June 2025
Mixed cropping, indigenous seeds and community-led agro ecology hold the key to a more sustainable future. Ananta’s journey is one such example.
In the remote corners of Odisha’s Rayagada District, Kashipur Block, where the lush hills embrace the small Adivasi village of Kodiguda, a silent change is taking shape, rooted in the memory of ancestral wisdom.
For decades, the impact of the Green Revolution pushed indigenous communities away from their resilient, biodiverse agricultural systems towards a narrow dependence on monocropping of rice and other crops. Millets, pulses, and other traditional crops disappeared from their fields and faded away from their memories.
Here, a marginal farmer, named Ananta Majhi, is breathing life back into the land, not with the latest agricultural technology, but with age-old wisdom, reviving cultivation of forgotten seeds and an unwavering determination to reclaim his community’s food sovereignty.
This is not just a story of agriculture; it’s a story of reclaiming identity, restoring balance with nature and ensuring that future generations do not go hungry or forget who they are.
The unseen cost of change
Over the last forty years, India’s agricultural landscape has shifted dramatically. With advent and spread of green revolution technologies, indigenous crops like millets and local paddy varieties were replaced with high-yielding and hybrid varieties of paddy and other cash crops. While some areas benefitted, the impact on Adivasi communities like Ananta’s was disturbing.
In Kodiguda and other surrounding villages, farming was once been a secure, cyclical rhythm of life. But, as commercial interests crept in and modern agricultural practices replaced traditional farming methods, mixed cropping was replaced by monocropping/monocultures. Development programs promoted single crops, particularly rice without regard to nutritious food needs, local conditions and ecological balances. Meanwhile, weather patterns increasingly became erratic with recurring pest attacks, thus, crop failures became common.
“The land doesn’t feel the same anymore,” Ananta reflects. “Agriculture has become expensive. Crop diversity is lost. Forests have thinned. And the old seeds are gone.”
For Ananta, this meant working as a daily wage labourer just to feed his family. His small plot of land, once a diverse and sustainable ecosystem, was no longer the same, adversely affecting his farm incomes. “We borrowed money for everything, from health emergencies to social functions. Inspite of Government supplied rations, we had food scarcity for three to four months in an year,” he says.
Remembering a rich agricultural past
The year 2023 was a turning point for Ananta’s life. It was not from adopting a new technology. It was by reviving old memories ignited with little support from Living Farms.
| Living Farms is a voluntary organisation working on food sovereignty in more than 150 villages of 3 districts of the southern part of Odisha since 2008. Living Farms is an initiative that promotes partnership engagement with communities to cultivate critical consciousness; developing Adivasi peasant’s abilities to address immediate problems, enabling them to respond to the challenges. Living Farms holds in high regard the abilities and wisdom of local communities, particularly women.
Living Farms creates linkages and solidarities among different local grassroots initiatives and diverse stakeholders. This it does by fostering innovative dialogues between academia, researchers, media, and the government, highlighting the need for valuing local and traditional knowledge so as to stimulate ethical action for the community wellbeing and for addressing ecological crisis. |
As he spoke with Living Farms, Ananta began to recall the way his father used to farm on the dangerous – the village’s hilly uplands. “Around 30 years before, we grew four types of finger millet, three of foxtail millet, barnyard millet, proso millet, two types of maize, 2 types of sorghum, pearl millet, pigeon pea, black gram… the list goes on,” he recalls with pride. These crops weren’t just food – they were assurance.
Their staggered sowing and harvest times meant that no season left the family empty-handed. “Even during droughts, my father once sowed little millet in August and we still had a good harvest,” he says. “Our food came from both land and forest, round the year.” But that diversified system has vanished. Only one variety each of finger millet, maize, and foxtail millet remained in Kodiguda. “Now, when the rain fails, all the crops fail,” Ananta says. “The taste of our food is not the same anymore. Now we have no control over our farming system. It has gone from us slowly.”
The turning point: Seeds of revival
The real spark came when Living Farms organised reflection sessions in Kodiguda, between the years 2022 and early 2023. Both elderly farmers and the young ones participated in these events. Around 30 to 40 farmers including women and men participated in these ‘reflection’ sessions. The elderly and experienced farmers shared stories of their traditional agriculture practices, the crop diversity, the seed heritage, the relationship between traditional crop and Adivasi culture etc. These stories were totally new and unheard of as far as younger farmers are concerned. In the 2 hours long village level reflection sessions, elderly farmers recalled their glorious past which the younger farmers sometimes doubt and sometimes accept. The discussions then focussed on modern agriculture practices and their negative effects on Adivasi self-reliant agriculture. After 3 to 4 reflection sessions, not only Ananta but also other young farmers in the village started realising the relevance and potential benefits of their traditional sustainable agricultural practices. These sharing sessions helped young farmers to reflect on the challenges being faced in the current situation and take decisions to revive their traditional farming systems. Ananta was one of them.
It was realised that enabling access to traditional seed varieties is the key. Living Farms helped women members of the Kodiguda to establish a seed bank in the village while organizing training sessions on agro-ecology. Initially 10 women of the village came forward to establish a seed bank in early 2023. They collected few varieties of millets, pulses, oil seeds, sorghum from the neighbouring Gram Panchats, like Sindurghati, Sunger, Godibali, as they were not available in their own villages. They stored them in some earthen pots kept in an individual house. Living farms supported access to few varieties of climate resilient finger millet, little millet, foxtail millet, barnyard millet and few varieties of indigenous paddy and aromatic paddy by collecting them from the neighbouring Block Bissam Cuttack, Muniguda and Chandrapur. Living Farms didn’t just provide seeds. They trained the communities on organic farming, seed conservation, and soil restoration. Two batches of farmer leaders’ training were organised for selected farmer leaders in 2023. Along with these village level training and demonstration programs on preparing organic manure, mixed farming processes and farmer sharing workshops were organised in the 60 villages of the Kashipur Block including Kodiguda
Ananta was one of those who attended the trainings. He was first to step forward. He received seeds of barnyard millet, proso millet, finger millet (Dashara) and 2 varieties of foxtail millet from the seed bank. These varieties were once upon a time considered as staples in his childhood. He borrowed 500 grams to 1 kg of each variety and cultivated in approximately 2 acres of upland. Along with Ananta, 17 more farmers borrowed seeds from the seed bank in the year 2023. “I promised to return the seeds to the bank after harvest and add a 1.5 times more so others can benefit too,” Ananta shares. “It’s like we’re bringing our old system back to life.”
Ananta learnt how to prepare handi khata (organic compost) and liquid manure from locally available materials. He collected cow dung, cow urine, neem leaves, Nirgundi leaves, leaves of legume plants, Arakha leaves from his locality and prepared organic manures. He applied these in his maize field and his newly established nutrition garden with excellent results.
“This manure works better than urea,” he exclaims. “It brought the soil back to life.”
A garden of hope
In the Kharif season, Ananta and his wife created a nutrition garden with 14 varieties of vegetables with indigenous seeds: pumpkin, tomato, amaranth, spinach, okra, brinjal, basil, beans, bitter gourd, ridge gourd, bottle gourd and more. For the first time in years, they had a basket full of fresh, chemical-free vegetables right at home. He applied organic manures in the garden and experienced a good harvest. Though he could not recall the precise quantities of vegetables of each variety harvested, he says “we had more than sufficient quantity of vegetables at home for my five member family including 2 children”. “We have also shared our harvest with our neighbours and relatives. When my children got enough vegetables to eat safe vegetables that I grew myself, I felt true happiness,” says Ananta’s wife, her face lighting up with pride.
A community awakens
Ananta is not alone in this journey. This year (2024), 35 farmers from Kodiguda have joined hands to revive 11–12 traditional crops through mixed farming including cereals, pulses, oilseeds, and tubers. It marks a dramatic departure from the two or three crops they grew earlier. Also, more farmers are keen to join the movement during Kharif 2025.
Most importantly, women, often the custodians of traditional knowledge and traditional seeds, have stepped forward too, leading seed banks, exchanging labour, and reviving age-old systems of mutual support. What once seemed like a dream has become a movement, because of their motivation and leadership.
Cultivating the future
The revival of traditional farming in Kodiguda isn’t just a local success story, it’s a model for communities across India facing the twin threats of climate change and food insecurity. By embracing indigenous crops and agro-ecological practices, Ananta and his fellow farmers are creating a farming system that is climate-resilient, nutritious, and rooted in cultural wisdom.
“I used to think about how we could bring back our food system, but I didn’t know where to begin,” Ananta says. “Now we have started, and we would not stop. We will bring back every seed, every practice that kept us strong.”
“Now the youth are sitting together, discussing our food system, our land, and how to protect the environment,” Ananta shares with hope. “If we start now, they will carry it forward.”
As policymakers and agricultural institutions seek solutions to the growing crises in food and farming, they would do well to listen to voices like Ananta’s clear, grounded and full of wisdom. Mixed cropping, indigenous seeds and community-led agro ecology may hold the key to a more sustainable future.
Bichitra Biswal and Anil Lima Living Farms Ratnakar baug-2, Tankapani Road Bhubaneswar, Odisha-751018 Email: livingfarmsoffice@gmail.com
