It’s a warm Sunday afternoon, one that’s best spent napping after a hearty lunch. But I’m at Thakkar Bapa Vidyalaya, that’s teeming with people — families, young professionals and children. In one corner, a farmer sits surrounded by what look like little balls of mud. Several young kids gather around him, listening keenly as he shows them how to create these seed balls, explaining what is conducive to seed health and what is not. In another section, a potter tells his audience how earthen pots are ideal for storing seeds, even as he lets people have a go at his potter’s wheel. Further down the corridor are farmers and vendors displaying their wares — coir planters, native herbs, organic cotton clothing and masalas made from organic produce.
We’re at the Seed Satyagraha, organised by Grow Your Own Veggies and Sahaja Seeds, and everyone is celebrating the cause of the native seed. It is a cause that’s probably alien to many of us, but it is gradually changing the way people look at food and how it is grown. Spearheaded by a community of people popularly known as ‘seed saviours’, the movement attempts to focus public attention on traditional seeds, which aren’t factory-processed in any way.
“It’s all about open pollination. Native seeds or heirloom seeds, as they’re also known, are those that have evolved organically over generations and are used to our soil and climate conditions. With genetically-modified seeds being marketed as products, indigenous species are vanishing and we are fighting to preserve them. We’re working to popularise food produce from these seeds,” says Alladi Mahadevan of Grow Your Own Veggies and Green Embryo, adding, “These events bring farmers and consumers together, so one gets the opportunity to engage with the farmer and know where exactly one’s food is coming from.”
For the uninitiated, native seeds can be fruits and vegetables, millets, pulses or legumes. “Factory-processed seeds are those treated with chemicals after harvesting, in the name of maintaining quality and to avoid major crop diseases,” says Alladi.
For instance, Tamil Nadu has about 150 types of brinjal native to it. Only 18 to 20 of these varieties are still grown. Other vegetables and fruits that grow well here are greens such as coriander, mint, amaranthus, agathi keerai and siru keerai, gourds such as bitter gourd, ridge gourd, snake gourd and ash gourd, and beans such as cluster beans and lablab (avarai), besides bananas and papaya.
According to Vandana Shiva, scientist and founder of Navdanya, preserving native seeds is the only reliable way to move forward. “The whole reason they were sidelined was purely ideological; these were declared inferior without even being tested. It’s just prejudice, equivalent to prejudice against language.” She adds that pesticides used in commercial seeds are not just detrimental to consumers’ health, but also cause wider problems such as farmer debts, and, eventually, farmer suicides. “While industrial breeding may have led to increase in quantity, it has brought down the quality of the food we consume,” she says.
Awareness about native seeds is just beginning to grow, according to Alladi. Contrary to popular belief, he claims that native seeds survive much better than industrially-produced, processed ones. “The wake-up call came when people saw that it was the organic farms that survived last year’s deluge. Despite the flooding, we could harvest paddy; the trick is that we work on the soil itself, not just on the surface like chemicals do. We address the root of the problem. Also, we encourage the multi-cropping system, bringing diversity to our farm; this contributes to soil health. We don’t de-weed the fields every month; instead, we preserve the top layer of the soil. It contains evaporation and makes the soil more conducive for raising crops,” he explains.
Vandana says the move now is towards creating Food Smart Citizens — those who understand and are aware about where their food comes from and what exactly goes into it. Alladi says, “It will also change the way we eat. A lot of us are rice eaters, but there are several other healthy options such as millets. Our meal plates are so different from the way they used to be — earlier, people would eat more greens and vegetables; today, the quantity of rice has increased. This movement will change that.”
The fact that an increasing number of people are opting to source heirloom seeds and grow their own vegetables increases awareness and food consciousness among people. “When each person who makes this shift spreads the change to 10 others, the switch will be faster. A few of us can’t be doing it all,” says Vandana.
