Woman’s push to save healthy indigenous seeds yields honours

New Delhi: She never had the chance to go to school and was married at the age of 17.

But the 55-year-old from Maharashtra has defied the odds to become one of three Indians listed on the BBC’s 100 inspirational and influential women from across the world.

Hailing from Kombhalne village, in Ahmednagar district, Rahibai Soma Popere is a self-taught expert in agro-biodiversity and paddy cultivation, who has put her techniques to good use and achieved success.

And now Popere has received international recognition for her work in conserving indigenous seed varieties.

The other two Indians on the list are Meena Gayen, who worked with women in the Sunderbans Delta to build a road to their village, and Viji Pallithodi for her efforts to secure better working conditions for women workers in the unorganised sector.

Speaking to Gulf News, Rahibai said: “I have a keen interest in the conservation of medicinal plants and conserved indigenous seeds. One cannot say it came from education, as I have never even attended school. I come from an impoverished background and as a 10-year-old reared cows and helped my parents as a farm labourer. Knowledge came gradually and I began delving into agro biodiversity and wild food resources.”

I have a keen interest in the conservation of medicinal plants and conserved indigenous seeds. One cannot say it came from education, as I have never even attended school.

- Rahibai Popere, Innovator

Belonging to the Mahadeo Koli tribe, she recalls the difficult times she lived through.

“Out of the five acres [two hectares] of land that we owned, only three acres [1.2 hectares] was utilised for crop cultivation and the rest remained barren. Our family did farming when it rained and would migrate to Akole for rest of the months to work sometimes as a daily wager cutting sugar cane, or doing transportation work and at other times working in a sugar factory as labourers. All those jobs were very cumbersome; we lived in thatched roof huts, and prepared food in the open.”

Rahibai was married at the age of 17, to Soma Popere.

Through her agricultural experience, she kept learning how native crop varieties were not only drought and disease resistant, but was nutritive and retained the soil fertility.

“They do not need chemical fertilisers and excessive water,” she explained.

While at work, she realised that villagers were falling sick frequently after eating food prepared from hybrid crops.

“I understood that the nutritive value of traditional seeds was much higher than that of hybrid seeds. That’s when, along with other women farmers, I began collecting local seeds from Ahmednagar district’s Akole town,” she added.

Soon she spearheaded the formation of a self-help group, named Kalsubai Parisar Biyanee Savardhan Samiti, which works towards the conservation and propagation of traditional varieties of crops.

Popularly known as the “seed woman”, she credits her achievements to an NGO named BAIF Development Research Foundation (formerly known as Bharaitya Agro Industries Foundation), which has been promoting sustainable livelihood in rural India since 1967.

It had started a community-led programme in Akole tribal town in 1996 and established network of self-help groups, horticulture and agriculture interventions and soil and water conservation.

Rahibai said, “My association with BAIF officials began in 2014, when they visited our area with the objective to conserve and revive crop diversity, scientific studies for morphological and nutritional aspects and community seed bank and seed production. They collected indigenous crop diversity and established a seed bank at my house.”

The farmer explained, “Native crops are likely to become extinct, as large seed companies are promoting and patenting hybrid seeds. Since farmers become dependent on the companies for seeds because they cannot save hybrid seeds in the fields, they become the sufferers.”

Her initiatives have helped thousands of farmers.

She stresses that, besides the advantages of native crop varieties, conservation of such seeds is important to prevent the exploitation of farmers.

After much learning and implementing her experiments, she now travels across Maharashtra training farmers and students on seed selection, techniques to improve soil fertility, kitchen garden, backyard poultry, pest management and health and hygiene.

Popere also helps to raise awareness and holds training sessions on the importance of organic farming and conservation of indigenous seeds.

She supplies farmers with seedlings of indigenous crops, thereby encouraging them to switch to native varieties.

The farmers are given the seed on the condition that they will return twice the quantity of seeds they borrow. The chain has only grown.

At present 116 indigenous varieties of 53 different crops are under conservation through Rahibai’s community seed bank.

These include: paddy, millets, hyacinth bean, pulses, oilseeds and medicinal plants. She has developed women-led enterprise for share-exchange of over a dozen vegetable crop varieties through kitchen garden.

To her also goes the credit of preparing more than 5,000 seedlings of curry leaves, papaya and blackberry and distributing these as gifts to self-help groups in 25 villages.

By establishing perennial kitchen gardens, which includes producing tubers, fruits and leafy vegetables, she has ensured availability of diverse food items for the growers.

With support from the Maharashtra government, in 2017, the farmer created her own water harvesting structures, including the traditional jalkund (farm pond).

She turned hectares of wasteland into productive land and started making money from the vegetables she grew.

Still, despite all her achievements, Rahibai is not one to sit on her laurels.

She said, “I plan to establish over 10,000 kitchen gardens for nutritional security of tribal families and reach 15,000 farmers to train them on conservation of agro biodiversity and underutilised crops.”

Rahibai also heads a self-help group through which several social initiatives, including health camps and supply of solar lamps are organised.