Sunday, 25 June 2023

Bio-resources into Bio-wealth : a way forward for grassroot communities to build climate-friendly livelihood with local food.

 

  Bio-resources into bio-wealth:                         By Farmer Samir Bordoloi

 


The northeastern region of India is a hot spot biodiversity zone of both flora and fauna. The abundance of natural resources provides a great opportunity of building up self-reliant sustainable livelihood by transforming the bio-resources into bio-wealth. The farming communities at the grassroots with sustainable use of those natural resources with the idea of conservation, cultivation, consumption and then commercialization can build up resilient communities.

Naturally grown high nutritive forest food which is apart of the local cuisines is collected from the wild and is never grown. This enormous list of wild edible plants must be conserved in its naturally growing state, but, the grassroot farmers should be trained to propagate them in their homestead gardens. Research needs to focus on these food plants and develop the ways of cultivating them in the homesteads. The growing techniques must also tap the significance of the natural resources that can be utilized to make organic manures and bio-pesticides to ascertain healthy food production system. Through the conversion of those bio-resources like fallen dry leaves, green biomass considered as weeds, animal manure etc. a natural farming system of those unsung high nutritive, high value, health-food flora can sustain a balanced healthy life.

The ever-growing wellness food industry touching the heights of about 500 billion US dollars demand those food plants in different forms of processing. Communities around these plant growing areas have inherited skills of processing and consuming them. Standardizing their traditional ways of processing with blending of technical skills of Food experimenters with renewable energy-based technologies can create an economy of permanence for the grassroot practitioners.

Wild growing fiddle head ferns with high nutritional qualities like high protein content is an example of the lying bio-resource on ground which can be processed to dehydrated health-food. Centalia growing wild in the paddy fields can be processed into wellness food by active participation of the women farmers and processed into different high value and low volume food products. Bread Fruit growing wild in the forest needs its seed collected to grow into orchards. The sour fruit can be processed into high value juice and the seed can be used like peanuts. Thus, these under-rated naturally occurring bio edible resources can be converted into bio-wealth.

When we say bio-wealth, it is based on the principle of developing a circular economy which is the requisite of the Climate-friendly food production system which is going to be mandatory to follow for all humans to sustain life on this planet. Conversion of bio-resources into bio-wealth must be devised in such a way that we know our carbon footprint in every stage of the process. Preparing bio-diversity registers of those miracle food floras, mapping community’s ways of evolving with their food floras(the food culture), proper food value analysis, selection of those resources, develop ways of cultivating, building nutritional securities of the communities is the need. Building up livelihood by processing the surplus into low volume but high value Wellness Health Food Products (WHFP) is the way forward.