Seeds soldier

Vijay Jardhari is on a mission to create a bank of indigenous seeds to share with other farmers.

in the Garhwal Himalayas, Uttarakhand

WE are on the edge of a mountain 1,500 metres high in the Garhwal Himalayas in Uttarakhand. Vijay Jardhari is picking beans in his backyard. Almost magically, from every pod a differently coloured seed jumps into my hand red, yellow, brown, black, white, spotted, speckled. The variety is endless. In a matter of minutes, my hand is filled with a rainbow of beans.

Jardhari is a wizard with seeds. He has collected over 600 varieties. For more than 25 years, it has been his mission to create a bank of indigenous seeds to share with other farmers. Jardhari has trekked through the Garhwal mountains right up to the India-Nepal border, searching for seeds and sharing them with people along the way. The Beej Bachao Andolan (Save Seeds Movement), founded by Jardhari, has unearthed more than 350 varieties of rice, 200 of rajma beans and 30 of wheat, and several varieties of locally grown grains, vegetables, herbs and spices. It is now a movement that is challenging chemical farming and genetically modified (GM) seeds by proving that home-grown, indigenous agriculture can be sustainable and more productive.

With a Zen-like calm, the bearded Gandhian explains how it all began. When I started farming in the 1980s, the time of the Green Revolution, the government was distributing subsidised high-yield variety [HYV] seeds and chemical fertilizers. I bought them for my field and sowed them with great excitement. In the first year, I had a good yield. But then it started declining. I realised that the fertilizer was poisoning our soil, Jardhari remembers.

My father and other village elders told me that they used to sow several varieties of seeds, which were far better [than the HYV seeds]. So, I started going from village to village in search of these seeds, says Jardhari. Initially, I barely found a few strains of rice, but as time went by, I discovered treasures varieties of millets and grains I had never known about. I started producing the seeds and giving them to other farmers.

At a time when the craze for commercial farming was peaking, Jardhari was warning people about its dangers. The government was pushing farmers to grow soya bean as a cash crop. Jardhari tried to convince people to get back to the basics, that is, go totally organic. The Green Revolution was a con. We tried to persuade people to revive the traditional Barnaja [12 grain] cropping system. If soya bean farming had replaced this system, our culture and diet would have been destroyed, Jardhari said. The Barnaja method supports 40 different crops. We would have lost several kinds of nutritious foods. Not only is Barnaja farming important for our food security, it also keeps our soil fertile and feeds our cattle.

The Green Revolution made people depend on one crop. The seeds were suitable only for irrigated areas but were freely distributed in dry-land farming areas such as the Garhwal. The hybrid crop gave less fodder, so women had to work harder to collect more grass for the cattle. Now, India is seeing the most extreme consequences of the Green Revolution: cotton farmers hooked on to GM crops and pesticides and totally dependent on their cash crops are killing themselves in supposedly prosperous States such as Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab. Jardhari woke up to its dangers decades ago. It has been scientifically proven by the agricultural scientist Vir Singh that the yield of the local rice grown in Jardharis village, Jardhargaon, is higher than that of HYV rice.

In the Barnaja system, 12 crops or more are grown on the same farm. Each crop has a different life cycle and supports the others growth. For instance, rajma bean is a creeper that grows on the ramdana (amaranth) stalk.

Now, the Barnaja system is practised in almost every village in Uttarakhand. It has built farmers solidarity. People are exchanging seeds and techniques, says Jardhari.

Harvesting rice in

On his shelves are rows of straw boxes in which he carefully stores the seeds, preserving them in neem and ash. Jardhari has carefully researched the origin and scientific name of each of the seeds and is slowly building a canvas of the Garhwals biodiversity. In the last few years, scores of scientists and researchers have landed on his doorstep to study the Beej Bachao Andolan and its work. Others have tried to fake affiliation to his movement to get funding. But he continues unfazed.

A child of the tree-hugging Chipko movement, Jardhari has been deeply connected with environmental struggles since his youth. After travelling around as a Chipko activist, Jardhari returned home to find that the forest in Jardhargaon was bare. There was a shortage of fodder and firewood. So we got people together and formed a Van Suraksha Samiti [Forest Protection Committee], with women at the forefront, says Jardhari. The village committee banned the hacking of any green wood. We had strict rules for cutting deadwood to make sure everyone in the village got some. We stopped entry into the villages common forest area so that fodder could grow back. There were guards employed to enforce these rules.

It worked like magic. Jardhargaons forest is now lush and diverse with oak, pine and rhododendron trees. Villagers say that wild boars, deer, tigers, leopards and bears have come back to the forest. A scientific study by the G.B. Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development, Almora, Uttarakhand, found that in terms of quality and diversity, the forests of Jardhargaon are better than those in most regions, including those managed by the government. It is now a success story cited in several conservation journals.

Yet, there are miles to go for Jardhari. He is still battling against the widespread marketing of GM seeds and pesticides, still trying to help get organic farming gain acceptability, and still fighting to keep the forest safe from commercial contractors. And, he is also worried about global warming and its effect on water supply in the Himalayas.

In a long conversation, Jardhari explained in detail the subtle changes he has observed in the climate and ecology of the Himalayas. His knowledge of the terrain is vast.

We call the oak tree the one that invites the monsoon, he says. Its our most important tree. All the springs are found in oak forests. Its leaves retain moisture and so there are fewer fires in oak forests, explains Jardhari. But for the last two or three years, the oak trees have not shed their leaves because of the lack of water, so they have not grown and remain stunted. If the oak goes, the Himalayas go.

Jardhari is determined to keep the Himalayas alive. More than preserve biodiversity, he has managed to change peoples mindsets from the way they use forests to the way they farm their food. When we initially began, it was hard to convince people to grow coarse grains even though they are so nutritious. They thought that it was old-fashioned. If guests came visiting, they would get embarrassed and would hide the grains, Jardhari remembers. Today, our villagers send millets to their sons working in the cities. They have realised its worth. The tide has turned.