Photo essay

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Mobile Seed Festival

14 January - 13 February 2007

Medak District, Andhra Pradesh, India

Every year in mid-January India-wide there are celebrations around the harvest of crops, one such festival is the Makar Sankrati. On that day several version of prayers are performed on the field for the crops that start coming in. This day of harvest is considered all the more auspicious when it occurs in a leap year. In the Southern State of Andhra Pradesh, in Medak District’s Pastapur village communities celebrate the diversity of their seeds in a unique month long Mobile Biodiversity Festival.

1. The festival is inaugurated in a gathering of mostly women seed keepers and the surrounding villages. Even the venue of the event is made beautiful by a resplendent decoration of leaves, seeds and flowers.

2. For days the communities prepare over a dozen carts that display the local seed varieties of greens, beans, corn, millets and other “coarse” cereals that the community has grown and sown during the year.

3. The village sanghams (women self-help groups) from the vicinity gather for the inaugural ceremony bringing with them a sampling of their best seed in little earthen pots.

4. A seed exhibition is put out for display even at the venue of the event. It is by the efforts of the women farmer that in these parts many lost varieties have been brought back into life.

5. Each cart carries with it not only seed but a message of diversity.

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