Tunisia plants seeds of hope against climate change
Tunisian farmers are turning to the past to ensure a future by planting indigenous seeds as the North African country suffers at a time of drought, disease and climate change.
Traditional seeds come from a genetic heritage best suited to the environment, said Maher Medini, from Tunisia’s National Gene Bank, which promotes the development of sustainable agriculture in the country.
“They are reservoirs of genes hundreds, if not thousands of years old,” Medini said, adding that the seeds are more resistant to the ever-growing dangerous impacts of global warming. Climate change is causing challenging variations in rainfall, temperature and humidity, creating disease in the crops, he said.
“The foundation of adaptation is diversity,” Medini said.
Wheat varieties developed in the 1980s are being blighted by disease in Tunisia, but farmers say that traditional varieties appear to be more resistant.
In the past, using indigenous seeds, Tunisian farmers set aside a small part of the harvest to sow in the next season.
But the development of hybrid or genetically modified seeds resulted in better harvests, and native varieties largely fell out of use. One problem is that seeds from the new varieties cannot be replanted, and farmers have to buy in more seed every year. Now some farmers are looking at the methods used by their forebears.
Mohamed Lassad Ben Saleh farms in the agricultural region of Jedaida, some 30 kilometers (18 miles) northwest of the capital Tunis.
Eight years ago he switched to planting a traditional variety of wheat, known as Al-Msekni. On his farm, the harvest is now in full swing. The wheat harvested from each hectare is weighed separately, so each plot’s productivity can be calculated. “The results are good,” Ben Saleh said.
When he meets other farmers, he lets them know how his traditional seeds are performing.
The national average in recent years has been 1.4 to two tons a hectare, while Ben Saleh says his yield has been five tons.
Ben Saleh reports his seeds are more resistant to drought and disease, which means he does not have to use as much pesticide.
“The new varieties are weak and quickly affected by mold,” he said.
With most farmers buying new seeds every season, the country currently imports 70 percent to 80 percent of its seeds each year.
“A return to local or native seeds is one of the conditions needed to reach food sovereignty,” said Aymen Amayed, a researcher in agricultural policies.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has warned against the increased use of hybrid seeds, and considers it a threat to indigenous varieties and to local genetic heritage.
The FAO estimates that over the past century, around three quarters of the diversity in world crops has disappeared. But Tunisia’s gene bank is working to “reclaim its genetic heritage.”