PRESS RELEASE

NAVDANYA'S SEED BANK IN CHAMPARAN

2007 marks 100 years of Satyagraha-The struggle for truth that Gandhi started in South Africa and continued in India with the Champaran satyagraha against the forced planting of Indigo by the Britishers.

Over the past two decades, Navdanya's ideas and actions to defend life's freedom and diversity have come from Gandhi. Without his legacy it would be impossible to even imagine a response to the totalitarianism built into the project of owning life, owning seeds and owning water.

It is in tune with this ideology that Navdanya runs seed banks in various parts of the Country. The seed reproduces and multiplies. Farmers use seed both as a grain as well as for the next year's crop. Seed is free, both in the ecological sense of reproducing itself, as well as in the economic sense of reproducing the farmer's livelihood. For Navdanya seed in a symbol of freedom in the age of manipulation and monopolisation of life and diversity. The seed is too small. It embodies diversity and the freedom to stay alive and seed is still the common property of small farmers in India.

With the establishment of seed banks in different parts of the country Navdanya aims to protect native seeds because it has become a system of resistance against monocultures and monopoly rights. The shift from uniformity to diversity respects the rights of all species and is sustainable. For us protecting native seeds is more that conservation of raw material for the biotechnology industry. The diverse seeds not pushed to extinction carry with them seeds of other ways of thinking about nature, and other ways of producing our needs.

Navdanya has set up a Seed Bank on the 19th of novemeber 2007, in kohargaddi village in West Champaran, which is close to Gandhi's Ashram in Bhitiharwa, from where he started his first Satyagraha in India in 1917.

In the whole north Bihar flood creates an epidemic situation every year damaging the crops of farmers. Traditional flood resistance rice varieties are vanishing in these zones. Navdanya is trying to conserve these precious seed varieties in our seed bank which has been opened.

Dr.Radha Bhatt of Gandhi peace foundation inaugurated the seed bank. The opening ceremony was attended by Babu Lal Sharma (Gandhi Global Forum), Amaranth bhai (Sarva Seva Sangh), Anand Kumar (Professor JNU) , Mr Ravindar prasad, Vivek Kumar, Ganesh Rai, the coordinators in Bihar and Mr Ajay Kumar and Manu Sankar from the Delhi office of Navdanya and the villagers of Kohargaddi.

Figure 1: Navdanya Seed Bank: Village Kohargaddi, West Champaran

Figure 2: Seed Biodiversity

Figure 3: Ms Radha Bhatt inaugurating the seed bank

Figure 4: Mr Ganesh Rai, coordinator of the seed bank making the welcome speech

Figure 5: Seed diversity for Food Security

For more information, please contact

Navdanya
A-60 Hauz Khas, New Delhi – 110 016

Call us on 2653 2124 / 2696 8077
Email us at: navslow@yahoo.co.in, vshiva@vsnl.com