Also at Yunnan Agricultural University I got a brief glimpse of some absolutely fascinating research from the Yuanyang rice terraces, which rival those of Banaue in age and extent. Professor Wang Yunyue, who just happens to be the wife of Professor Zhu, has been studying the agriculture of the Hani people who have cultivated the terraces for at least 1300 years. Modern hybrids have been introduced from time to time, but the Hani always abandon them after a couple of years, usually because they are no longer resistant to the diseases they were brought in to combat. Instead, the Hani continue to grow their traditional landraces.
These have hardly changed over the past decades. One household gave Professor Wang a sample of Acuce, a traditional variety that they had stored in a ceremony when the family built a new house 115 years ago. Genetically and morphologically it was essentially identical to today’s Acuce.
That’s a minor part of the research, which demonstrates that yields of landraces are more stable than hybrid varieties both across sites within the Yuanyang terraces and from year to year. That stability over place and time is intimately linked to the genetic diversity within each landrace. There’s more, but a publication is in preparation so it would be rude to divulge details. Nevertheless, I think there’s a lot to be learned from the Hani farmers’ system about the sustainability of low input agriculture and its dependence on agricultural biodiversity.
It has to be said, the breeders in our party were deeply skeptical. “But they haven’t tried to breed durable resistance for that environment.” Indeed not. And why not? Because “that environment” covers all of 16000 hectares and probably changes with every couple of hundred metres of elevation. Not much of a market. The breeders were convinced that a modern variety, done their way, would give increased yield and stability of yield with no need for fungicides. There’s certainly a precedent, notably Bioversity’s work with Nepalese farmers to produce an improved version of a landrace called Jethobudho, but somehow I don’t think that’s the kind of breeding they were thinking of. Still, it could be tried, if someone thought it worth the investment. They obviously don’t.
The thing is, as long as the population dependent on that farming system remains more or less within control, why would the Hani farmers want anything different? To sell? But then, what would they eat?