In India, Women’s Seed Conservation Practices Are Making Them Climate Resilient

PHOTOS: Sohel Sarkar In India, Women’s Seed Conservation Practices Are Making Them Climate Resilient by SOHEL SARKAR Tamarai is unsure of her age but she can name every single one of However, millets began to disappear from farmers’ fields following the 30-odd varieties of heirloom millet seeds she’s saved over the the Green Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, when the Indian years. [...] She high yielding varieties of rice and wheat.5 It was only in the late utilized a practice she learned from her mother and aunt who would 2010s that policymakers realized that heirloom millets held huge always grow a few varieties of millets, pulses and vegetables in their potential in a climate insecure world: being drought resistant and backyard, regardless of the crops being cultivated in the. [...] and preserve the healthiest seeds, and exchange some with the rest of the community. [...] Many save anything between five to thirty varieties TAKE ACTION depending on the size of the land they have, and the different types of crops they grow,” says the collective’s founder Sheelu Francis.7 Saving seeds is a great way to conserve agrobiodiversity and safeguard plants against These women are following in the footsteps of many generations extinction. [...] L., Kiran Sakkhari, and Devullu Pachari, “Sowing the Seeds of Resilience: A Case Study of Community-based of how to conserve and grow them with others in the community.