Heritage Crop for Future Challenge

Researcher and scientist have relentlessly warn the global society of the coming climate change and its detrimental effect to the society, especially on the food production ecosystem. Predominantly, the effect of global warming, drought and depletion of water source in agriculture and fisheries.

Since the last 80-90 years, modern day crops and food system have been developed with the technology and know how in producing new hybrid species, especially in crop production, with the main focus to produce higher yield. This genetically modified seed, that were skewed to perform well in certain range of weather condition barely producing enough during the seasons where the weather condition differ greatly from normal.

Heritage crop, on the other hand are crops cultivated from seeds that have gone through the cycle of planting and storing for generation. The history of these se seeds can be traced back up to hundreds of years ago and have been thru the acclimatation process for many generations.

Historian and archaeologists researching agriculture practices in the past, is studying how people in the past have strengthen their food production ecosystem against the recurrent cycle of climate change. This include the study of ancient and heritage crop that is pass down from generation to generation.

Due to the explosive development of agriculture in the last era, unfortunately, heritage crop and seed have been forgotten by the mainstream farmer and farming industry. The only cluster of society that still maintain and preserve this heritage crop and the seeds are the indigenous tribe. However , over time, even the varieties that were in their safe keeping have started to extinct or depleted.

Taking Indigenous paddy hill variety kept and maintained by the Semai tribe in Kuala Lipis Pahang Malaysia as an example, according to the head of the tribe, in as short as 12 years, they have lost around 7 variety of rice that they used to kept. These rice variety for over the decade have proven to be able to produce sufficient rice production without using any irrigation and fertilizer, and can withstand warmer temperature. The problem that the tribe is facing however, are more towards the lack of man power to continue the cultivation tradition as well as the depletion of indigenous tribe exclusive land zone for agriculture, that they called " Tanah Adat" or " Culture Land " due to deforestation and migration of the tribe to the city.

These species of heritage rice, have stand the test of time in term of its resilient, and in comparison to the new rice variety that require excessive water supply for its cultivation, is suitable to be cultivated in places that have limited source of water. Although in term of its production yield that is less superior compared to the performance of hybrid seed rice crop in their optimal production weather condition, commercializing and maintaining the purity of the heritage seed is believed to be an added advantage in future plans to secure rice production while facing the challenging climate change.

While a few non government Organization have started to take steps to assist the tribes to preserve the seed, the cultivation practice and the culture, attention and assistance from government and their agencies is still very limited and the possibilities of these heritage crop to be used as an optional crop to help with ensuring food security is still overlooked. More effort need to be done in order to create and spread the awareness among the agriculture industry players and the government decision maker, to start incorporating the heritage crop as part of the food production ecosystem in every countries.