Human, Wheat & Authenticity

03-11-2020

I am writing this as an overview of my entire project. Just to give an idea, I started with roti in my kitchen, which led on to wheat, changes in wheat seed because of increasing demands to questioning authenticity of wheat followed by studying farmer wheat relationship and till this point. I felt I was being biased in my approaches of looking at wheat and its relationship with human. Considering farmer and wheat and traditional ways of farming as the only authentic way of production. Considering authenticity only lies between farmers and wheat relationship. I needed to relook at the whole scenario from all the point of views, putting myself in the shoes of farmers, scientists, policymakers and conservationist, the ones who are involved with the overall seed culture scenario. This thought of relooking maybe was the effect of all the different sessions where we talked about how colonized we are, how we discard what we think is not an ethical approach, how we pass on judgements so easily and think of only one particular way as ethical. It maybe the effect of documentaries like World according to Monsanto and Food Evolution that I watched, which presented different view points. It may be due to all the various types of readings listed here that I did for my line of inquiry.

1. Kulshrestha, V.P. 1985. “History and Ethnobotany of wheat in India”. Journal D’agriculture Traditionnelle Et De Botanique Appliquée. 32 (1): 61-71.
2. Lev-Yadun, Simcha, Ken-Ichitanno, Avi Gopher, Shahal Abbo, Anat Hartmann, Mordechai E. Kislev, Ehud Weiss, and George Willcox. 2006. “How and When Was Wild Wheat Domesticated?” Science. 313 (5785): 296-297.
3. Shewry, P. R. 2009. “Wheat” Journal of Experimental Botany 60, no. 6: 1537-553.
4. Cook, Seth. 2018. “BIODIVERSITY AND THE FUTURE OF FARMING”. The Spice of Life: The Fundamental Role of Diversity on the Farm and on the Plate. Report. International Institute for Environment and Development. 10-18.
5. Lopes, Marta S., Ibrahim El-Basyoni, Peter S. Baenziger, Sukhwinder Singh, Conxita Royo, Kursad Ozbek, Husnu Aktas, et al. 2015. “Exploiting genetic diversity from landraces in wheat breeding for adaptation to climate change”. Journal Of Experimental Botany. 66 (12): 3477-3486.
6. Cook, Seth. 2018. “FIVE STEPS FOR FOSTERING DIVERSITY ON THE FARM AND ON THE PLATE” The Spice of Life: The Fundamental Role of Diversity on the Farm and on the Plate. Report. International Institute for Environment and Development. 31-38.
7. Leverink, Joris. 2018. Seed Freedom & The Future of Farming. An interview with Vandana Shiva, Roar Magazine. 58-69.
8. Eliazer Nelson, Ann Raeboline Lincy, Kavitha Ravichandran, and Usha Antony. 2019. The impact of the Green Revolution on indigenous crops of India. Journal of Ethnic Foods.
9. Sandhu, Jashandeep Singh. 2014. “GREEN REVOLUTION: A CASE STUDY OF PUNJAB”. Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. 75: 1192-1199.
10. Barnes J. 2016. “Separating the wheat from the chaff: The social worlds of wheat”. Environment and Society: Advances in Research. 7 (1): 89-106.
11. Shergill, H. S. 2007. “Sustainability of Wheat-Rice Production in Punjab: A Re-Examination”. Economic and Political Weekly. 42 (52): 81-85.
12. Aistara, Guntra A. 2014. “Authentic Anachronisms”. Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture. 14 (4): 7-16.
13. Economist, The. 2005. Ears of Plenty. London: The Economist Group Limited.
14. Varshneya, M.C. 2011. Bhalia Wheat. GI Application Report, Anand, Gujarat: Anand Agricultural University.

I don’t have a particular answer of why this thought prevailed in my mind but it indeed provided a new perspective towards the issue. This thought along with view of a designer, led me to study notions of authenticity in human-nature relationship as farmer-wheat, scientist-wheat, policymaker-wheat, conservationist-wheat and myself-wheat relationship. Understanding the ideas of these individuals and the context in which that idea is born, I consider authenticity as highly subjected to the context of the issue. All the people involved in the seed culture issues and their approaches towards the challenges they are working with can be considered as authenticity. Though how ethical or unethical their ways are, they are being true and original to each of their contextual scenario. A detailed painted picture of this scenario is what I have presented in my research paper that at the end culminates into a design proposal.

Being a designer and studying the overall scenario of the seed cultures of wheat led me to conclude on the need for an inclusive and collaborative approach to the issue. There is a need for a platform were all the voices around this issue, especially the marginalized voices can be brought together. Thus, I propose a web based mobile application which will act as a virtual knowledge exchange platform. I imagine it is a space for discussing and innovating in the design of more sustainable and inclusive wheat production systems, for allowing participatory plant breeding (PPB) that can bring farmers and breeders to participate equally in decision-making at every stage, from the identification of desirable traits and parent lines, to the evaluation of resulting varieties. This application will display an alternative and try to place itself in current transition context of the so called “the second green revolution”.