In the hills of southern Rajasthan, where small farms cling to rocky slopes and morning smoke curls above mud houses, a quiet revolution is taking root.
The village is Seranagla, in Anandpuri tehsil of Banswara district. Among its residents is 65-year-old Kankudevi Kama Damor, known across the region as Beej Mata or the "Seed Mother." For years, she has been collecting, conserving and sharing indigenous seeds, safeguarding an agricultural heritage that many feared would disappear forever.
Her work is not merely about farming. It is about memory, culture, nutrition and resilience in a changing climate.
Kankudevi belongs to the Bhil community, whose members have practised rain-fed agriculture in these hills for generations. Looking back on her childhood, she recalls a landscape once covered with dense forests and fields bursting with diversity.
As a young girl, she would walk with her parents and two brothers to fields spread across the hill slopes. They carried simple meals from home: *lapsi*, a porridge made from ragi and kuri, along with boiled vegetables. Such foods, once staples of local diets, have largely vanished from village kitchens today.
What she remembers most vividly, however, is the diversity of crops that sustained her family. Before the monsoon, her father sowed more than thirty varieties belonging to sixteen different crops. Each matured at a different time, ensuring harvests throughout the year. If one crop failed, another survived. Hunger rarely had a chance to enter the household.
At the centre of this system were millets such as ragi, kuri and kangni, crops that flourished even under difficult conditions. For Kankudevi, ragi is more than a crop. It is the food that sustained generations. "We ate it three or four times a day," she says. "The strength to work in the fields comes from it."
Modern nutritional science supports what farming communities have long known. Ragi and other millets are rich in calcium, fibre and minerals. They require relatively little water, grow well in marginal soils and have sustained communities in dry and hilly regions for centuries.
Yet despite these advantages, traditional crops gradually disappeared from local farms. Kankudevi remembers a time when her family cultivated ten varieties of millets and fifteen varieties of pulses. Today, many of those seeds are gone.
"I was worried that we were losing our traditional seeds, which are precious," she says.
The decline did not happen overnight. As joint families gave way to smaller households, labour became scarce and landholdings fragmented. Farmers increasingly adopted high-yielding hybrid seeds that promised quicker returns. Government procurement policies also encouraged the shift. Many traditional varieties fail to meet the standards required at procurement centres, making them difficult to sell through formal markets.
National trends reflect this local reality. According to a World Food Programme policy report, the area under millet cultivation in India declined from about 36.9 million hectares in 1965-66 to roughly 14.7 million hectares in 2016-17, a fall of nearly sixty percent. Apart from ragi, smaller millets receive limited policy support, including minimum support prices. What Kankudevi witnessed in Seranagla is echoed in the country's statistics.
Saving Seeds, Saving Freedom
For Kankudevi, the problem with hybrid seeds extends beyond biodiversity loss. Hybrid seeds are costly and often require expensive fertilisers and pesticides. Over time, she says, soils lose their vitality.
Traditional seeds tell a different story. They require less water, respond well to organic manure and can be stored for long periods. Farmers can save their own seed rather than purchase it every season. Her philosophy is simple: a farmer who must buy seed each year becomes dependent on the market, while one who preserves seed retains control over the farm.
Kankudevi does not describe seed conservation as extraordinary work. In her community, saving seeds has traditionally been the responsibility of women. Protecting seeds therefore felt less like a mission and more like a duty inherited from generations before her.
With this conviction, she joined the Saksham Mahila Samuh formed by the development organisation Vaagdhara. Through the group, she encouraged other women to revive local seed-saving traditions. Vaagdhara provided members with a matka kit, a traditional seed-storage system using earthen pots. Tested over generations, the method helps preserve seeds naturally and for long periods.
Women regularly exchange seeds among themselves, ensuring that if one family loses a variety, another can restore it. Among all farming activities, Kankudevi enjoys sharing seeds the most.
"If I lose what I have, it will be safe with someone else," she says.
Her approach highlights an important principle: a seed bank is not simply a storehouse. Seeds survive only when they circulate, are planted and continue living in farmers' fields. Kankudevi believes conservation is impossible without cultivation. A seed endures only when farmers continue sowing it season after season.
This idea aligns closely with the spirit of India's Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act, 2001, which recognises farmers not merely as consumers of seed but as custodians and innovators. Women like Kankudevi may never use the language of policy documents, but their work embodies its core principles.
Bringing Millets Back
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Seranagla's seed movement is its system of exchange. When farmers seek a traditional variety, Kankudevi and her companions provide seeds free of charge. The only expectation is reciprocity. Farmers who possess another native variety share it in return, while those who have none repay double the quantity after harvest. The system operates on trust rather than transactions.
"It is our traditional tribal practice," Kankudevi says.
Yet Kankudevi also understood that seeds would survive only if farmers saw value in growing them. For years, millets were dismissed as "poor people's food" and attracted low prices in the market. To challenge this perception, she began speaking to villagers about the nutritional, cultural and spiritual significance of traditional grains.
Gradually, attitudes changed. Farmers now recognise that crops such as ragi and bajra are not only healthy but increasingly profitable. According to Kankudevi, farmers recently sold ragi at around ₹3,700 per quintal, compared with approximately ₹2,000 per quintal for maize. Returning to millets is no longer merely an emotional choice. It is becoming an economic one as well.
Official policy is also beginning to recognise the value of millets. For the Kharif Marketing Season 2025-26, the Central Government announced a substantial increase in the minimum support price for ragi, signalling growing recognition of millets as climate-resilient and nutritionally important crops. The challenge, however, remains ensuring that such support reaches small and marginal farmers on the ground.
Government estimates indicate national millet production of around 180 lakh tonnes in 2024-25, with Rajasthan emerging as the leading producer. While Rajasthan's position rests largely on bajra, the revival of ragi in places like Seranagla is significant because it is bringing back a crop that had long remained on the margins. Government initiatives can provide support, but their success ultimately depends on whether they reach communities like Kankudevi's.
More Than a Harvest
For Kankudevi, the journey is about far more than money.
"As a woman, this achievement means more than financial gain," she says. "These traditional crops are my identity."
Her words point to a truth often overlooked in discussions of development. Farming systems are not merely mechanisms of production. They contain songs, rituals, festivals, beliefs, relationships and memories. When a seed disappears, an entire cultural vocabulary disappears with it: knowledge of seasons, traditional recipes, planting rituals and community practices.
When Kankudevi says these crops are her identity, she is speaking not only about food security but also about cultural survival.
Despite the progress, she acknowledges that the task is too large for individuals alone. She credits Vaagdhara's training programmes for strengthening her efforts and helping spread millet cultivation across the region. At the same time, she believes stronger government support is needed to conserve indigenous varieties for future generations. Her appeal is not a complaint but an invitation to partnership.
Toward the end of our conversation, Kankudevi recalls the lesson that shaped her life's work. Her father often told her:
"Seeds are living beings. They are our ancient roots. We need to nurture and protect our traditional seeds because they keep our customs alive."
More than half a century later, his daughter continues that mission.
In an era marked by climate change, erratic rainfall and rising temperatures, her work carries growing significance. Indigenous seeds embody centuries of adaptation to local conditions, resilience that cannot be engineered overnight. The true success of policies and global recognition of millets will not be measured in declarations alone, but in villages like Seranagla, where seeds remain alive because someone continues to save, share and sow them.
When the next monsoon arrives and ragi sways across the hills of Seranagla, it will represent more than a harvest. It will stand as evidence that one woman's determination has helped restore a disappearing legacy. The Seed Mother of Seranagla has shown that seeds survive not because they are stored, but because they are shared. And as long as people continue to sow them, hope too will keep growing.
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*Contact: vikasmeshram04@gmail.com
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