Cultivating diversity

By Kanchi Kohli
Frontline Volume 20 – Issue 20, September 27 – October 10, 2003

There is an urgent need to accord recognition to the traditional wisdom of farmers who persist with retaining biodiversity in agricultural practices in the face of the aggressive promotion of monoculture systems through incentives and subsidies. [more]

Back to traditional farming

By Parshuram Ray
Humanscape (1), January 2001

The solutions to farmer indebtedness and suicides, rising input costs and declining yields lie not in Krishi Bhawan, the Food Corporation of India’s godowns, Cargill’s grain-ships or Monsanto’s bio-technology labs. The solutions lie with organic farmers like Narayan Reddy and people’s movements like the Beej Bachao Andolan which are retrieving and reviving traditional agricultural practices. [more]

(1) Humanscape, unfortunately ceased publication in 2005.

Linking Environment Protection To People’s Livelihood

By Bharat Dogra
Frontier Vol. 33, No. 15, December 3-9, 2000

Bharat Dogra has been chronicling the various environmental struggles in the Uttarakhand Himalayas for many years. Here, he brings out the largely unheralded heroism of three humble men — Kunwar Prasun, Dhum Singh Negi, and Vijay Jardhari, who for over three decades, have sacrificed selflessly for the welfare and protection of the Himalayas and her peoples.

Recently, they have been engaged in the Save the Seeds Movement to preserve and promote crop diversity and local self-reliance. Meanwhile, with the movement for statehood, they were instrumental in guiding it away from reactionary expressions.
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