The traditional adivasi Gharabari is not the Kitchen Garden of the households. It is more than a kitchen garden complete with integration of livestock and domestication of wild species. This diverse system of farming is now getting strengthened through integration of more sustainable approaches like in-situ water conservation, Compost Pits, portable Vermi compost pits, layered crops and use of plant and animal extracts for crop management. The families also learned to produce non-traditional food varieties to minimize their market dependency’. 

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Khanjaguda village like any other village in Chakapada block in Kandhamal district is a dry land location with scattered land ownership of the farmers. The villagers are mostly small and marginal farmers. With the limited resources and means to address their food production needs the villagers were part of the seed sovereignty campaign initiated by ORRISSA.

Tuber Crops as part of the crop diversity; Considering the drought resistant characters of the tuber crops the up lands of the village got six varieties of tuber crops from CTCRI as the village is primarily dependent on monsoon rain water. The farmers here doing vegetable cultivation in Khariff season only and they can get vegetable for 3 to 4 months in a year. To enhance the food security from 3 months to 6 months and generate income source  this year 52 farmers cultivated tuber crops in dry lands. This is also taken up considering the climate change effects where the unpredictable rain affects the crop in the event of long dry spells or sudden flash floods.



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I am Jamuna Kirsani the Seed Mother of my village Mauliguda in Malkangiri. Like me there are more than 70 adivasi Seed Mothers working in our locality to collect, conserve and propagate the local traditional seeds. We take care of our local seeds as we take care of our children and family. Women are best skilled to nurture the seeds. Seeds are our life and our identity. The knowledge around our local seeds and farming systems are travelling from one generation to the other and we experience it through our day-to-day life. We never buy seeds but exchange with other farmers. Our seeds were evolved through our intense resilience efforts across generations. Now I have more than 61 varieties of Paddy seeds and 123 varieties of pulses, tubers, oil seeds, domesticated wild food, vegetables and greens.

I have learned from visitors (and also attending various meetings outside) that our region is highly eco-diverse as well as one of the birthplaces of Rice. Our forefathers were agriculture pionner communities who domesticated and gifted Rice to this world that is the staple food to more than half of the global population today. Why we allow our own seeds to vanish. Who will protect our forests if the local seeds are lost?

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