Before the monsoon reaches Odisha’s uplands, seed work begins indoors. In many millet-growing villages, women sit on mud floors with baskets of finger millet panicles stored from the previous harvest. Panicles are opened carefully, grain by grain. Some seeds are set aside because they are bold and mature early. Others are rejected because they are too small, too light, or did not perform well in the last season.
This quiet sorting happens long before sowing begins in the field. Yet it determines what will survive in the next agricultural cycle. These traditional seed selection practices reveal how women continue to make some of the most important decisions about crop diversity, even though their role often remains invisible in formal agriculture. For many families, selecting seeds means drawing on memory, experience and years of observing how crops behave under uncertain rainfall.
Millets were once central to farming in Odisha’s rainfed uplands, especially in tribal and hilly districts where paddy could not always be relied upon. Over the past several decades, however, the spread of rice-centred agricultural policy, input-intensive farming and changing food preferences steadily reduced the area under traditional small grains.
This decline reflected a wider agricultural pattern: while thousands of edible species exist globally, food systems have become dependent on a narrow set of crops. Such dependence has weakened agro-biodiversity and reduced resilience to climate variability.
Under Shree Anna Abhiyan, implemented by the Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment, Odisha, millet cultivation has expanded from around 1.62 lakh or 0.162 million hectares in 2018-19 to nearly 2.64 lakh or 0.264 million hectares in 2023-24.
Across millet fields, women remain central to almost every stage of cultivation. They prepare nurseries, germinate seed, transplant seedlings, weed repeatedly through the season, prepare organic formulations, harvest earheads, thresh grain, dry produce and store seed for the next year.
These are the daily operations that determine whether the crop succeeds. Men usually handle summer ploughing and mechanised field preparation, but much of the crop’s continuity depends on women’s work, especially in labour-intensive operations that require close observation and repeated attention.
The physical burden remains significant. Millet fields in uplands often require multiple rounds of manual weeding under intense heat. Post-harvest cleaning and threshing are equally demanding. Yet despite their central role, women often have less access to farm tools, improved technologies and institutional decision-making.
To reduce drudgery, small threshers developed by Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology have been introduced under Shree Anna Abhiyan, alongside community-level cleaning and grading units. Community-managed seed centres and custom hiring centres led by women have also improved access to seed and farm equipment.
Even so, the most valuable contribution women make often begins before any tool is used.
When farmers compare millet varieties, women and men often judge them differently. Between 2018 and 2024, Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN), the programme secretariat of Shree Anna Abhiyan conducted 253 millet (ragi and non-ragi) participatory varietal trials (PVTs) across 30 districts of Odisha to test millet varieties under local conditions. Women participated in larger numbers than men in these field selections.
Men largely focused on visible production traits: finger length, tillering, panicle size and yield potential. Women assessed a wider set of characteristics. They preferred plants that remained upright during strong wind, matured early under uncertain rainfall, produced bold grains easier to process, and adapted well to local soils. Taste also influenced selection. Some varieties were preferred because the cooked gruel developed a slightly sour taste considered desirable at home.
These choices reflect the fact that women engage with the crop beyond the field — through storage, cooking and feeding the household. A seed is therefore judged not only for production, but for how well it survives the full cycle of cultivation and consumption.
This wider seed knowledge matters more as weather becomes less predictable. Traditional millet landraces continue to survive in Odisha because many tolerate low soil moisture, high temperature, irregular rainfall and poor nutrient conditions better than more input-dependent alternatives.
Several varieties perform steadily even with limited fertiliser and delayed rainfall. Women often recognise these strengths through repeated seasonal observation long before they are formally documented.
A seed that survives erratic rain, stores safely and cooks well often earns trust over one that promises higher yield only under ideal conditions. That is why many women farmers remain cautious about abandoning traditional seed entirely. Their choices are shaped by long-term reliability.
Although women perform much of the farm operational work, their authority in formal agricultural decision-making remains limited. Market transactions, procurement systems and institutional interactions are still often controlled by men, even where women lead cultivation, harvesting and processing tasks.
This creates a gap between who grows the crop and who is recognised as making agricultural decisions. Yet on the ground, varietal continuity often depends on women’s judgement. Where households make seed choices jointly, varieties selected tend to balance yield, resilience and food quality more effectively.
As International Seed Day focuses attention on seed sovereignty globally, Odisha’s millet revival initiative proves that conservation rarely begins in laboratories or policy documents alone. It often begins at home, after harvest, when one panicle of finger millet is kept aside because it survived drought, another because it tasted better, and another because elders trusted it for years. These small acts carry ecological memory across generations.
In each selected grain lies a farming future shaped by biodiversity, nutrition and resilience. And in that future, women remain among its most experienced custodians.
Susanta Sekhar Choudhury works as a Programme Manager - Seed for Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN), Bhubaneswar.
Pritesh Sundar Roy works as a Programme Officer - Seed for Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN), Bhubaneswar.
Pulak Ranjan Nayak works as a Senior Programme Officer - Seed for Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN), Bhubaneswar.
Bikash Das works as a Programme Officer - Seed for Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN), Bhubaneswar.
Suresh Kumar Sahoo works as a Programme Officer - Seed for Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN), Bhubaneswar.
Views expressed are the authors’ own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth