Kapra Mahali is a CRP from Musabani Block, East Singhbhum District, Jharkhand who joined the Eastern India initiative as a People and Nature Fund (PNF) fellow in 2023 and is now working on the Eastern India project. She works with the Santal, Ho, Machua, Sabar, Mahali and OBC communities in 6 villages of Gohla and Kuilisuta Panchayats.
Kapra has been working with the Santal community is Bhadua to promote traditional agriculture, natural farming, Kitchen Gardens and traditional seeds. When she started work in 2023 she found that the farmers had lost a majority of their traditional seeds. She distributed several varieties of traditional seeds to farmers to promote their revival.
These seeds included traditional paddy varieties – Bali Bhojna, Jata; maize, finger millet, green peas, black gram, moong daal and urad daal, mustard, Niger, Black sesame and open pollinated vegetable seeds – Ridge gourd, Nanua, Bitter gourd, Lady fingers, beans, flat beans, bottle gourd, pumpkin, cucumber, three types of greens – Laal saag, Palak, Pui Saag and Dhania, Methi. When the Keystone Kotagiri team visited the village in March 2024 the women displayed a variety of seeds that the farmers had returned for future sowing. Based on this interaction with the women and future Gram Sabha and women’s groups meetings it was decided that the villagers would establish a Community Seed Bank (CSB) – Abua Ita Bhandar. They constituted a CSB committee comprising of 16 women members with Fulmoni Hansda as President, Bangi Murmu Secretary and Fulmoni Hansda (2) as Treasurer. The seed bank was set up in an unused government building with NOC provided by the Gram Sabha. The villager of Bhadua made contributions themselves in order to have the building whitewashed and cleaned. The CSB was provided with 21 Earthen containers with lid, wooden racks, and some more seeds in addition to the seeds returned by the farmers. The CSB now has the following seeds and planting material – Mustard, Black Sesame, Paddy (2 varieties), Maize, Moong Daal, Arhar (Pigeon pea), and 14 varieties of vegetable seeds. The CSB committee is in the process of distributing seeds to farmers for sowing in the Kharif season. These farmers will return a little more quantity of the seeds they receive after harvesting.
Senior farmer Konda Hansda shared that after the formation of the CSB our lives have been secured as we no longer need to worry about availability of seed for farming both to meet the subsistence needs of our families and generation of income through sale of our produce.
