Revival of ancient farming urged to protect biodiversity

Ancient farming practices, such as raising fish in rice paddies in China or Aboriginal Australian fire controls, will get a new lease of life under plans to slow extinctions of animals and plants, experts said yesterday.

Turning to traditional farming is seen as a way to limit what UN studies say is the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago, driven by a rising human population that wrecks natural habitats.

A 115-nation group seeking to protect the diversity of wildlife, which underpins everything from food supplies to medicines, will look at ways to revive and promote indigenous peoples' practices at talks in Turkey that run until Saturday.

"Indigenous and local knowledge … has played a key role in arresting biodiversity loss and conserving biodiversity," said Zakri Abdul Hamid, founding chair of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

The idea is partly to compare traditional farming around the world and see if the practices can be used in other nations.

Among ideas, raising fish in the waters of rice paddies, a practice used in south China for 1,200 years and in some other Asian nations, can reduce pests. Most modern rice paddies are not used to raise fish.

Farming the two together "reduces by 68 per cent the need for pesticides and by 24 per cent the need for chemical fertiliser compared with monocultures", an IPBES report said. Pesticides often kill many more species than those targeted.