Banking on the seed

Farmers in over 200 villages across the State have joined hands to revive traditional agricultural practices and conserve seed diversity through community seed banks, Vijayalakshmi K P N writes.

At Nidanegilu, Haveri district, Karnataka, farmers have come together for a quiet revolution—sustainable agriculture through the conservation of biodiversity: to discuss the protection of diversity in traditional farming systems which is largely based on seeds—through community seed banks.
“The community seed bank is a system for community agriculture, which encompasses village level facilities where traditional seed varieties are stored and protected,” says Dr Vanaja Ramprasad of the Green Foundation, which gave form to the concept of on-farm conservation in Karnataka and proposed the setting up of community seed banks.
Farmers’ contribution
“For instance, rice (Oryza sativa) has a diversity of over 50,000 varieties, which is neither accidental nor purely natural: it is the farmers’ contribution that have made these varieties biologically adaptable,” she notes, adding that during drought, flood or a pest attack, this vast diversity has been the succour for marginal farmers.
In a scenario where a lot of farmers have taken to mono cropping thanks to market pressures, a few farmers are still individually conserving seeds. Like the farmer on the outskirts of Bangalore who’s growing a traditional variety of rice—Chinna Ponni—for more than half a decade.
But how do you get a community of farmers to adopt this? In India, farmers themselves usually meet eighty per cent of the seed supply. But if a majority of farmers take to high-yielding varieties, how does one ensure the propagation of traditional diverse seeds?
“That’s why we decided to formalise the availability of traditional seed from individual farmers into a community seed bank, which would cater to the needs of the local community of farmers,” explains Vanaja.
In the community seed bank concept, women were involved on the premise that traditionally, it was she who decided what to grow and the man just tended to fieldwork.
“The women were responsible for deciding upon what varieties could be maintained; to ensure that there was no mix-up with modern varieties as well as to tackle issues like seed-borne diseases and germination,” explains Dr Nadagouda, of Green Foundation. With no monetary transactions involved, the seed banks proliferated just by distributing a quantity of seeds to farmers and taking back twice that quantity after harvest.
“This way even the seeds of diverse vegetables grown in kitchen gardens have found a way to be marketed,” explains Dr Nadagouda.
Seed banks catch up
Slowly, the community seed bank project was extended to more areas in 2001 by creating a network with other NGOs in different climatic regions to cover all the agro-diversity available today.
But the challenge for Green Foundation and other partner organisations was to convince farmers to give up the use of high-yielding varieties and to work towards conserving the traditional diversity of seeds.
“For us, getting farmers to get back to growing these diverse crops like their grandfathers did was a big challenge when we started this project,” Vanaja says, “together with the task of zeroing in on what was to be conserved.
“In a multi-cropping system, the crops enrich the soil, contribute to nutrition of family—there is a dal, an oil seed, a commercial crop to earn a livelihood from and even fodder for cattle. In a mono-crop, there is only rice or wheat with farmers having to buy everything else using the little money they have. The trend of mono-cropping is not only resulting in loss of diversity but also threatening food security.”
“When there is seed security, can food security be far away?” asks
Dr. H Sudarshan,Honorary Secretary, Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra, a partner of the network. “The community seed bank project has sown the seed of sustainability and shown ways for it to grow. It now rests with the farmer to ensure that this possible panacea to their problems takes root and grows,” hopes Vanaja.
Seed Bank at Home
For 47-year-old Papamma, a farmer from Kurubarahalli in Kolar, life changed after she became a part of the seed bank project in her village. Her family now leads a life of comfort and is also respected for practising organic farming for the last 4 years. Their five-acre dryland is partially rain-fed and partially irrigated.
After Papamma became a part of the seed bank, she learnt about seed treatment, preparation of bio-pesticides, seed selection and much more. Awarded the title of Beeja Mate—mother of seeds—for her contribution to seed conservation, Papamma has a seed bank in her house today. She has conserved 58 varieties of seeds in her bank, including three varieties of ragi, four of paddy, six of minor millet, three of oil seeds, four of pulses and 37 varieties of vegetable seeds.
Courtesy: Deccan Herald