Dumeri is a small village in Kalahandi district, with a population of about thirty households most of whom are Kandha and God tribals. The village has about 200 acres of cultivable land. But most of them are up and medium lands. Rice cultivating area is only about 80 acres. All the farmers are small and marginal farmers.
Agni Dei, a mother of three children, lost her husband at the age of 32. Since then she has been struggling hard to rear the children and to sustain herself. Agni Dei has about one acre of medium land and a small plot of 0.12 acre in her backyard for growing vegetables. She has only one bullock. She brings another young and untrained bullock from a nearby village on banka system in which she will keep the bullock for about six months. During this period she trains it and feeds it on behalf of the bullock owner.
In her one acre of land Agni Dei grows the following crops, the approximate harvest of which is mentioned within the brackets: Maize (about 50 to 60 kgs, food for one month), Kudo (60 to 70 kgs), Ragi (about 40 kgs), Kushla (about 24 kgs), Horse gram (40 kgs), Black gram (20 to 24 kgs), Sesam (24 to 28 kgs) and Mustard (40 to 60 kgs)
All the crops are grown only for her family’s consumption excepting Mustard and Sesam which is sold in the market. In the vegetable plot she grows vegetables like spinach, beans, tomato, chilly, brinjal, pumpkin, yam, sweet potato etc. etc. but all these crops are also grown under rain fed condition. Agni Dei herself has kept seeds of five different varieties of beans. Her land is not suitable for growing any rice. So she collects her rice requirement by working as a labourer in others field and takes the wages in kind.
It was startling to know that in this small village even today there are thirty three varieties of rice seeds cultivated, out of which only four are introduced by Government Departments. The list of all the thirty three varieties harvested this year is given in Box 1.
Conclusion
People have their strong reasons for practicing crop diversity. It is not that Government Extension Officers have not reached these villages or the tribals have not got exposure to modern agricultural practices for which the monoculture has not yet penetrated to those areas. It is high time that people who are genuinely interested on the issue of bio-diversity need to spend time with the farmers and tribals in remote villages and understand from them the reason for which they prefer to practice the diversified crop pattern as well as the indigenous seeds. May be from them we shall be able to find the solutions for most of our problems.
Jagadish Pradhan
