Wayanad’s keeper of rice seeds

On the slopes of Wayanad, where mist hangs low over green valleys and streams chatter through laterite hills, a house of clay stands stubbornly against time. Its mud walls breathe cool air in summer, its bamboo rafters gently creak in the wind, and heavy rosewood beams bear the weight of 150 monsoons. The floor is smeared with red soil, smoothened over each week with cow dung.

This house, in Kammana village near the town of Mananthavady in Kerala, is where paddy seeds whisper their stories.

Their custodian is Cheruvayal Raman of the Kurichya community (listed as Scheduled Tribe in the state). His community was once renowned across Malabar for their skill in paddy cultivation. The 73-year-old has preserved traditional seeds through decades of economic hardship, declining health and neglect from state and other organisations.

“They [seeds] are living ancestors,” says Raman, or Ramettan as he is fondly and respectfully addressed. He is celebrated as the keeper of Kerala’s agrarian soul – a land where the wealth of a household was once measured by the varieties of rice stored in its granary.

Raman has turned his ancestral holding into a living museum of diversity. His granary holds 50 traditional varieties native to Wayanad and 14 collected from other parts of Kerala. He grows them each season, saves the seeds, and shares them freely with anyone committed to traditional farming — tribal farmers, individual growers, researchers, and institutions. “Each rice has a soul,” he says. “It remembers the soil, the rain, the touch of generations. Lose that, and you lose your history.”

In the dim light of his front room, burlap sacks of rare rice varieties are piled on top of each other – sentinels of history. Each bag is tagged in Malayalam with names that sound like lullabies: Chennelu, Thondi, Chembakam, Veliyan, Gandhakasala, Kayama.

Raman tells PARI how the fragrance of steaming Gandhakasala fills the air with a perfume reminiscent of jasmine and sandalwood; Kayama, also called Jeerakasala, releases a buttery fragrance into the air that defines Malabar’s biryani tradition, and Chembakam has a sweet and delicate flavour, melting into coconut milk when made into payasam, a sweet dessert.

In the last three decades, over 70 per cent of Kerala’s paddy fields have vanished, swallowed by cash crops, real estate, and quarries.

A largely agriculture region, Wayanad district lies at the northeastern edge of Kerala. Watered by the monsoon, paddy once covered over 30,000 hectares of its valleys, framed by forested hills. This region alone once grew 160 indigenous varieties of rice; now only a handful survive.

Cheruvayal Raman resists this erasure quietly but firmly.

“He is stubborn. We laugh at him sometimes, but we also respect him. Without him, we would not even remember these names,” says Appukuttan. The 70-year-old sold his paddy land and planted arecanut instead.

Others too have sold out, and today in Wayanad, barely 20,000 hectares of paddy survive, much of it fragmented. Yet the terrain still shelters more traditional rice than anywhere else in Kerala. Organisations such as the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation’s Community Agrobiodiversity Centre in Kalpetta, Kerala Agricultural University, and farmer groups like Seed Care document and preserve these landraces. Together, they describe Wayanad’s paddy as a living genetic treasure — a source of drought-resistant, pest-tolerant traits that could help farmers face the climate crisis.

Chennelu, the deep red grain of the Kurichya and Paniya farmers, is grown in the iron-rich uplands. It smells of wet earth and iron; it has a nutty, mineral bite that lingers on the tongue. Thondi, lighter and mildly sweet, cooks to a fluffy softness that makes it perfect for the everyday choru (rice) served with fish curry. Veliyan rice has a mellow, earthy taste and is valued for being easily digestible, often made into warm kanji (porridge)for the old and infirm. Njavara, with its nutty bitterness and dense texture, stands apart as Kerala’s only medicinal rice, grown not for feasts but for healing. Each variety has its role, its meaning, its story.

These are low-input crops that survive drought, resist pests, and flourish without chemical fertilisers or pesticides. When modern hybrids wilt under erratic rainfall, these ancient landraces endure, bending but not breaking.

Speaking softly as he runs his palm through a handful of glossy brown paddy Cheruvayal Raman lists out: “this one, can survive floods. This one can stand against drought. This one smells like jeera [cumin] when you cook it.”

The 73-year-old's voice carries the pride of a scientist and the tenderness of a parent. “Seeds are my children. I keep them alive for the next generation.”

Beyond Raman’s house stretch 40 acres of fields, partitioned into neat rectangles, each shimmering a different shade of green. Some stalks are tall and golden, others short and purple-tipped, some heavy with grain. The air hums with dragonflies, frogs, and birds — creatures that vanished from most of Wayanad’s farms when chemicals first entered agriculture in the 1970s.

“I stopped using fertilisers in 1978,” Raman recalls. “The soil was dead. No fish, no earthworms. But when I went back to natural farming, life returned. That was my biggest lesson: farming must feed the soil, not kill it.”

For more than four decades, his farm has been his laboratory. “Here,” he says, pointing to a patch with knee-deep water, “is Chennelu, more than 500 years old. Next to it, Jeerakasala, and there is Kayama, which resists pests without any sprays.” Each grain, he explains, has evolved to fit its terrain: Gandhakasala and Kayama prefer standing water in the wetlands, where cool, still nights intensify their aroma. Chennelu and Veliyan draw their strength from rain-fed slopes and the organic richness of upland soil.

The grains also mirror the culinary geography of the hills. In tribal homes, Chennelu and Veliyan remain staples, cooked slowly in earthen pots and eaten with wild greens, smoked meat, or jackfruit. In the higher valleys and small market towns, Gandhakasala and Kayama are the rices of celebration, served at weddings or festivals. Chembakam appears in feasts and rituals, while Njavara finds its place in Ayurveda and temple offerings.

The Kurichya community, to which Raman belongs, get their name from kuri (mark) and chiyuka (to draw), recalling their reputation as archers who defended fields and forests during the days of Pazhassi Raja. Today, the archery is gone, and so are most of the paddy fields.

“Who can survive on paddy now?” asks Raman’s neighbour Krishnankutty, 55. “With rice, I could barely feed my family. Pepper and coffee give quick money. The government gives no price support for paddy. So we abandoned it.”

In Wayanad, rice farming yields little monetary return compared to black pepper. A hectare of paddy produces about 1.5 tonnes, fetching roughly Rs. 23 per kilo under MSP and a small state bonus, giving farmers less than ₹50,000 in a season. That is often below cultivation costs of Rs. 75,000 to one lakh.

Pepper on the other hand, a mature holding of the same size can produce around 1.5 to 1.7 tonnes of dried pepper, currently selling for about Rs. 650 to 700 a kilo, grossing over Rs. 10 lakh a year with the farmer getting Rs.6 to 7 lakh after expenses.

So while paddy sustains food security and ecological balance, pepper remains the economic lifeline of upland farmers in Wayanad, its fortunes rising and falling with global spice markets and monsoon moods.

“I wanted to keep a small patch, but my children insisted we plant ginger and pepper. They said rice has no future,” says Radhamani. Now 62, she remembers the days when their family fields glistened with Gandhakasala paddy. “Now it grows only in Raman’s land,” she adds.

Inside Raman’s mud house, the sacks of seed sit stacked in the cool darkness. There is no fan, no temperature control, just the slow breath of clay walls and the faint light of an oil lamp. “Every year I lose 70,000 rupees just to keep these seeds alive,” he says. “Awards come, but no one builds me a permanent facility. Seeds cannot wait for speeches.”

The paradox is cruel. He has won the Padma Shri in 2023, the Genome Saviour Award in 2016 and Kerala’s Green Award in 2012 Universities invite him to lecture. Kerala Agricultural University made him Professor of Practice. Politicians from Rahul Gandhi to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan have walked his fields.

Yet Raman still depends on ration rice from the local fair price shop to feed his family.

“We often eat ration rice to survive,” says Geetha, his wife, as she spreads harvested grains to dry in the courtyard. “Our own fields are used for experiments. We forget about our stomachs.”

Raman worries what will happen when he is gone. The Kurichya follow matrilineal inheritance. After his death, the land will pass not to his children but to distant relatives, many uninterested in farming. “Then everything will vanish,” he says. He dreams of a publicly supported seed bank. “Not in glass jars, but in soil. Seeds live only if they are grown. Universities, research centres, NGOs — anyone serious can take this up. Otherwise, in 10 years these sacks will just be memories.”

“Don’t call me a hero,” he says. “Make sure the seeds survive. That is enough.”

The attention Raman receives often frustrates him. “Every week, they call me to inaugurate something. They treat me like a celebrity. But seeds do not survive on garlands and photographs. I lose time in the fields,” he says. Illness has not slowed him either. Since a heart attack in Dubai in 2019, followed by recurring cardiac scares and COVID-19, he works with visible fragility.

Every morning, barefoot, he still walks the bunds of mud, checking stalks, tasting grains, listening to the rustle of leaves.

His anger surfaces when talk turns to policy. “Farmers are not enemies of the environment,” he says. “Only with farmers can you protect it. The government must stop giving awards and start giving fair prices. Farmers need dignity, not charity.”

Local historian O. K. Johnny believes Raman represents “the last generation of Wayanad tribals who preserved rice for the people, not for profit. He is more than a farmer — he is a political being, standing against environmental destruction.” But Raman waves off such praise.

Geetha and their children still help him cultivate each variety in tiny plots, sometimes just a few cents of area each. The work is delicate; some seeds need extra care during sowing, others during harvest. “Our elders lived healthier because they ate these grains,” Geetha says. “Now, most Kurichyas grow coffee or pepper. Only Raman sticks to rice.”

As dusk falls, the fields shimmer under the wings of moving dragonflies. The fragrance of boiling rice wafts from the kitchen, earthy and aromatic. Inside the mud house, the gunny sacks wait silently, holding centuries of resilience in a land once called Vayal Nadu, the land of paddy fields.

Here is a living museum – a place where every grain has a name, a story, and a soul.