Koraput: Farmers in the eastern Indian state now look up to a young tribal woman for guidance and Raimati Ghiuria does not let them down.
The woman farmer has set them on a new path for development by conserving 40 traditional landraces (lineages developed by farmers) of rice and 12 of millets.
The resident of Nuaguda village in Koraput district has also trained nearly 340 neighboring women farmers in conserving of local genetic resources.
She has also trained others in the SRI (system of rice intensification) technique and line transplanting method of rice cultivation. This has helped farmers increase their yields manifold.
It all started nine years ago when Raimati became a member of a self-help group (SHG) in her village and participated in capacity-building training and awareness programs at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in Koraput.
Kartik Lenka of the MSSRF told IANS that the training helped the young woman to undertake various micro-enterprises. This helped her SHG become a model for others in the district. The district administration gave the group the Most Progressive SHG award in 2013.
Raimati says her group developed hybrid varieties of paddy and other food grains. “It is also equally important to conserve indigenous species to maintain the natural biodiversity,” she added. She has provided training on value addition to the rice and millet crops to members of 27 other SHGs.
These groups took the micro-enterprise as an alternative livelihood option that helped each family earn addition income of 2,000 rupees to 3,000 rupees, the young woman claimed.
She won the best leadership award from the district administration and Jamsetji Tata National Virtual Academy Fellowship Award in 2014 for being “a leading grassroots academician.”
She recently participated in the ‘Prajatiya Khadyotsav (an agro forest food diversity festival) organized by Tata Steel’s Sukinda Chromite Mine in Jajpur district.
“Even as conserving traditional species is not lucrative against hybrid products, we need to conserve so that these indigenous products do not go extinct,” Lenka pointed out.
B.B. Panda of the Cuttack unit of the Central Rice Research Institute said the indigenous varieties have to be conserved for further research on producing high-yielding varieties.
“We can develop high-yielding varieties through these indigenous varieties. With the unavailability of the varieties, there would be no further improvement,” Panda told IANS.
He said climate change is posing a severe threat to the country’s farming community and there is need to preserve and multiply the traditional seed varieties to improve the adaptation mechanism of farmers.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has accorded the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System status to the traditional agricultural system being practiced in the Koraput region.
This means the tribal people have an indigenous knowledge system for their various agricultural practices that they use to check the viability of seeds before sowing, maintain soil fertility and conserve their landraces.