Seeds of Life

EAST TIMOR: Activities such as AusAID's agricultural program Seeds of Life are helping to bring food security a step closer for one of the world's poorest nations.

Australian and Timorese man outdoors, looking at corn husks For Rob Williams, team leader of AusAID's Seeds of Life program, putting food in bowls is what matters. 'East Timor has three seasons, a dry season, a wet season and a hungry season,' he explains. 'The hungry season can last up to five months. Seeds of Life wants to eliminate it.'

Seeds of Life team leader Rob Williams and local farmer Luis Almeida inspect a bountiful crop.

On average, each farmer in East Timor has about a hectare of land, often on a steep slope. Maize, sweet potatoes, peanuts, cassava and rice are the main crops which are usually harvested using the customary katana, a large knife.

But such traditional farming is inadequate. A hectare of land currently doesn't produce enough cereal to last a family for a year. And as the population increases - following current trends it will double to two million in 25 years - the struggle for East Timor to feed itself can only get harder.

In 2000, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) stepped in to help the country's ailing rural sector. It put out the call around the world for newer, high yielding seed varieties to replace those destroyed or lost during the struggle for independence. Seed centres responded and, in East Timor over the past few years, exhaustive tests have been run to establish the most promising seed varieties for local conditions.

It's time now for the next stage - on-farm trials, which rely on the cooperation and goodwill of rural communities.

'We have spent a lot of time on farms, listening and talking to farmers. We're slowly introducing the idea of growing new varieties of familiar crops. This way the change isn't so great,' says Rob.

'The idea is to persuade farmers to test new varieties not coerce them.' Seeds of Life is employing 11 young local agricultural graduates to help with the onfarm trials. 'We give them each a motorbike and send them off with packets of seeds to invite farmers to test the new varieties.

So far the results are encouraging,' says Rob. Domingo de Silva, who works a farm on a steep slope near Liquica, is one of the many converts. He couldn't be more pleased with the new seeds. His last corn harvest was nearly twice as much as usual. 'Soon I hope to sell some of my higher yields and use the money for other things,' he says. He's also found the new varieties of sweet potato can be grown in half the time as his old varieties.

'Some families using the new seeds are already bringing in a healthy surplus,' says Alex Dalley, a former Australian Youth Ambassador for Development who now works on Seeds of Life. 'They have enough to eat and there's some produce left over to sell. The extra money is sending children to school.'

The Seeds of Life program, which is active in four of the country's 13 districts, is a quiet example of how rural communities are able to make real improvements in their lives. It's also demonstrating how East Timor can take fundamental steps towards feeding its growing population itself.

2006