Seeds: Essence of Life

12,000 years ago, cultivated agriculture began and changed mankind’s path. For the first time, we were no longer a nomadic species but a civilised, stationary one. What agriculture triggered led to a chain of events that establishes mankind as we know today. Needless to say, agriculture is the backbone of most countries today, especially India. An important part of agriculture is the act of seed saving. After every crop is reaped, the seeds are saved to be sown in the next cycle of planting. This creates a circular system of agriculture which is self sufficient and self correcting. The act of seed saving gives us a variation in crop and encourages a sense of community while sharing seeds with the surrounding farmers.

Seed saving and open pollination works on the Darwinian principles of natural selection, selecting the strongest plants that survive by growing immune to factors threatening crop destruction. It also means the seeds selected have the best chances of survival in that particular environment, familiar with its soil and environment.

Images used for representation only borrowed from Adarsh Kishan Yojana

Alarmingly, in the last century itself, 95% of seed varieties have gone extinct due to Industrialisation of seeds. Thousands of plant varieties are discontinued because the industries tend to focus on the more profitable versions of plants. A small set of industries control over 90% of seed supply to the farmers, rendering them helpless. This is particularly acute when famine hits and seeds are unaffordable. This also poses another serious problem. Industrialisation of seeds causes uniformity in seeds produced. Since all of them have same genomes, a single virus/adverse weather could wipe out the entire batch of crops.

This also means that MNC’s start patenting the traditional agricultural practices of India, and make it inaccessible to the farmers with whom the practice started in the first place. The Neem Campaign led to KRRS destroying the Cargill unit in Tumkur is one such instance where the farmers have defended their sovereign agricultural practices and opposed the construction of neem pesticide production plant where 20 tonnes of neem seeds would be crushed everyday to make pesticide and exported to USA to make pesticides. The repercussions of this are that the traditional practice of using neem as a pesticide will be restricted as it will be patented by an MNC and the supply is controlled causing distress to farmers.

The Seed bill of 2019 forces the Indian farmers to give up rights over their own seeds. It makes it illegal to share seeds with the community. It industrialises the whole process completely, giving the sovereignty of seeds to MNC’s. This is causing destruction of biodiversity and open floodgates of GMO seeds which are not renewable, eliminating heirloom seeds completely. This is fostering a complete dependance on MNC’s. Seed security to nation is extremely important and should never be rested in a single hand where it has the possibility of being misused.

Something as fundamental to life as a seed should not be made into private property but should be kept as accessible as possible to encourage spread and conservation of them. Urban gardeners have equal part in this as agricultural spaces keep decreasing and urban spaces keep increasing, they too can start seed saving and continue the tradition.

Seed saving is the only way to move forward. We must conserve our natural variety to ensure a healthy production of plants in coming generations! As an avid gardener and hobbyist cultivator of heirloom plant varieties, this issue is particularly close to my heart.