Aheli Moitra
In a well-to-do village situated towards the eastern part of Nagaland, a study was once conducted by a team of women. The study attempted to understand what kind of changes had taken place in the food systems of the people over the past couple of generations. The findings worried everyone.
Over the years, many indigenous seeds are being replaced by newer ones. Millet and beer now has rice and dal as replacement. Along with this, the songs, dances and weaves—the language of the people—that accompanied the cultivation of indigenous crops, like millets, sesame or red corn, is also slowly diminishing.
Non indigenous seeds and methods of farming are being promoted to a large section of the rural populace. With men holding the reins of decision making entirely, more lands are being converted to use for cash crops, reducing the generational longevity of the soil. It has led to a change in the food plate, more dependency on the market and lesser degree of control over the land.
The story of the eastern village, however, can be found repeated in every district in Nagaland. A number of indigenous fruits, rice variants and chillies have disappeared from Mokokchung, for instance. Most of these disappearances are going undocumented and unnoticed.
As climate changes, the Naga lands and fields will face new situations of weather, water, flora, fauna and soil conditions. While globalised variants may provide for larger and easier produce alongside a thriving chemical economy, they are also likely to bring diseases and other threats in crops unknown to the area till date. Indigenous seed varieties stand sturdier in the landscape when faced with climate change. Their knowledge has been held by communities here for centuries—how to change their planting patterns with other corresponding changes is wisdom already held by communities, which, in turn, empowers them.
Some women from Chizami village in Phek district have been working on strengthening these indigenous systems of land use through preservation and investment in indigenous seeds. Working under the banner of the North East Network, they have helped enhance traditional seed banks that Naga women used to maintain. The concept of the seed banks have been enlarged to help women share and broaden the horoscope of indigenous knowledge—women store seeds in each of their banks in an organised manner and share it with women of neighbouring areas, experimenting and passing on the knowledge thereby growing their investment in a sustainable future.
In turn, it has also helped renew songs surrounding millets and the diversity in cultural practices it allows for. Traditional fruits and delicious methods of food preparations have also returned with them. Alongside millets, you can grow almost 40-60 varieties of vegetables and crops that provide for a nutritious and empowered food security.
Through empowering themselves, women are opting more for cooperation and peace as opposed to the egotist politics of war that has defined the region through the lens of cash crop politics. On the ground, women are not just preserving sovereignty through the preservation and practice of indigenous knowledge, they are also building inter-regional people’s solidarities with other farmers of the sub-continent as was on display at the Biodiversity Festival held in Chizami on March 9.
The government should take part in such activities to learn from the keepers of the soil and seeds.
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