Return of the native seeds

Tejlibai Dhedhiya is slowly getting back her indigenous seeds.

Roughly 15 years ago, Bhil Adivasis like Tejlibai, farming in Alirajpur and Dewas districts of Madhya Pradesh, switched from indigenous seeds grown with organic farming methods, to hybrid seeds grown with chemical inputs. This led to a loss of heirloom seeds, says Tejlibai and explains the switch, “our traditional farming required a lot of labour and this was not compensated by the prices we got in the market.” The 71-year-old adds, “the labour time saved allowed us to migrate and do wage labour at higher rates in Gujarat as migrant workers.”

But now, in 20 villages in these districts, around 500 women are conserving their heirloom seeds and returning to organic farming under the guidance of Kansari nu Vadavno (KnV) which means ‘the felicitation of Goddess Kansari in the Bhil language (known locally as Bhilali). A mass organisation of Bhil Adivasi women, KnV was founded in 1997 to fight for women’s rights and deal with their health problems. After more than a decade of working on health issues, the Adivasi women who were part of the formation of KnV realised that returning to their traditional crops could help deal with their dietary issues.

At KnV, selected seeds are stored separately for selling and distributing among other farmers to spread biodiverse organic farming across the country, while the rest of the crop is kept for consumption, says Rinku Alawa, a resident of Kawada village. “After harvesting, we have to select the best seeds,” adds the 39-year-old Rinku.

Farmer and KnV member from Kakrana village, Raytibai Solanki agrees: “Seed selection is the best way to improve the quality of the seeds and increase their productivity.

Raytibai, 40, adds, “millets and cereals like sorghum were staple food of our Bhil tribe. Millets are the most water-efficient and nutritious of all cereals. Their cultivation is easier than other cereals like paddy and wheat.” She begins to list names of varieties of millets – batti (barnyard millet), bhadi , rala (foxtail millet), ragi (finger millet), bajra (pearl millet), kodo , kutki , sangri (little millets). “These are rotated with legumes like beans, pulses and oil seeds in biodiverse cropping to maintain soil fertility naturally,” she adds.

Not stopping at indigenous seeds, the tribal women's cooperative, KnV, is also working to bring back organic farming.

Tejlibai, who lives in Khod Amba village in Alirajpur district of Madhya Pradesh, says it is happening slowly as preparing the manure and fertiliser takes a lot of time. “I am sowing indigenous seeds only in a small portion of my land for my consumption. I can’t shift completely to organic farming.” She practises rainfed cultivation of jowar , makka [maize], paddy, pulses, and vegetables on her family’s three-acre farmland.

Also making a comeback are compost and bio-cultures used in organic farming, explains Vikram Bhargava, a resident of Jamasindh in Dewas district. Bioculture is prepared by mixing jaggery, gram powder, dung and cattle urine and fermenting it.

The 25-year-old Barela Adivasi says, “the biomass from the farm has to be mixed with the cattle dung and placed in layers in a pit which has to be watered constantly to prepare compost. Then, it has to be spread and mixed with the soil so that it can benefit the crops.

When the seeds vanished under pressure from market crops, says Vesti Padiyar, their traditional dishes were also gone, as did the traditional ways of dehusking and hand pounding the millets. Once processed, millets have a very low shelf life so women would pound the millet only when they were ready to cook it.

“We used to cook such tasty dishes with millets like rala , bhadi and batti when we were young,” says Vesti, listing the names of the millets. “God created humans and asked them to suckle at the breast of Goddess Kansari to get life. Jowar [symbolised by Goddess Kansari] is considered to be lifegiving by the Bhils,” she adds about the locally grown millet. The 62-year-old farmer from the Bhilala community (listed as Scheduled Tribe in the state) farms four acres of which half an acre is given to organically grown food for their table.

Bichhibai also recalls some of the dishes they cooked with millets. A resident of Pandutalab village in Dewas district, she says her favourite was mah kudri – chicken curry mixed with millet rice. In her sixties now, she also recalls a jowar kheer made with milk and jaggery.

The methods of pounding grain by hand was a community affair, bringing the women together. “We used to sing our folk songs which used to make our work easier. But now, because of migration and smaller families, women don’t get a chance to come and share the work,” says the 63-year-old.

When Karlibai Bhavsing was a young woman, she used to pound the millets with her hands – a laborious process she recalls. “Young women these days prefer to mill the flour of jowar, maize and wheat in the machine mills. That is why the consumption of millets has gone down,” the 60-year-old Barela tribal of Katkut village says.

Storing the seeds also poses a challenge. “The winnowed crops have to be dried in the sun for a week before they are stored in muhti s [bamboo bins] which are lined inside with a mud and livestock dung mixture to make them airtight. Even so, after about four months or so the stored crop tends to get attacked by pests and so it has to be sun-dried once again,” Raytibai explains.

Then there are the birds, who also love the millets. Different millets ripen at different times after sowing and the women have to be on constant vigil. Bicchibai says, “we have to ensure that the birds don’t eat all the harvest and leave nothing for us!”