Surendra Pandram and Gyansa Bharti
The Bhariya people residing in the 12 villages of Patalkot, Chhindwara District, MP have a long tradition of cultivating a rich diversity of crops that include a variety of millets, pulses and other legumes, maize and oil seeds. However, with increasing restrictions by the Forest Department on the traditional shifting cultivation based practice of Dahiya along side increasing focus of farmers on a handful of commercially important species, there has been a marked decline in the cultivation of several traditional crops resulting in a reduction in the dietary diversity of the Bhariya people thereby threatening their nutritional security.
In order to promote the revival of traditional crops and make available seeds of these crops to farmers of the region two Community Seed Banks have been established in the villages of Chimtipur and Sukhabhand. Community Seed Bank committees comprising of 12 villagers (10 men and 2 women) have been established in each villager and they have been provided training and capacity building for managing their respective seed bank.
With the commencement of the agricultural season in June along with members of the Community Seed Bank committees we distributed seeds of 15 traditional crops to 103 farmer families across the 12 villages of Patalkot with each farmer taking 4 to 6 different varieties of seeds each to cultivate in her or his lands. The seeds distributed comprised – Kali kutki, Sama, Bhadeli, Kodo, Kala Kang, Kanggni, Bajra, Bewari, Kusmusi, Kurthi, Madia, Lai Jowar, Chawla, Ballar and Tuar.
