Laxman and Gyansa Bharti
On the 17th of April 2021 an awareness program on uncultivated food and traditional agricultural practices was conducted with the men, women and children of Pachgol village, Harrakachar Panchayat, Patalkot, Chhindwara District, Madhya Pradesh. Participants included 18 men, 3 women and 2 children. Using Diversity fellows Laxman and Gyansa Bharti shared knowledge of the importance and benefits of uncultivated food and traditional crops and agricultural practices. The Chief Guest of the program was Shri Munnalal Bharti, the head of the students’ hostel.
Books on different uncultivated foods were shared with the participants and they were divided into groups, with discussions on uncultivated food and traditional agriculture being facilitated in the groups. The participants identified a variety of uncultivated foods found in their region from the books on uncultivated and discuss about their benefits and availability. The focus of the meeting was to discuss how uncultivated food and traditional agriculture are disappearing day by day and brainstorm on how they can be protected and revived.
Ramsingh Angariya, Jeevanlal Pacholia and Vishnu Angariya felt that nowadays daughters and daughters in law fear carrying out labour intensive work like winnowing, grinding, pounding and other methods of processing crops. The head of the students’ hostel, Shri Munnalal Bharti, shared that today’s children hesitate to eat uncultivated and traditional foods.
All the participants pledged that is their collective duty to protect uncultivated foods and traditional agricultural practices.
They also discussed the need to have regular meetings of their group.
