I have a relative who has spent nearly a year in rural tajikistan,
living with local farmers.

I have been given permission to quote this extract from an email they
sent recently. It's for general interest.

===================

The family we stayed with has a hectare of
rented land sown to wheat but is only yielding
about 0.6 tonnes/ha, which is just enough to
feed their family of six children for 4 months.
The rest must come from the sale of a couple of
cows. But the farmer says: "the land is tired
and each year it is producing less and less."
In living memory it has never had anything but
wheat grown on it.

Then take the firewood situation. In order to
have enough firewood in the 3 months of winter
(when electricity is only supplied 4 hours a
day) to heat and cook, he must travel 10 km on
his donkey every day for 1 month out to an area
where firewood is rapidly being depleted.

He also rents a few rows in the apple orchard
but the trees are over 50 years old so they are
no longer producing what they once did, and
besides they are so tall and un-pruned that
much of the fruit cannot be harvested.

He also had a hectare of land that he once grew
chickpeas on. Sadly this last year mud and
rocks resembling a big alluvial fan came down
from the mountain and completely buried his
field.

They are just scraping by. Health-wise the
family had obvious nutritional deficiencies.
The wife had goitre (this country is completely
devoid of iodine in its soils) and iron
deficiency and no doubt many more.

The hard thing to realise is they are in a catch twenty-two
situation. They only have just enough to live on now. But
what about next year and the one after that and the one
after that - when their wheat yields fall even more, when
they have to go 15km instead of 10 every day for wood, when
the old apple trees give up the ghost and haven’t been
replaced.

Sustainable????


--
Oz
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