Linguists will tell you that each language arranges the world differently. No two languages classify objects, activities or emotions in the same way. This is especially true of the words used in farming.
I was reminded of this recently when translating a video script from English to Spanish. The video, from northern India, forced me to grapple with “mulchâ€, an English word that is also widely used in Spanish, in real life and on the Internet. Yet the world’s authority on the Spanish language, the Real Academia Española, does not include “mulch†in its magnificent dictionary, the Diccionario de la Real Academia de la Lengua Española.
It is odd that “mulch†is a new word in Spanish, when it is an old word in English. The Oxford English Dictionary defines mulch as a “Partly rotted plant material, etc.; (Horticulture) loose material consisting of straw, decaying leaves, shredded cuttings and bark etc., spread on soil or around or over a plant to provide insulation, protect from desiccation and deter weeds.†“Mulch†comes from a Middle English word, “molsh” or “mulsh” and has been in the language at least since 1440, and possibly much earlier.
I had my doubt about using “mulch†in Spanish. Various on-line dictionaries suggest “mantilloâ€, literally “little blanket†instead. But a web search of mantillo usually shows commercial bags of chipped bark used for landscaping and suppressing weeds. Not quite the same as the straw, leaves and husks that farmers have on hand.
I wrote to three agronomists I respect, native Spanish speakers who work closely with farmers. They confirmed that “mulch†was the word to use in Spanish. But one offered a little twist: if the video from northern India was being translated into Quechua, we could say “sach’a wanu.†Now there is a term to savor. “Wanu†means dropping, and is the source of the English word “guano,†meaning bird dung. In Quechua, “wallp’a wanu†is chicken dung, “llama wanu†is llama dung, and “sach’a wanu†is forest mulch, or the fallen leaves of trees.
I was back where I started. So, I decided to use “mulch†in the script, although at the first mention I did offer the alternative “mantillo.â€
While languages describe the world in different ways, they also level those differences as they aggressively borrow words from each other, for example “siloâ€, “lassoâ€, and “stevedore.†These are all recent loanwords from Spanish to English. New words take time to be defined in dictionaries, which cautiously avoid including fad words that may fade away before really entering the language. But one day “mulch†will be included in the Diccionario de la Real Academia, joining “whisky,†“sandwich,†and other recent English loan words that have enriched the Spanish language.
Watch the video
Vea la versión en español a continuación.
I used to think that committees and group work killed creativity, but teamwork can help individuals produce things – like a cool video – that they couldn’t do by themselves.
Late last year, I was part of a team making a video in the southern Altiplano of Bolivia, along with Paul (the director), Marcella (the cameraperson) and Milton Villca. Milton is an agronomist who grew up in a village on the windswept plains where we were filming. He still lives in the area, helping local farmers to cope with challenges, especially the immense loss of soil caused by wind erosion.
After watching Marcella film for two days, Milton confided that he had tried making his own video, about a wasp that attacks and helps to control some of the caterpillar pests of the quinoa crop. But like the farmers, Milton had also struggled with the wind, losing two cameras because of damage by the fine sand. He’d continued filming the wasps with his cell phone, but he told Marcella he wasn’t sure about the quality of the images. Would she mind taking a look at them?
Marcella was happy to watch Milton’s video clips. All was fine. There were fabulous close ups of a wasp that digs a tunnel in the earth, hides it with grains of sand, finds a big, fat caterpillar, paralyzes it, and drags it back to the burrow, which the wasp is miraculously able to find, with the precision of a GPS. The video clips showed how the wasp uncovers the nest, inserts the unfortunate caterpillar, and lays an egg on it. A wasp grub hatches from the egg, eats the caterpillar and eventually emerges in the summer as an adult wasp.
Paul was immediately taken by the story of the wasp, which locals call nina nina. In our interviews with farmers for a video on windbreaks he decided to also ask them what they knew about the wasp. Unlike many parasitic wasps, which are too small to see clearly with the naked eye, the nina nina is pretty big, and local people know about it and can describe its ecology.
Asking a professional cameraperson to critique your videos can be daunting, but Milton no doubt sensed that Marcella would give him sympathetic and positive criticism. His risk paid off. We collaborated with Milton to write a script for his video. Marcella edited his clips and combined them into a short video, which we are proud to release this week.
Watch the video
The wasp that protects our crops
Related video
Living windbreaks to protect the soil
Related blog stories
Acknowledgements
Milton Villca works for the Proinpa Foundation. Our work was generously supported by the CCRP (Collaborative Crop Research Program) of the McKnight Foundation.
DOS CABEZAS FILMAN MEJOR QUE UNA
Por Jeff Bentley, 15 de septiembre del 2019
Yo solÃa pensar que los comités y el trabajo en grupo mataban la creatividad, pero el trabajo en equipo puede ayudar a los individuos a producir cosas – como un video genial – que no podrÃan hacerse por sà mismos.
A finales del año pasado, formé parte de un equipo que hacÃa un video en el Altiplano sur de Bolivia, junto con Paul (el director), Marcella (la camarógrafa) y Milton Villca. Milton es un técnico agrónomo de un pueblo del altiplánico ventoso donde filmábamos. Él todavÃa vive en la zona, ayudando a los agricultores locales a manejar sus desafÃos, especialmente a la inmensa pérdida de suelo causada por la erosión del viento.
Después de ver a Marcella filmar durante dos dÃas, Milton confió que él habÃa intentado hacer su propio video, sobre una avispa que ataca y ayuda a controlar algunos de los gusanos plagas del cultivo de la quinua. Pero al igual que los agricultores, Milton también habÃa luchado contra el viento, perdiendo dos cámaras debido a los daños causados por la arena fina. HabÃa seguido filmando las avispas con su celular, pero le dijo a Marcella que no estaba seguro de la calidad de las imágenes. ¿Ella estarÃa dispuesta a verlas?
A Marcella le encantaron los videos de Milton. Hubo excelentes primeros planos de una avispa que excava un túnel en la tierra, lo esconde con granos de arena, encuentra una oruga grande y gorda, la paraliza y la arrastra hasta el túnel del nido, que la avispa milagrosamente logra encontrar, como si tuviera un GPS. Los videos muestran cómo la avispa descubre el nido, inserta al desafortunado gusano y pone un huevo en él. Luego, la crÃa de la avispa sale del huevo, se come al gusano y eventualmente emerge como una avispa adulta en el verano.
A Paul le cautivó inmediatamente la historia de la avispa, a la que la gente local llama nina nina. En nuestras entrevistas con los agricultores para un video sobre las barreras vivas, decidió también preguntarles lo que sabÃan sobre las avispas. A diferencia de muchas avispas parásitas, que son demasiado pequeñas para ver claramente a simple vista, la nina nina es bastante grande, y la gente local sabe de ella y puede describir su ecologÃa.
Pedirle a un camarógrafo profesional que critique sus videos puede ser desalentador, pero Milton sin duda sintió que Marcella le darÃa una crÃtica positiva, con empatÃa. Su riesgo valió la pena. Colaboramos con Milton para escribir un guion para su vÃdeo. Marcella editó sus clips y los combinó en un video corto, que estamos orgullosos de lanzar esta semana.
Ver el video
La avispa que protege nuestros cultivos
VÃdeo relacionado
Barreras vivas para proteger el suelo
Historias de blogs relacionadas
Agradecimientos
Milton Villca trabaja para la Fundación Proinpa. Nuestro trabajo fue generosamente apoyado por el CCRP (Programa Colaborativo de Investigación sobre Cultivos) de la Fundación McKnight.
Vea la versión en español a continuación
I remember a story from grad school about a people in the Amazon Basin who had no word for “parrotâ€, because they knew the names of all the individual species of parrots.
I was reminded of that this week in Peru, where I was teaching a course on how to write fact sheets and video scripts for a popular audience.
My students are seasoned professionals, and one group was writing a fact sheet about planting legumes to fix nitrogen from the air, as a non-chemical way to improve the soil, a crucial concept for ecological agriculture. Along with the students, I struggled to say “nitrogen-fixing legumes†in words that everyone knows. “Nitrogen†was the easy part, it’s like urea fertilizer, which most smallholders know about.
But “legume†was trickier. It’s a botanical term. Like the parrot-watchers in the Amazon, smallholders in many parts of the world have a word for each species of legume, but no one word for all legumes.
“We could say ‘plants that produce pods.’†I suggested helpfully.
“No,†one of my students said, rejecting my idea out of hand.
That’s one of the advantages of teaching adults, the students know more than the teacher about a lot of topics. In this case, the student is an agronomist who has worked with farmers and legumes in northern Peru for a full career. He explained that some of the best legumes for fixing nitrogen, like alfalfa or the wild garrotilla, have pods so small that people fail to see them.
In the end, we wrote “legume†and then followed it with examples like beans and peas.
Then we drove out to the prosperous village of Piuray, about an hour from Cusco on the road to the Sacred Valley. The smallholders of Piuray value formal education. They are proud of their large, two-story school. Some of the local people work in the city as lawyers and engineers.
But after asking several local people to read our fact sheet, they often looked up and said “What’s a legume?â€
Our examples had not been good enough to explain the concept. And there is no simpler word for legume. The simplest word for legume is “legume.â€
This matters when writing for a global audience, because people all over the world, from Peru to Pakistan grow legumes, but different species.
In the end, the authors of this fact sheet realized that there was no short and simple way to say “nitrogen fixing legumes.†So they said “Legumes are plants like clover, lupin, vetch and alfalfa that capture nitrogen from the air in little nodules, which are pink or white balls or in the roots. The nitrogen is then used by the rest of the plant.â€
Some terms have no simpler synonym, but they can be defined and explained, in words that everyone knows.
Scientific names
Garrotilla is Medicago hispida
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Edgar Olivera and Ing. Alfredo Tito, both of the Grupo Yanapai, and to Dr. Ana Dorrego of the Centro de Investigación de Zonas Ãridas (CiZA) of the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina and of LEISA, la Revista de AgroecologÃa. They are writing a script for a video on pasture management. I have learned a lot from them in a week of working and writing together. Our script writing course was generously supported by The McKnight Foundation’s Collaborative Crop Research Program (CCRP).
HACE FALTA UNA PALABRA PARA LEGUMINOSAS
por Jeff Bentley, 1 de septiembre del 2019
Recuerdo una historia de la universidad de posgrado sobre un pueblo en la AmazonÃa que no tenÃa una palabra para “loroâ€, porque conocÃan los nombres de cada especie de loro.
Me acordé de eso esta semana en el Perú, donde enseñaba un curso sobre cómo escribir hojas volantes y guiones de video para una audiencia popular.
Mis estudiantes son profesionales experimentados, y un grupo estaba escribiendo una hoja volante sobre el sembrar leguminosas para fijar el nitrógeno del aire, como una forma no quÃmica de mejorar el suelo, un concepto crucial para la agricultura ecológica. Junto con los estudiantes, luché para decir “leguminosas que finan nitrógeno” en palabras que todo el mundo conoce. El “nitrógeno” fue la parte fácil; es como la urea, que la mayorÃa de los campesinos conocen.
Pero “leguminosa” era más difÃcil. Es un término botánico. Al igual que los observadores de loros en la AmazonÃa, los pequeños agricultores en muchas partes del mundo tienen una palabra para cada especie de leguminosa, pero ninguna para todas ellas.
Sugerà “PodrÃamos decir ‘plantas que producen vainas'”.
“No”, dijo uno de mis estudiantes, rechazando de frente mi idea.
Esa es una de las ventajas de enseñar a los adultos; frecuentemente los estudiantes saben más que el profesor. En este caso, el estudiante es un ingeniero agrónomo que ha trabajado con agricultores y leguminosas en el norte del Perú durante toda su carrera. Explicó que algunas de las mejores legumbres para fijar el nitrógeno, como la alfalfa o la garrotilla silvestre, tienen vainas tan pequeñas que la gente no las ve.
Al final, escribimos “leguminosa” y luego la seguimos con ejemplos como frijoles y arvejas.
Luego nos dirigimos a la próspera comunidad rural de Piuray, a una hora de Cusco en el camino hacia el Valle Sagrado. Los pequeños agricultores de Piuray valoran la educación formal. Están orgullosos de su gran escuela de dos pisos. Algunos de los habitantes locales trabajan en la ciudad como abogados e ingenieros.
Pero después de pedirle a varias personas locales que leyeran nuestra hoja volante, a menudo levantaban la vista y decÃan “¿Qué es una leguminosa?”
Nuestros ejemplos no habÃan sido suficientes para explicar el concepto. Y no hay una palabra más sencilla para leguminosas. La palabra más simple para leguminosas es ” leguminosasâ€.
Esto es importante cuando se escribe para una audiencia global, porque gente de todo el mundo, desde Perú hasta Pakistán, cultiva leguminosas, pero especies diferentes.
Al final, los autores de esta hoja volante se dieron cuenta de que no habÃa una forma corta y sencilla de decir “leguminosas que fijan nitrógeno”. Asà que dijeron: “Las leguminosas son plantas como el trébol, el tarwi, la vicia, y la alfalfa que capturan el nitrógeno del aire a través de nódulos, que son bolitas rosadas o blancas en las raÃces. Luego el nitrógeno es aprovechado por el resto de la planta.â€
Algunos términos no tienen sinónimos más sencillos, pero pueden ser definidos y explicados, en palabras que todo el mundo conoce.
Nombre cientÃfico
Garrotilla es Medicago hispida
Agradecimientos
Agradezco al Ing. Edgar Olivera y al Ing. Alfredo Tito, ambos, del Grupo Yanapai, y a la Dra. Ana Dorrego del Centro de Investigación de Zonas Ãridas (CiZA) de la Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina y de LEISA, la Revista de AgroecologÃa. Ellos están escribiendo un guion para un video sobre el manejo de los pastos. En una semana de convivencia y redacción he aprendido bastante de ellos. Nuestro curso de redacción de guiones recibió el apoyo generoso del Programa Colaborativo de Investigación sobre Cultivos (CCRP) de la Fundación McKnight.
Vea la versión en español a continuación
Villagers the world over are buying smart phones, getting on line and eagerly using and sharing information electronically. It might seem like print is going out of fashion, but paper can still be an important medium.
I recently took part in an information fair for farmers in the village of Carrillo, Cotopaxi, in highland Ecuador. Along with colleagues, I was visiting the NGO EkoRural, which has worked for years with the farmers in this land of perpetual springtime.
Such visits can turn into a performance, where the farmers put on shows for their guests. It’s always interesting, but it can be hard to tell how much of the information came from the farmers and how much was prompted by their well-meaning extensionists. This time, EkoRural turned the idea around. We visitors were given a small space to show posters and demonstrations to the local farmers, who would rotate through our stands in eight groups of 25 people.
I set up shop in a village schoolroom. I used my 15-minute time slot to show each group a farmer-to-farmer video from Bolivia. The time limit was too short to discuss the videos with my audience. So I wrote a factsheet, telling them how to log onto www.accessagriculture.org, and download more videos for free.
At least some people read the factsheets carefully and my idea seemed to be working. But I didn’t realize how much my audience wanted the factsheets until I ran out of them. I had underestimated the turnout for the event. As I handed out the last copy of the fact sheet, I turned to apologize to one farmer who still had her hand out. She gave me a piercing look of total disappointment.
Then another man stepped in. “Don’t you have your original left? I can get it photocopied,†he said helpfully.
Problem solved, or so I thought. I gave him the original I brought from Bolivia and waited for my new friend to return with the photocopies. I never saw him or the factsheet again. At least he got the information he wanted. Even in this digital age, print is still popular. It also has some advantages: it is cheap, permanent and always available to read, as my vanishing new friend will surely agree.
Watch the videos
Living windbreaks to protect the soil
Forecasting the weather with an app
Further reading
Access Agriculture publishes a fact sheet for each of its videos. The fact sheets have been popular with video viewers. In a recent on-line survey, 31% of respondents said they downloaded them.
See also:
Bentley, Jeffery W. and Eric Boa 2013 The snowman outline: fact sheets by extensionists for farmers. Development in Practice.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to EkoRural for organizing our trip to Carrillo, generously supported by the McKnight Foundation.
LA HOJA VOLANTE DESAPARECIDA
La gente rural de todo el mundo está comprando teléfonos inteligentes, conectándose al Internet y usando y compartiendo información electrónicamente. Puede parecer que los impresos están pasando de moda, pero el papel todavÃa sirve.
Hace poco participé en un dÃa de campo para compartir con agricultores en la comunidad de Carrillo, Cotopaxi, en los Altos Andes de Ecuador. Junto con mis colegas, visitaba la ONG EkoRural, que ha trabajado durante años con los agricultores en esta tierra de la eterna primavera.
Estas visitas pueden convertirse en todo un show, donde los agricultores presentan espectáculos para sus invitados. Siempre es interesante, pero puede ser difÃcil saber cuánta información proviene de los agricultores y cuánta es motivada por sus bien intencionados extensionistas. Esta vez, EkoRural dio un giro a la idea. A los visitantes se nos dio un pequeño espacio para mostrar carteles y demostraciones a los agricultores locales, quienes rotaban por nuestros stands en ocho grupos de 25 personas.
Me instalé en una escuela del pueblo. Usé mis 15 minutos para mostrar a cada grupo un video de agricultor-a-agricultor de Bolivia. El lÃmite de tiempo no me dejaba discutir los videos con mi audiencia. Asà que escribà una hoja volante, explicándoles cómo entrar en www.accessagriculture.org, y descargar más videos gratis.
Varias personas leyeron las hojas volantes cuidadosamente y mi idea parecÃa funcionar. Pero cuando mis hojas volantes se acababan mi di cuenta que la gente las querÃa de verdad. Yo habÃa subestimado la participación en el evento. Mientras repartÃa el último ejemplar de las hojas volantes, di la vuelta para disculparme con una campesina que todavÃa extendÃa su mano. Me miró con una mirada penetrante de total decepción.
Entonces otro hombre intervino. “¿No tienes tu copia original? Puedo fotocopiarla”, dijo amablemente.
Problema resuelto, o eso creÃa. Le di el original que traje de Bolivia y esperé a que mi nuevo amigo volviera con las fotocopias. Nunca lo volvà a ver ni a él ni a la hoja volante. Al menos él obtuvo la información que querÃa. Incluso en esta era digital, el material impreso sigue siendo popular. Tiene algunas ventajas: es barato, permanente y siempre disponible para leer, como seguramente estará de acuerdo mi nuevo amigo que se hizo humo.
Ver los videos
Barreras vivas para proteger el suelo
Pronosticar el clima con una aplicación
Lectura adicional
Access Agriculture publica una hoja volante para cada uno de sus vÃdeos. Las hojas volantes han sido muy populares entre los espectadores de vÃdeo. En una reciente encuesta en lÃnea, el 31% de los encuestados dijeron que los habÃan descargado.
Bentley, Jeffery W. and Eric Boa 2013 The snowman outline: fact sheets by extensionists for farmers. Development in Practice.
Agradecimientos
Gracias a EkoRural por organizar nuestro viaje a Carrillo, generosamente apoyado por la Fundación McKnight.
A gift of music
Marcella Vrolijks, who films and edits the Agro-Insight videos, has an ear for music. She starts and ends each video with a few riffs of music from the country where it was filmed. She has a gift for making the music fit the action. In one video where people in Mali are planting millet, Marcella added a West African beat that matched the rhythms of the hoes and hands so perfectly that others have asked if the music was playing while the farmers were being filmed. Another time, in Togo, the farmers themselves had composed a song about mucuna (velvet bean) and Marcelle starts the video with the women performing their own tune.
So, when Marcella and Paul came to film in Bolivia late last year, I took them to see something I knew they would appreciate – the Musical Instrument Museum in La Paz. There we met Ernesto Cavour, who is often called the greatest charango player in the world. A small stringed instrument with a curved body, the charango was originally made from armadillo shells. Nowadays they’re usually carved from wood.
Don Ernesto will be 80 next year. He grew up fascinated by the music created by campesinos playing their charangos. Don Ernesto taught himself to play the charango, formed a band and toured Europe, North America and Japan while he was still quite young. He loved every performance, but he came back to Bolivia to play and to teach people about music. He bought a house on Calle Jaén, a narrow cobblestone street in the old town of La Paz which is only accessible on foot. Here he publishes books about music and displays the traditional musical instruments of Bolivia in the museum he made. Don Ernesto is not only a scholar and player of the charango but an inventor too. He has created 30 new instruments, including the muyu-muyu, a charango which is strung on both sides of the body, giving an extended tonal range.
At the museum, we heard don Ernesto play with his daughter, Kantuta Cavour, and fellow musicians. Their musical style ranged from traditional Andean tunes, to those that incorporated representations of bird song, animal noises and the sound of rain made by instruments or the inventos created by don Ernesto.
Later we asked Kantuta if we could use their music for a small set of farmer educational videos. She thought her father would like the idea, and he readily agreed.
Marcella painstakingly reviewed dozens of don Ernesto’s songs to weave the music into the videos. Two of the videos were about weather, and Marcella was able to blend some of the musical rain with shots of storm clouds. I often think of the Cavours’ generosity. Their respect for tradition and love of innovation mirror our own ideals at Agro-Insight for an agriculture that creatively blends the old and the new.
Watch the videos
The planting video (Grow row by row)
Living windbreaks to protect the soil
Forecasting the weather with an app
Visit the Music Museum
Museo de Instrumentos Musicales de Bolivia
Additional reading
Los Tiempos 2019 “Ernesto Cavour†Revista Oh! No. 1046 (16 July) pp 2-3.
