Oishika Roy explores experiences of seed savers and scientists to gather proof of relationships between people and seeds beyond that of money: generational, and through the principle of commons.
Against the ruins of a textile mill in Colaba, Mumbai, on a January evening this year, farmers and seed savers Abhijit Patil and Shailesh Awate implore an urban audience to care about the food grown many miles away from them—in the rural and tribal regions of Maharashtra. “India produces three to four times the amount of rice it needs,” they insist during a panel discussion on seeds and food security at the second edition of The Gathering, a festival bringing together immersive dining experiences, talks, and workshops centered around Indian food.
“Yet, we rank 105 out of 127 countries on the Global Hunger Index. The surplus rice produced subsidises costs for middlemen [instead of contributing to food security],” they say. Through the hour-long discussion, they reveal that India’s problem with food security is not a problem of insufficient production, but the fact that seed companies’ and middlemen’s commercial interests are being prioritised over those of growers and consumers. What the audience learnt was just how many nutritious and hardy seeds have been lost, making way for lab-engineered seed varieties that are poor in micro- and macro-nutrients, but are commercially viable for large seed corporations.
Photographer and farmer Abhijit Patil has been trying to alert the audience about this concern for a while now, using social media, photographs, and public conversations as his mediums. One example of such an engagement was the exhibition ‘Seed Stories’ Abhijit curated. The only edition of the exhibition took place in Pune in March 2025 with the intention of not only portraying the sheer diversity of India’s indigenous, heritage seeds, but also bringing their stories into the mainstream, beyond the disciplines of science that are often difficult to access.
As a practising permaculturist at his farm in Muradpur, Ratnagiri, Abhijit extends his photojournalism to documenting and preserving indigenous seeds and landraces (traditional agricultural varieties distinct to a region) with seed savers along the Western Ghats. For example, with the Shrushtidnyan seed bank in Devrukh, Maharashtra, which saves natural and local seeds to provide farmers of the region with economic autonomy, Abhijit photographed and labelled 75 rice varieties.
To him, this is an opportunity to portray what might appear invisible: “When you see something in the market, usually all the processes that are so laborious have already happened behind the curtains. (But the truth is) farming can’t be done without the skillset and knowledge carried on from generation to generation within the family.”
Abhijit is able to deftly tell a story through photographs—a story of the generations of work, time, and resources that go into producing each seed. Simultaneously, he also recounts why these seeds have deep cultural significance: for instance, Javayachi Gundi is a rice variety often cooked for the son-in-law in the northern parts of the Konkan region, while a particular variety of jowari is used to make puffed lahya, important in festivals for local deities. “There are relationships between people and their seeds that traverse beyond the simple ‘formula’ of ‘one crop isn’t fetching a price, we’ll move to a different one,’” he says.
These stories, Abhijit tells me, “play(s) the role of making things accessible. We’re not moved by research papers. As a society, humans have only been changed through stories. If we don’t have a narrative on the diversity of seeds in the form of stories, we reach only a certain audience.” These stories are also crucial in building evidence in the long term of relationships that people have had with the seeds—in growing them, harvesting them, and sustaining through them.
While making knowledge about seeds accessible, the stories also show the world—an audience that goes beyond scientists and seed corporations—that there is more to seeds than the final biological material one sees. There are relationships, labour, and culture, which act as testament against the rapid commercialisation of seeds.
“The Song Says, This Land and its Seeds Are Ancestral, like Family”
Adivasi activist Prakash Bhoir is known most for the Marathi songs he writes and sings on his people’s relationship with Mumbai’s forested land. The exterior of his home in the city’s Aarey Milk Colony is adorned with Warli drawings—of people sowing and dancing, deer and leopards running and chasing, and men playing the tarpa, a conical wind instrument made out of emptying and attaching massive gourds and bamboo stems. He shows me YouTube videos of the songs he’s worked on. The lyrics (translated from the Marathi) go like this:
“My relation with the forest goes way back,
the trees, fruits, flowers, and we are one big family
we learnt farming by sowing seeds
we are grateful to our ancestors
their names aren’t written on any paper.”
While we watch the videos, he explains, “See, the song says, this land and its seeds, they’re ancestral, like family.” Both Prakash and his wife Pramila Bhoir are closely involved in the citizen-led ‘Save Aarey’ movement. While Prakash retires from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) water department next year, he also farms on the land adjoining his house, along with Pramila, who then sells the fresh vegetables they grow at the market behind Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road.
“When Pramila sells these, she doesn’t just call them fresh, but live (jeevit), because they have just been plucked. The varieties [of vegetables] we sell, unlike many others in the market, reveal how fresh they are in their appearance, so we have no choice but to be honest,” Prakash says. The bounty they sell includes small gauthi brinjals—each plump with multiple tiny, flat seeds—moringa, elephant foot yam, lady’s finger, and cucumber, along with seasonal wild greens.
The seeds of these vegetables are preserved inside the vegetable itself. When the vegetables begin to sprout, the first ones to grow are to remain unplucked, while the rest would be harvested. The unharvested vegetables would then grow large and dry out, with their seeds safely preserved inside until the next sowing season. “In the stomach of the vegetable, the seeds are safer from the warmth and humidity [of the atmosphere] than in any packet,” Prakash reveals.
In this way, the seeds are propagated from year to year. “If you go to any of our neighbours’ farms as well and notice some of the fruits of vegetables hanging [long after their counterparts have been harvested], you know they are keeping those fruits to save their seeds.”
Among the seed savers of the Aarey forest—who belong to various Adivasi communities, such as the Warlis, Malhar Kolis, and Koknas—the practice of seed exchange still continues. Not everyone grows the same foods year on year, approaching each other if they are in need of particular seeds. “If someone grows bhindi, I grow karela, someone else grows sponge gourd, and the next year we want to grow something else, we will go to our neighbours and ask to keep extra seeds this season. In return, I might give them, say, some cucumber seeds. What’s important is that no money is exchanged at all. All of us keep extra seeds, more than we will need, because we know someone will come to ask,” Prakash tells me.
He also mentions that this practice of exchange is dwindling in Aarey, mostly because people don’t have the seeds anymore. While some of the older custodians of these seeds still cultivate them, many of the farmers now buy hybrid seeds from shops; others have moved away from farming due to loss of land. “The seeds that one buys from the shops not only produce weak fruit, we found, but also need to be purchased with pesticides from the same shop. Plus, [since they are hybrid varieties], the seeds from their vegetables won’t further produce vegetables. They are ‘one-time use’. They won’t propagate further, so one will have to buy them repeatedly.”
All of us keep extra seeds, more than we will need, because we know someone will come to ask,” Prakash tells me.
Pramila and Prakash, who once sowed hybrid seeds and saw no return, are aware of the value of the seeds they have inherited: “They have been with us for generations. My mother passed these down to us. Many of them aren’t available in the market, and the fruit they yield is so tasty. There is also a feeling of ‘attachment’ that this is ours, a part of us,” Prakash shares. They acknowledge that, in some ways, they too have been protected by these seeds. “If we had to buy seeds, our money would be spent without any returns. They sell by the gram. If we calculate, for one kilogram, it would cost 50,000 rupees or more, and then it’s hard to have any profit.”
Prakash’s words reveal that while they do sell the fruits and vegetables produced by the seeds they preserve, their relationship with these seeds is not just for sustaining their livelihood. They also share a familial attachment with these seeds; for them, the process of preserving and exchanging these seeds occurs with no money changing hands at all. To them, seeds sold for profit are not only expensive, but are also causing the erosion of indigenous seeds, along with farmers’ livelihoods and their self-sufficiency.
“They will not grow unless nurtured and loved like you would a child”
Historian Sandip Hazareesingh finds a similar trend of returning to natural seeds during his fieldwork for his paper, ‘Our Grandmother Used to Sing Whilst Weeding’: Oral histories, millet food culture, and farming rituals among women smallholders in Ramanagara district. In South Karnataka, women smallholder farmers have been returning to ‘nati’ or local seeds following the proliferation of hybrid varieties of ragi, paddy, and pigeon pea that the government introduced at the turn of the century. Before this intervention—born of the Green Revolution model prioritising yield through the use of chemical inputs and irrigation-led farming—farmers in the region only cultivated and exchanged local heirloom varieties, which helped the communities maintain local food culture and security.
“Their experience of these hybrids was that while yields did increase in good seasons, this was not often reflected in their incomes due to the high costs of the seeds and fertilisers which had to be purchased on the market,” Sandip finds, corroborating much of the experiences with hybrid varieties in the Aarey forest. Just like Pramila and Prakash, farmers in Ramanagara also described that the exposure to chemical fertilisers affected the fertility of their land, compelling them to go back to using cow-based fertiliser, and growing indigenous varieties of ragi, groundnut, and pigeon pea. “We leave the roots of our nati plants in the soil to obtain next year’s seeds,” Sandip quotes one of the farmers he interviewed.
Hombalamma—who is known for preserving and cultivating indigenous seeds in Denkanadoddi village in southern Karnataka and sharing her knowledge with other farmers across southern India—finds it counter-intuitive to grow and eat hybrid seeds. Her wide arsenal of seeds includes several varieties of ragi, foxtail millet, avarekai or broad beans, bottle gourd, pumpkin, tomato, pigeon pea, and other pulses.
“As I remember from the days of my grandfather, we have been eating tasty, nutritious food from locally raised crops on our farm,” she tells Sandip. “It makes no sense for our bodies to consume foods that we don’t know from outside that don’t give us strength.” It is clear that her knowledge of these seeds and their value comes from the generations of familial knowledge.
“They will not grow unless nurtured and loved like you would a child,” Hombalamma says, perceiving the seeds as living, almost human entities. To Sandip, the process of seed preservation mutually reproduces: for farmers like Hombalamma and the rest of the women smallholders, seeds are not only being passed down generationally, but are also living material that sustain generations, one reproducing the other. When these seeds are so closely tied to her ancestry, her family, their local land, there is little space for need from the outside. However, one cannot ignore the tensions present in sustaining these relationships.
As paddy seed saver Balan in Wayanad, Kerala, tells me, the challenges of growing indigenous rice, especially when it is his primary means of livelihood, cannot be considered insignificant. A member of the Kurichiya tribal community from Wayanad, which has traditionally grown and been custodians of paddy varieties, Balan reveals that growing indigenous rice varieties, such as Veliyan, Chennellu, Thondi, Mullanpuncha, and Gandakasala, require high amounts of labour, which is no longer done within the family and therefore costs money.
While Balan continues to cultivate many of these varieties on the land owned by the tharavad (joint family), and facilitates exchange of indigenous varieties with other farmers to ensure that they don’t disappear, he also grows hybrid rice for sale, which fetches a guaranteed price from local players, such as rice mill owners who only have the infrastructure for hybrid varieties. He admits that indigenous rice cultivation is not for profit, but as a responsibility he has towards “sustaining (the Kurichiya) system, tharavad, and diversity.”
The relationship between communities and the seeds they pass down is reciprocal, and increasingly threatened with members moving away from farming these varieties. Traditional rice savers in Wayanad also face challenges due to extreme weather conditions such as unpredicted rain, and increased foraging of rice by wildlife, especially aromatic varieties. Further, as Vipindas P., Development Coordinator at the Community Agrobiodiversity Centre (MSSRF) who works closely with the seed savers in Wayanad shares, “The traditional seeds are preserved only by the traditionally land holding ones. We can’t do this, for instance, with the Paniya community (who have traditionally been agricultural labourers) since they don’t have access to seeds and resources.”
There is merit in understanding the kinship that indigenous farming communities have with the seeds they sow and preserve. While these relationships offer reservoirs of preserved landraces, and agricultural livelihoods that sustain despite commercialisation, there is also merit in interrogating its limits: How strongly does it persist against the rise of profit-oriented varieties, and who does it leave out?
“How Can Anyone Own the Seeds That Have Been Passed on for Thousands of Years as Living Things?”
In their paper, sociologists Archana Patnaik, Guido Ruivenkamp, and Joost Jongerden studied community seed banks led by Dalit women in the Zaheerabad sub-district of Telangana, where, over time, over 500 varieties of millets have been stored and preserved. Their research, Marginalized community, space of commons and autonomy: The case of the Deccan Development Society in South India, published in 2017 found that all of the women who participated in sanghams—voluntary groups running these community seed banks—were farmers of very small holdings, usually less than one hectare.
These farmers had been dependent on landlords from oppressor castes for seeds, which were often stored at their homes, “with whatever the smallholders produced on their lands used for consumption, (disallowing them from) sav(ing) seeds themselves.” To access seeds, the women often had to travel far, without any guarantee that they would find the seeds they were looking for. Moreover, those found at the market were too costly.
The women running these community seed banks built a massive repository of millet seeds by accessing various individual networks of friends, mothers, neighbours, and even other villages. At first, the sanghams were aided by the grassroot organisation Deccan Development Society (DDS) through loans starting a few years after DDS first started in 1983. By the early 2010s, the sanghams were financially self-sufficient.
Not only were millets well-suited to the semi-arid climate of Zaheerabad, but they also held traditional significance and came to represent the region’s farmers’ self-sufficiency and sovereignty. Cultivating local millets meant no longer having to rely on external bodies for food, and being able to retain the generational skills required to prepare millet dishes. Their network spread wide, given that the farmers were “living and working in different communities”, the paper observes, forming a heterogeneous group.
As Dalit women are typically disenfranchised by generational or institutional access to seeds, their method of sourcing seeds—regardless of traditional relationships with particular varieties, and collecting seeds from various communities—allowed for deep variety in what the seed banks hold today. This stamina for heterogeneity also reflects in how they manage seed exchange, which is entirely agnostic of where a farmer comes from and what seeds they already have.
The paper further finds that farmers can borrow five to eight varieties from the seed banks at a time, and are only expected to return seeds after the harvest season, to replenish the bank. In fact, when “communities from other states requested… varieties of significant financial value, it was learnt that sanghams sent the varieties without any formal procedure”, relying on trust and shared ideology. Archana, Guido, and Joost conclude, stating: “The resistance of the community (in favour of more equitable seed sharing and exchange) is extended to a wider and more generally local, collective, and informal approach through these seed exchanges.”
It is a similar approach to seed saving—and food growing—that researcher Soumik Banerjee shares with me. Working closely with seed-saving communities in Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and southern Indian states, he has spent over two decades pursuing the revival of natural seeds in partnership with individual farmers, communities, and organisations. Soumik believes that everyone must be able to access seeds and grow food.
Soumik recounts anecdotes of Anju Kumari, a farmer from Samastipur in Bihar, who, although had no access to natural seed varieties, was deeply interested in growing them. Anju reached out to him to not only procure some seeds, but also learn which ones would be best suited to the climate of the region she grows in, and how to grow them. In the same conversation, he mentions how the Sabar community in West Bengal—traditionally hunter-gatherers with no access to land or history of farming—have slowly started sowing natural seeds indigenous to the region they are in, after gaining access to some land through government schemes.
From these interactions, Soumik’s takeaways are clear: Access to natural seeds must not be limited only to communities that have traditionally grown them, but must be equitable and democratic. “This is important because there is a need for proliferation of natural indigenous seeds that modern seeds already have in order to not only restore farmer and seed autonomy, but also a collective autonomy that all of us have over what we eat,” he says.
According to him, there is a deep requirement for a ground-up, collective approach to making seeds accessible and democratic, beyond corporation-led dissemination. In ideology, Soumik aligns with the sanghams in Telangana, who are, as Archana makes evident, “aiming to re-establish local food self-sufficiency [as well as] secure community access to and control over food production”.
However, while Soumik believes in the ideologies surrounding free exchange of seeds beyond boundaries of inheritance, and outside the ambit of commerce, he also admits that currently we’re far from this reality. “Enacting seed commons, through banks or even individual-level exchange, is hard today because we have lost the culture of barter,” he shares. (In his experience), providing farmers with seeds under the conditions of free exchange, with the expectation that they will return the seeds to keep the system going, has proved challenging, as many food growers no longer have the systems of care it may take to look after the seeds.
In Odisha’s Narisho village, Khurda district, Loka Samabaya Pratisthan (LSP) is a grassroots seed-saving organisation building seed commons through banks. It noted similar struggles too—it was difficult to facilitate exchange of seeds when the principle itself had been lost. In an article exploring community seed sharing, LSP shared that while initially, farmers were asked to return double the amount of seeds they borrowed, this wasn’t feasible as they often didn’t return to restock the supply. In response, the organisation now asks farmers to pay a nominal 10 to 20 rupees per packet of seeds, roughly around 5-10 grams.
While Soumik provides a small amount of seeds for free, he too charges a nominal fee for larger packets—only a fraction of what farmers would have to pay at seed shops. Given the labour and resources that go into building, maintaining, and growing seed diversity blocks (patches of agrarian land used to grow and preserve natural seeds) in various parts of the country, he also encourages the farmers he works with to do the same.
For vegetable seeds in particular, farmers are willing to pay this token amount, as they are priced exorbitantly in the market. Soumik tells me that hybrid seeds of brinjal, chillies, and tomatoes are priced between 200 and 1,000 rupees per small packet in Madhya Pradesh. While a large range, all amounts within it prove steep, especially as the cost of buying seeds repeats every sowing season. Plus, unlike the varieties bought in shops, the ones sold by diversity blocks can be preserved year on year, at no extra cost of purchase. Through this, Soumik hopes, natural indigenous seeds, conserved through diversity blocks, will pose as a sufficient alternative to seed shops. Further, in the absence of free exchange, Soumik and LSP are also attempting to make seeds accessible to all by sharing widely and openly the knowledge required to grow these seeds. LSP provides training free of charge on how to cultivate landraces, as does Soumik.
When I ask Soumik whether he imagined seeds as commons, not owned at all, but accessible to all, he agreed vehemently: “Take Gobindobhog rice, or say, Karhani, a type of red rice documented 2,500 years ago. They are living things…they have lived for thousands of years, and have been grown for thousands of years. This is especially true of heritage seeds that have been grown by so many farmers over generations. They are the commons, and by awarding ownership, one is allowing the rights to these seeds to be sold, and bought. How can anyone own the seeds that have been passed on for thousands of years as living things? One is privatising the commons. It is illogical.”
We would like to thank Abhijit Patil, Pramila Bhoir, Prakash Bhoir, Sandip Hazareesingh, Balan Sir, Vipindas P., Archana Patnaik, and Soumik Banerjee for their time, insights, and knowledge that shaped this piece. We would also like to thank Seed Stories and Community Agrobiodiversity Centre (CAbC), MSSRF for allowing us the space to learn more about seeds.
Oishika Roy is the Features Editor at The Locavore. In her free time, she likes to update her reading challenge on Goodreads.
Anugraha Mahesh is a visual artist based out of Mumbai. She found her way to illustration through her varied interests in design and culture. Through her work, she hopes to portray the nuanced details of the world—and everyday life—around us. While away from her desk, she dreams about her evening snack, and tries to cross off books and movies from her to-read and to-watch lists.
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