PHOTO ESSAY
When we meet Kong Sita Mary Nongrum, she is brewing sha saw (red tea) over a traditional woodfire at her home in Umsawwar. The hearth, usually made of ash, mud, and stone, lights the kitchens of traditional Khasi homes across Meghalaya.
Directly above the fire is the lyngwiar dpei or the area around the hearth. From the lyngwiar dpei hang woven bamboo baskets and cloth pouches, storing a household’s diverse variety of local seeds including peas, beans, mustard, millets, pumpkin, corn, cucumber, radish, chillies, and garlic. A farmer and ASHA worker, Sita has been preserving seeds for the past 27 years.
In the city, we hardly notice the fire hearth anymore, but for farmers like Sita, it is at the heart of seed-keeping: ensuring the health of seeds, keeping them moisture-free, and protecting them from insect infestations.
The smoke from the fire burning underneath reaches these seeds and coats them with a thin layer of soot, acting as a natural insect repellent while regulating moisture levels, ensuring that the seeds become dormant, but remain alive, preserved for the next planting season.
Sita owns a field about a third of the size of a football field (less than half an acre). A five-minute walk from her house, she grows a variety of crops here—such as beans and cucumbers—to feed her family, including her husband, aunt, and five children. She also farms at a community village field, a 30-minute-walk from her house, where she grows potatoes, taro, and sweet potatoes. The land is provided by the village council and shared among village farmers to grow crops of their choice.
Women farmers—who are landowners and primary decision makers in Meghalaya’s matrilineal society—carefully select the best quality crops from their fields and dry them in the warmth of their kitchen fire. “The first fruit that comes from the first harvest is preferred for seed-keeping,” says Gratia E. Dkhar, Senior Associate (Programmes) at the North East Society for Agroecology Support (NESFAS), an organisation dedicated to revitalising and promoting Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems. “It is believed that if you take the seed from the first fruit, the growth duration will be predictable for the next [plantation season].”
Farmers then wait till the seed is mature and safe for seed-keeping. “The fruit that has been identified for seed-keeping should be free of any infestation and be visually appealing (for instance, the skin should be smooth and the colour should be bright),” says Gratia. For years, farmers, especially community elders, have been practising seed collection during Ngen Bnai or the new moon phase. “It is believed that if you collect seeds during that time, instances of pest attacks during the next plantation are less,” adds Gratia.
Sita plants limited quantities of each crop, allowing her to grow a variety of crops in the same field. With plants beneficial to each other side by side, the risk of pest attacks is reduced. Small quantities enable her to tend to her crops without using chemical fertilisers or pesticides. Sita manually removes visible pests from the crops or uses wood ash to get rid of small insects like Aphids, locally known as Ñiangrieji.
The time it takes for a seed to be ready for preservation depends on the crop: Beans and peas that are harvested in October and November, for example, are left in the field until their shells harden. Every seed variety in Sita’s collection requires a unique drying process. Varieties of grains are sundried in the verandah. Root vegetables like sweet potatoes are kept under the soil, while some tubers are stored in a dark room away from the fire as they need cooler temperatures.
Changes in local weather have impacted Sita’s seed bank. In the monsoon of 2026, Meghalaya recorded India’s highest rainfall deficit—59 percent below normal. The East Khasi Hills district received 53 percent less rain than normal. “This (2026) is a dry harvest year,” says Sita, adding that the insufficient water has made seeds smaller in size. To adapt to the changing climate, Sita has to be careful when she plants her seeds—planting earlier in the season if the expected rainfall is low, and later if it is excessive.
Indigenous knowledge of agriculture is transferred to the next generations through mothers who engage children in agricultural activities at a young age. “Earlier, a child as young as two years old would get their hands dirty and accompany their mother to the kitchen and fields,” says Gratia.
Now, however, things are different. Even the architecture of villages in Meghalaya is transforming, as houses built with concrete and steel are increasing in number. According to Sita, the next generation of farmers must either find new, equally effective ways to replicate the hearth’s function or risk losing these resilient seed varieties entirely. “We can save the seeds today, but we need them to understand how to save them tomorrow,” says Sita.
Eighty-three kilometres from Umsawwar, in Nongwah village, 59-year-old Kong Aidira Khasaiñ also uses the kitchen fire method of seed preservation in her home. Aidira started farming at 11 years old, with her mother.
“I am not dependent on whether there is sun or not,” Aidira, who is now the mother of eight children and grandmother to 16. “The seeds get ample warmth from the fire. The smoke knows exactly how to protect what we need to survive.”
“This year, the skies withheld their rain,” says Aidira, referring to the dry monsoons in Meghalaya. The lack of rainfall has impacted harvest for farmers in Aidira’s village, but Aidira and her daughter Stialinda have adapted to the water scarcity by digging out a pond on their field, 40 minutes from their house.
They use the pond to store water when there is no rain after the sowing season. This pond saved her fields this season, she says. Aidira’s corn plantation, though, took a massive hit, rotting in the earth due to ‘ïap ïong’ (black death)—a term used by farmers to describe poor soil conditions leading to extensive crop damage. Trusting her gut, she moved her seeds to a different part of the field. It was a smart move that saved the lineage, even though overall production dipped.
Traditional seed conservation practices play a significant role in upholding the local food systems across Meghalaya, especially as food growing cycles and supply chains are impacted by the climate crisis. Across the state, farmers have reported changes in the field as a result of rising temperatures, irregular and sparse rainfall, and extreme weather events like landslides, floods, hailstorms, and drought-like conditions. Farmers have also reported changes such as increasing pest attacks, declining soil quality, and frequent crop losses linked to unpredictable rainfalls.
A ‘Participatory Agrobiodiversity Mapping Exercise’ conducted by NESFAS in 2019 documented the agrobiodiversity available across 32 villages in Meghalaya, including Khweng, Marmain, Umsawwar, and Nongwah, revealing that while the extent of agrobiodiversity in the region is vast, there is a difference in quality between local and commercial varieties of seeds. New varieties produced a higher yield, but were not resilient to climatic stress or extreme weather conditions. In contrast, indigenous seeds and local landraces of crops preserved by farmers recorded as being more resilient adapted to regional climatic conditions, soil and terrain, and changing weather and rainfall patterns.
A district-level risk and vulnerability assessment conducted by National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture in 2024 has categorised every district in Meghalaya as “very high” or “high” risk, based on an analysis of factors such as rising minimum temperatures, increased drought-proneness, and erratic rainfall. All these factors impact the predominantly rain-fed agriculture that sustains local livelihoods.
A kilometre away from Aidira’s home, the single-room community seed bank holds 20 varieties of seeds dominated by potatoes, beans, and green peas. Currently, the seed bank collects seeds contributed by 16 villagers who are a part of the Nongwah Primary Agroecology Cooperative Society. “The seed bank came out of the [community’s] demand for local seeds,” says Gratia. “If [farmers] have to sell the seeds in the market, [they] require certain technical support to ensure the quality of seeds.”
The community seed bank uses certain technical guidelines to maintain the seeds’ moisture content in the absence of wood fire and smoke. Members of the cooperative also handpick pests and impurities manually. While it is hard to control temperatures that a seed is exposed to in a home kitchen, here, seeds are stored at cooler temperatures, usually below 17 degrees Celsius, thereby increasing their viability to 1-2 years.
A record of the seeds, and an exhaustive inventory, is managed by Stialinda, Aidira’s 38-year-old daughter. She maintains details such as farmers’ names, the time the seeds were stored for, and the time when they were sold.
The first priority of the seed bank is to sell the seeds back to the village residents who have contributed to the seed bank. While smaller seeds like mustard are sold at ₹10-20 per tablespoon, larger seeds like rice are sold at ₹60 per kilogram. It is only after the seeds have been bought by the community members that they are sold in the market at the same price, even though the market brings more customers.
The quantity of seeds that are saved for community members or sold at the market depends on several factors; rainfall is among the most important determinants. While 2026 has been a dry year, excessive rain also reduces seed production. According to Meghalaya’s Department of Agriculture, high rainfall can adversely impact agriculture beyond seed-keeping. Assessments have pointed out that the state’s terrain, with its hills, steep slopes and dissected landscape, makes water storage and distribution difficult. Factors like flash floods, siltation, and damage to infrastructure also reduce the effective use of irrigation systems.
According to NESFAS, communities in Meghalaya maintain a high diversity of staple food plants, with at least eight species being used (rice, potato, sweet potato, cassava, taro, tania, maize, wild yam, and job’s tears). The Participatory Agrobiodiversity Mapping Exercise undertaken by NESFAS identified a variety of staple food plants, including potatoes grown in Meghalaya. An average of six potato varieties were documented across villages—including in Umsawwar and Nongwah—while other villages reported potato diversity as high as 15. Several local potato varieties are now lost, as farmers move to newer, higher yielding crops.
For example, sohlah ltot, which is especially resistant to the heavy rainfall patterns, common for Meghalaya, is no longer grown. In recent years, there has been an effort by NESFAS, along with community members, to reintroduce sohlah ltot to farms, to improve climate resilience. Over the years, farmers like Aidira have consistently saved the best potatoes for planting again. In the last three sowing cycles, the size of the potatoes has increased, Aidira notes.
Back at the Nongwah community seed bank, Stialinda and other members of the Cooperative are waiting for the harvest season. Until then, it is too soon to say what this year’s seed production will look like.
Queeneerich Kharmawlong is the Woman Farmer Project Writer-Researcher fellow from Meghalaya. She grew up in Shillong, a quiet hill station where whispering pines hold a thousand untold stories. She became a journalist and a multimedia storyteller to catch those fleeting tales and weave them into something real.
Ibapdianghun Myria is the Woman Farmer Project Audio-Visual fellow from Meghalaya. She works at the intersection of storytelling and the field, documenting real experiences through film, photography, and writing.
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Additional Inputs
This story was produced in partnership with North East Society for Agroecology Support (NESFAS). Read more about their work here.
This story is part of the Woman Farmer Project, a multimedia storytelling initiative led by The Locavore in partnership with the Doc Society Climate Story Kitchen. It aims to build a roadmap for successful collaborations between institutions and innovative grassroots networks who are committed to amplifying climate stories.
The Doc Society supports climate action across the globe by championing independent filmmakers, audio producers, journalists, and artists working alongside impact producers and movement builders to bring more communities into climate conversations to advance climate just and biodiverse futures.