While Norman Borlaug was celebrated for hybrid seed varieties, several small groups of farmers are today searching for those rare traditional seeds that are still being sown in some places in preference to hybrids.
It rained heavily in Chhattisgarh two years ago and almost all the paddy got destroyed. Just one variety thrived. It was jal doobi, the water diver. It was an indigenous variety known only to communities in Ambikapur district. In a rare instance, the state government released this variety.
But there are thousands of traditional varieties of seeds for paddy and other crops which are dying out as more and more farmers are being lured into dependence on hybrid seeds available in the market. There are no official efforts to track those who still sow traditional seeds and to multiply these for redistribution.
Borlaug, who passed away recently, is credited with linking research with enhanced crop yields and thus authoring the Green Revolution. But in India, Dr RH Richharia, a scientist from Hoshangabad who researched and documented about 19,000 traditional paddy seeds, was able to establish that indigenous seeds can be not only as high yielding as hybrids but also leave the farmer quite his own master, not dependent on the market for seeds in every sowing season.
Just as Borlough’s was a success story, RL Richharia’s was a story of a man and an effort that failed. He was forced out of the directorship of the Central Rice Research Institute in Hyderabad and his paddy varieties were taken away with the advent of the foreign funds that flowed in with the Green Revolution
His research was regarded as duplication and snuffed out, first from the national scene at Hyderabad and then at the rice research institute he started in Raipur with support from the Madhya Pradesh government. Here, the state government at first asked him to continue his work on traditional seeds but abandoned him after it accepted foreign funds for rice research.
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Today, no one knows the fate of the seeds he contributed to the state-run institute, now called Indira Gandhi Agricultural University. He died almost unsung in 1996 .
The concept of traditional seeds has no place in government policies, in the food security mission, or in the bio-diversity law. It is left to some rag-tag groups of activists to hunt for farmers who are still sowing traditional seeds and then to persuade them to multiply these for distribution among those who have already become dependent on hybrid seeds. These farmers are rapidly becoming extinct, threatening a drought of seeds that will be never overcome.
One such group is the Richharia campaign, started by Jacob Nellithanam, an activist who used to work with the great researcher till he died. The campaign has been collecting indigenous seeds and then redistributing them.
Uttaranchal, the birthplace of the Chipko movement, has the Beej Bachao Andolan, which has been collecting and distributing traditional seeds in 20 villages. Founder Vijay Jardari, who is working in Tehri, Dehradun and Pithoragadh, is a farmer and recalls meeting Richharia on a visit there. In Karnataka, there is the Sahaja Samrudda and the Green Foundation, while in Andhra Pradesh, Deccan Development Society in Medak has been demonstrating for two decades on how farmers can be taught to save seeds and be freed from the market.
Richharia’s followers are hoping that government policies will change to save Indian farmers from seed bankruptcy.