As monoculture farming expands across Vidarbha, traditional crops such as millets, pulses and indigenous rice varieties are disappearing from fields.
At a recent workshop, a small number of seed conservers protecting crop varieties that have survived outside formal seed systems and government records convened.
Farmers say weak markets, poor processing facilities and difficult registration systems make seed conservation harder to sustain.
Their work offers a local response to a wider biodiversity crisis, preserving the crop diversity needed for nutrition security and climate resilience.
Before sunrise in eastern Vidarbha, Mandabai Gavadkar unlocks a small room inside her home in Arjuni Morgaon block of Maharashtra’s Gondia district. Cloth pouches hang from bamboo pegs. Some are tied with jute string, others with pieces of old sari fabric. Each pouch contains traditional seeds.
One holds Luchai, a traditional black rice variety that Mandabai has grown since 2012. The seed reached her through generations of exchanges between relatives and farmers. It is not recorded in any government database. It is not recognised by any insurance scheme. Officially, it does not exist.
But in her palm is a genetic inheritance shaped over generations by drought, pests, soil and seasons. It is a biodiversity archive that no laboratory has recreated.
On May 4 and 5, 2026, weeks before the International Day for Biological Diversity 2026, which is recognised on May 22 every year, around 40 seed conservers and farmers gathered at Seminary Hills in Nagpur for the Vidarbha Beej Samvardhan Samvad. The workshop was organised by the Maharashtra State Biodiversity Board’s Maharashtra Gene Bank Project Special Cell and the Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation (BAIF).
There were no ministers, no ribbon-cutting ceremonies and no policy spectacle. Farmers arrived with seeds in paper packets and handwritten notebooks documenting varieties that have survived outside the formal agricultural system. Together, they represented one of India’s lesser-known biodiversity frontlines.
Vidarbha once cultivated a wide range of millets, pulses and indigenous crops adapted to local conditions. Over the past three decades, many of these have been replaced by Bt cotton and soybean.
The warning signs were visible years ago. In 2006, agricultural scientist M S Swaminathan wrote to then Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh after visiting the farmer suicide-hit region. He warned that Bt cotton was too risky for Vidarbha’s rainfed farms and urged the revival of sorghum and pulses. He also suggested that Vidarbha be declared Maharashtra’s organic farming zone.
Much of that advice was not acted on.
At the Nagpur workshop, farmers described the scale of the loss. Yashwant Thakur from Brahmapuri said nearly 65 locally adapted rice varieties had disappeared from his region. Ramesh Sakharkar, a 70-year-old farmer from Amravati district, said Dhamangaon block once cultivated 131 crop varieties. Today, he said, only 21 remain.
“The rest vanished within one lifetime,” Sakharkar said.
From Melghat, Gajanan Kale said tribal farmers were moving away from traditional millets such as kutki, kodo and ragi because these crops receive little procurement support, have unreliable markets and lack local processing facilities. Soybean, by contrast, has a clearer market.
“So soybean becomes the only practical option,” Kale said.
Among those at the gathering was Deepak Barde from Wardha, who has conserved more than 50 traditional varieties of millets, pulses and vegetables. Some of these now survive with only a few farmers.
Barde has also worked to revive traditional sorghum varieties such as Dukri Jwari, once valued for drought tolerance and flavour before it disappeared from commercial seed markets.
Gurunath Bankar from Sakoli maintains 22 indigenous bean varieties and has extensive knowledge of wild edible plants.
Many participants had never met one another before. That pointed to a wider problem: India’s living network of seed conservers often survives through individuals working in isolation, with little institutional support, documentation or recognition.
Principal Chief Conservator of Forests M Srinivas Rao addressed the gathering and said the consequences of the Green Revolution were now visible.
“Soil fertility is declining and monoculture farming has created structural fragility,” he said. “We need to act now.”
India has laws intended to protect traditional crop diversity. The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act allows farmers to register indigenous varieties and claim recognition.
In practice, few small farmers are able to navigate the system. When participants at the workshop were asked how many had successfully registered their traditional varieties under the Act, only a few hands went up.
Mandabai Gavadkar had not registered her Luchai rice. Another farmer, who maintains more than 272 varieties of crops, spices and pulses in a personal seed archive, had not registered all of them either.
For most conservers, the registration process remains distant, bureaucratic and difficult to access.
Biodiversity Management Committees, mandated under India’s Biological Diversity Act, face a similar problem. In many places, participants said, they exist mostly on paper. The People’s Biodiversity Registers they are meant to maintain are rarely linked to agricultural planning or extension systems.
One participant described them as “registers of the forgotten”.
The challenge is legal and also practical.
Anant Bhoyar from Katol has practised organic farming for 25 years and cultivates nearly 40 traditional varieties of paddy, millets, oilseeds and vegetables. His biggest problem is not production, but processing.
There are few affordable facilities nearby to clean, mill or grade small millets. Taking produce to distant towns often wipes out his profit.
“The grain survives,” he said, “but the farmer cannot.”
Sonali Phate of the Bajaj Foundation, which supports seed banks across nearly 1,000 villages in Wardha district, said storage and processing infrastructure remain the missing links.
“The seeds exist. The knowledge exists. Even buyers increasingly exist,” Phate said. “But farmers still cannot cross the post-harvest barrier.”
In Melghat, Sukhram Dhurve’s farmer collective has organic certification and hundreds of members conserving traditional millets. But unreliable electricity makes cold storage difficult.
“The government asked farmers to build a house,” one participant said, “but refused to provide the doors.”
The workshop also showed how easily biodiversity disappears from official records.
Prachi Mahurkar said Maharashtra’s basic land record, the 7/12 extract, usually records only the main commercial crop. A farmer cultivating several traditional varieties may therefore appear unremarkable in government data.
There are no production records for many of these crops. There are no targeted subsidies, insurance products or support systems built around them.
Poonam Pate, Director of the Maharashtra Gene Bank Project, said many seed conservers remain unknown outside their villages despite decades of work.
One example is Mamatabai Bhangre from Akole, who has built a community seed initiative conserving 115 varieties across 54 crops. With support from BAIF, her community seed bank initiative now generates an annual turnover running into lakhs of rupees.
Mamatabai said schools and colleges must be involved if younger generations are to engage with seed conservation.
The theme of the International Day for Biological Diversity 2026, “Acting locally for global impact”, has a clear relevance in Vidarbha.
Agriculture across the world is becoming increasingly uniform. A small number of plant species now provide most of humanity’s calories. As climate shocks intensify, such dependence on a narrow genetic base creates serious risks.
The traditional crops being conserved in Vidarbha — drought-resistant millets, iron-rich grains, indigenous pulses and climate-resilient rice varieties — could be important for the future.
BAIF Vice President Dr Rajashree Joshi said India faces both malnutrition and rising obesity, and that nutrient-dense traditional crops could help address both concerns.
“This is not nostalgia,” Joshi said. “It is nutrition security and climate resilience.”
Sanjay Patil, Chief Thematic Executive on Agrobiodiversity at BAIF, said the organisation’s seed programme currently conserves more than 350 paddy landraces and 125 finger millet varieties. So far, 32 traditional varieties have been formally registered in collaboration with farming communities.
Patil has worked on seed conservation for two decades through an approach focused on conservation, cultivation, consumption, commercialisation, capacity building and collective action.
At the workshop, Aniket Likhar of the RRA Network presented the Community Managed Seed System model of the Working Group on Seed Systems. The model has already helped establish crop diversity blocks across India and document traditional varieties through farmer-led conservation.
The framework exists. Farmers said what is needed now is sustained state support.
Late in the workshop, Ramesh Sakharkar asked a question that stayed with the room. “Who will carry this forward?”
At his age, much of his knowledge exists only in memory: which sorghum survives dry spells, which bean grows best with forest trees, and which rice tolerates shallow soils. When such farmers are lost, the knowledge they carry is often lost with them.
As the gathering ended, the seed conservers packed their pouches and notebooks and returned to their villages across Vidarbha.
Their demands are modest: functioning biodiversity committees, local processing infrastructure, easier seed registration, recognition in agricultural policy and financial support for community seed networks.
What they are protecting is far larger. Inside those cloth pouches are not just seeds, but the biological memory of Indian agriculture.
Aniket Likhar works as regional coordinator for Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN) in Nagpur, Maharashtra. Views expressed are the authors' own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth