Project of Songping Society Agricultural Biodiversity and Local Species Conservation in Lianhe Village, Panzhihua City, Sichuan Province
Project of Songping Society Agricultural Biodiversity and Local Species Conservation in Lianhe Village, Panzhihua City, Sichuan Province
Baseline
1.environmental and socio-economic conditions
Songping community has a wide cultivated land area, with a total cultivated land area of more than 2,600 mu and a woodland area of 28,000 mu. The cultivated land area of each village is about 20 to 40 mu, and agricultural cultivation (vegetables, corn, flue-cured tobacco) is the main source of income for local villagers, and the average annual income of the whole village is 11,000 yuan. Local men are seasonal migrant workers, and local women play a major role in agricultural production. In the past 20 years, the industrial agricultural planting mode has brought economic income to the villagers and improved the local economic and living conditions. However, we can also see that the local ecological environment has been greatly damaged, especially in the past five years, the development of commercial vegetable planting in the village has brought environmental problems, but also brought great impact on the conservation of local varieties. In order to enter the market, the villagers have grown vegetables mainly to meet the external market in recent years. Local varieties are difficult to be recognized by the market under the evaluation criteria such as appearance and taste, and are gradually abandoned by villagers, and local varieties are disappearing. The destruction of the local ecological environment not only directly affects the production and life of local villagers (water environment degradation, health risks, etc.), but also makes a national pollution-free vegetable base downstream in an environmental and health risk.
2. State ongoing projects in the local area
In 2021, the village was rated as an ancient village in Sichuan, and the government also invested 10 million yuan in the development and construction funds of ancient villages, which are mainly used for the construction of infrastructure in and around the village, including road construction and village style transformation.

Problems
1) Villagers' external dependence on seed resources is becoming stronger and stronger, and their autonomy is decreasing;
In the investigation, we learned that there were more than 80 local varieties of various crops that could be said 10 years ago. These local varieties can be kept for themselves and exchanged within and between villages. However, local varieties have been reduced from more than 80 to more than 10, especially rice, which has no local varieties at all. The villagers now mainly buy seeds from the market, and the villagers said in the interview: "Now we plant what others sell." Local wisdom, such as seed selection, preservation, planting and concepts, is disappearing with the disappearance of seeds. The market replaced the social relationship of mutual seed exchange among villagers. Villagers' autonomy in seed resources is declining, and local crop genetic resources are being impacted.
2) Commodity seeds bring community health problems, especially women's health problems;
Due to the weak local adaptability and the emphasis on yield and appearance, commercial seeds need to apply a lot of pesticides in the planting process. Take the local staple vegetable, green beans. Local old varieties of green beans do not require any pesticide application, but today's commercial green beans need to be sprayed at least eight times per season. Especially in the context of climate change, the pests and diseases of commercial seeds have become more serious, and the amount of pesticide application has gradually increased. This entails greater health risks and Labour for local villagers, especially women who are mainly involved in farming. In the survey, both villagers and local village doctors said that the occurrence of strange diseases in the village has increased in recent years, and suspected that this is related to the long-term heavy pesticide application. Although there is no scientific data to verify the direct correlation between the application of pesticides and the occurrence of "strange diseases" in local villagers, local village doctors and Huaxi public health teachers who have participated in the village survey have confirmed the suspicion of villagers from the side that there is a direct or indirect relationship between the application of large amounts of pesticides and the health of villagers.
3) Commercial seeds bring ecological environment problems, especially water environment damage;
In addition to weak local adaptability, the consumption of water and fertilizer of commercial seeds is also higher than that of local varieties. In recent years, with the inflow of local commercial seeds, villagers have increasingly invested in agricultural materials such as pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides. Only a small amount of these pesticides and fertilizers will be absorbed by crops, while a large amount of pesticides and fertilizers will seep into groundwater, streams flowing into the surface of the ground or remain in the soil. Bring soil degradation problems, water pollution problems. According to the investigation, fish and shrimp are rarely seen in the local gullies, and the local groundwater level is also declining year by year, which directly affects the villagers' production, irrigation and domestic water use.
Local agricultural seed resources are an important component of agricultural biodiversity. Local villagers have different degrees of awareness and awareness of the decline in agricultural autonomy, women's health problems and environmental problems brought about by the disappearance of local seed resources. Especially women who are mainly involved in farm work. Therefore, it is hoped that external support can be obtained to enhance the autonomy of local seed resources from the perspective of local seed conservation, improve the biodiversity of local agriculture, and reduce the health risks of local women's farming activities and the harm to the ecological environment in farming.

Solutions
1) Promote the villagers to fully understand the value and significance of local agricultural seeds, and enhance the awareness of local variety conservation.
- Establishing baseline data information on local agricultural seeds; Promote the Songping Ecological Culture and Art team to conduct participatory surveys from different aspects such as the characteristics, economy, culture, ecology and society of local agricultural varieties, learn and sort out the knowledge of local traditional agricultural seed conservation, and establish the baseline data information of local agricultural biodiversity;
- Encourage villagers to understand the value of local varieties from multiple perspectives; Assist villagers to analyze the causes of the changes from the vertical changes of local agricultural seeds, and the impacts and challenges brought to the villagers' production and life, ecological environment and local culture, so as to fully understand and understand the value of local agricultural seeds, and enhance the awareness of local seed conservation. (Songping Ecological Culture and Art Team is a self-organized group of Songping Society, established in 2014, with a core management team of 5 and 58 members, mostly women, committed to the protection of local ecological environment and the construction of cultural life)
2) Encourage villagers to find local agricultural seed resources inside and outside the community, and start to restore ecological demonstration planting of local agricultural varieties.
- Assisted the ecological culture and art team to find and collect existing local agricultural seeds in the village and surrounding villages, and initially established local seed interaction with the surrounding villages.
- Select demonstration households to display restorative demonstration planting. In the process, eco-friendly farming practices are promoted to reduce the health risks posed by farming to villagers, especially women.
3) Establish local seed resource library and operation management mechanism, and mobilize the participation of surrounding villages to promote the construction of local support network for seed resource library.
- Use the public activity center in the village to build a local seed resource library. Use physical objects, words, pictures, videos and other forms to show the local traditional agricultural seed resources and culture;
- Through the construction and operation of seed resource library, promote the continuous investigation and collection of local agricultural seeds, display and publicity, exchange and dissemination of farming culture, and realize the construction of local support network for local seed conservation.
4) Promote interaction between urban and rural areas, and build external support networks for local agricultural seed protection.
- Cooperate with local social organizations in Panzhihua to promote the interaction between urban and rural areas, promote the interaction between urban consumers and villages, use the power of healthy consumption to support the villagers' practice of restoring local ecological planting of old varieties, and cultivate an external support network for local agricultural seed protection.
- Participate in external seed conservation network exchange and learning, such as Chengdu Shuguang's seed conservation project site in Wangjiazhai, Xiaojin County, and other training and learning opportunities of farmer seed network. To enhance the local seed conservation capacity and experience of the villagers' backbone.

Outcomes
1) The community has a more comprehensive understanding of the value and significance of local varieties, and the awareness of local agricultural seed conservation has been improved, so that no less than 80% of farmers have an understanding of the value of agricultural biodiversity conservation.
2) Seed resource archives (graphic form) were established, and most of the local (60%) traditional agricultural seed information was scientifically and effectively collected, sorted out and analyzed, including basic information, quantity change, impact and challenge analysis, etc.
3) The local seed ecological planting demonstration practice group with the participation of villagers was established to restore no less than 20 local varieties of live conservation planting demonstration. Local skills in seed conservation have been improved, with 10% of farmers mastering ecological planting methods.
4) The Community seed Resource Library was built and operated, and the traditional seed resources of the community were sorted and displayed, providing a local exchange and support platform for the conservation, dissemination and flow of local seeds.
5) Through the establishment of direct sales channels for agricultural products based on ecological cultivation of local varieties to urban consumers, promote interaction between urban and rural areas, and build internal and external support networks for local seed conservation and agricultural biodiversity conservation. Examples of local seed conservation and biodiversity conservation are disseminated locally and beyond.
 

Project Snapshot

Grantee:
Chengdu Home Action Public Service Center
Country:
China
Area Of Work:
Biodiversity
Grant Amount:
US$ 50,000.00
Co-Financing Cash:
US$ 2,709.09
Co-Financing in-Kind:
US$ 6,515.70
Project Number:
CPR/SGP/OP7/Y4/STAR/BD/2023/04
Status:
Not active yet
Project Characteristics and Results
Promoting Public Awareness of Global Environment
Combine with community festivals to publicize and display local knowledge, traditional conservation experience and cultural stories in the community. The activities will be combined with community festivals such as the Torch Festival, Women's Day, Double Ninth Festival, etc.
Inovative Financial Mechanisms
Local traditional knowledge and experience on local variety conservation will be produced in the process of local variety investigation and analysis. The external expert support process will combine local experience to produce local variety conservation related knowledge and experience; The implementation of the project and villagers together to summarize the landing experience.
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SGP Country office contact

Ms. Meijia Lu
Phone:
+861085320743
Email:
Ms. Lixia Zheng
Email:

Address

No. 2 Liangmahe Nanlu
Beijing, Chaoyang, 100600