Seed Sovereignty - Navdanya

In her book ‘Soil Not Oil’, World Future Council member Vandana Shiva strongly endorses regenerative organic farming strategies. She makes a connection between food insecurity, peak oil, and climate change and examines why any attempt to solve one without addressing the others will get us nowhere.

A further component of the book, and the work of her organisation Navdanya, is to call for seed sovereignty, assuring that farmers are not forced to rely on seed, fertilizers and pesticide ‘packages’ supplied by multi-national companies. Navdanya has worked with local communities and organizations, now serving more than 200,000 farmers from 14 Indian States. Navdanya’s efforts have resulted in the conservation of more than 2000 rice varieties from all over the country, including indigenous varieties that have been adapted over centuries to meet different local ecological demands. Members have also conserved 31 varieties of wheat and hundreds of millets, pseudocereals, pulses, oilseeds, vegetables, as well as multipurpose plant species, including medicinal plants. Navdanya has established 34 seed banks across the country as it believes in operating through a network of community seed banks in different ecozones of India, and thus facilitating the rejuvenation of agricultural biodiversity, farmer’s self-reliance in seed locally and nationally, and farmer’s right. Navdanya has also established a conservation and training centre at its farm in near Dehradoon in Uttarkhand. In this region more than 70,000 farmers are primary members of Navdanya. Today, biodiversity conservation programs linked to Navdanya are underway in Uttaranchal, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Orissa, West Bengal, Karnataka, Haryana. It remains to be seen if and when the Indian government may decide to make Navdanya’s practices into government policy.

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