
Van Beghenstraat 189, 1071 GD Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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