by When enslaved Africans escaped from the Surinamese plantations overseen by Dutch colonialists from the 17th to the 19th century, some women hid grains of rice in their hair to grow when they found refuge deep in the Amazon rainforest. Now, hundreds of years later, a gene bank is working to save Suriname’s rare rice species while preparing communities to be more resilient against the climate crisis.
In the hinterlands of Suriname, near the town of Brokopondo, Albertina Adjako, a descendant of those Africans – known as Maroons – carefully walks in her flip-flops through her rice seedlings. “We are worried because we have had a long period of drought,” she says as she inspects her plants.
As the impacts of the climate crisis are felt around the world, rural farming communities are highly vulnerable to extreme climate events, such as dry spells and heavy rains.
A study by the World Bank in 2021 found that Suriname was “particularly vulnerable to major threats from floods, drought and high winds during extreme weather events”. Maintaining a diversity of crop and seed species can help these communities meet their food needs.
Some rice species are known to Adjako as “sunflowers”, while others are “water lovers”. Nicholaas Pinas, a Suriname expert on rice species, says: “There are varieties that thrive in dry weather, that require less water than some others. In a year with little rain, they naturally produce much more than the varieties that need more water.”
Sustaining a rich diversity of species spreads risk and helps build resilience to external shocks, such as climate-related events. “You would always have something to eat,” says Pinas, a PhD researcher at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center of the Netherlands at the University of Leiden and Wageningen.
We not only want to protect Marún rice but also empower local communities to play a role in its conservation
Beri Bonglim, Crop Trust scientist
The Dutch ceded the city of New York (then called New Amsterdam) to the British in exchange for Suriname in the 17th century. In the transatlantic slave trade, the Dutch brought African slaves to Suriname to work on coastal plantations, which were rampant with brutality and violent repression. On the ships, traders carried African crops, including rice.
In Suriname, a new community and ethnic identity emerged from among African cultures: the present-day Saamaka, the Maroon people. Fleeing slavery, they created hidden and autonomous communities, cultivating a distinct identity rooted in the quest for freedom, strategically moving away from the oppressive plantations. Their main food is rice but they also grow cassava and plantains.
Albert Aboikoni, the main leader of the Saamaka, asked a grandma in their creole language, they explain that rice was a vital crop for the survival of the Maroons. “After fleeing the plantations, where will you find food to survive?” he asks.
The grandmother tells the story of how an 18th century ancestor named Ma Paanza hid grains of rice in her hair and brought them to the newly established communities in the jungle. The Saamaka still grows a strain of rice known as Ma Paanza. “[Rice] is easier to sustain. It was great food for us then and until now,” says Aboikoni.
I never knew there were so many species of rice
Albertina Adjako
Now, hundreds of years after escaping the plantations, the Saamaka find their ancestral lands in new danger, this time from climate failure. In 2022, Suriname experienced heavy rainfall due to the climate crisis and La Niña weather patterns, which caused widespread flooding in the interior.
In response to increased pressure from heavy rains on the Brokopondo reservoir in the center of the country, the state-owned oil and gas company, Staatsolie, opened the Afobaka dam environment, designed to provide electricity to the now defunct industrial aluminium. . smelters of the US multinational Alcoa.
Cultivated fields were left under water for months, resulting in the irrevocable loss of several rice species. “They couldn’t save anything,” Adjako says.
Adjako strolls across the desolate terrain away from her costa small piece of land for subsistence farming cleared from the forest using traditional slash and burn techniques.
“I never knew there were so many species of rice,” she laughs as she holds out a rice stalk. She is experimenting with versions provided by Suriname’s state-supported rice research center, SNRI/ADRON, but many of the seeds originally came from the Saamaka communities themselves, collected and preserved by Pinas and his colleagues.
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Most rice seeds are for staple foods, but some, like the black ones that Adjako shows in her palm, are reserved for traditional ceremonies, funerals and ritual offerings. Now, SNRI/ADRON, which has teamed up with the Crop Trust, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting crop diversity by collecting and protecting seeds, holds a wide variety of rice species.
The Crop Trust has stored seeds from Suriname in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a secure agricultural archive on the Norwegian Arctic island of Spitsbergen. According to the Seed Vault database, there are 183 unique rice samples of Suriname origin stored there.
“Maroon rice faces a significant threat,” says Beri Bonglim, a scientist at the Crop Trust. “We saw this as an opportunity to repatriate this valuable material to Maroon communities and actively engage with community members to renew them, raising awareness of the importance of these genetic resources and the need to preserve.”
“So not only did we want to protect Maroon rice but also empower local communities to play a key role in preserving it.”
Aboikoni called for a series of community seed banks, which are now planned to be operational this year. They will enable local people to trade seeds, maintain crop diversity and improve Saamaka’s resilience.
Jerry Tjoe Awie, director of SNRI/ADRON, located in the coastal region of Nickerie, near Guyana, says that its objective is to strengthen the resilience of the community against external shocks, especially those related to the climate crisis, such as the overwhelming impact of last year. the weather was great. “It was really hot and dry, and it affected the quality.”
Related: ‘Big move’: El Niño threatens world rice supplies
In the humid and humid interior of Suriname’s Amazon, Adjako expresses Tjoe Awie’s concern about the lack of rain in 2023. “You need the sun because we cannot harvest in the rain,” she says, and laughs – but she goes on to emphasize the need to gain more awareness of the impact of the climate crisis in her community. The consequences are all around them, she says. “You can see it.”
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