Organised by Dhaatri Resource Centre, Hyderabad and Keystone Foundation, Nilgiris
4th-5th April 2017
Adivasi women from six states in India came together to celebrate their traditional systems of farming and food gathering. The Mela was organized during the traditional annual festival of sowing where adivasi women from different hill-top villages brought with them a variety of seeds that have been their source of nutrition and food security. They exchanged seeds, customs and practices around farming, storage and seed management. The event included a cooking session where the large gathering was given a feast of twenty five lip smacking traditional recipes with millets and wild food. This exchange helped in sharing some of the varieties of millets and other grains that are fast becoming extinct.
The women farmers shared some of the critical concerns they are experiencing in the changing context of state interventions and climatic impediments to adivasi farming and land management that have led to significant losses to their local crops, food and nutrition practices and livelihoods. Women exchanged important strategies and perspectives from within their adivasi experience that provide critical markers to the way forward in strengthening food security. Some of these articulated demands and assertive statements were:
Adivasis and specifically adivasi women be acknowledged and recognized as farmers with strong knowledge of land, farming and natural resources
Adivasi women’s practices of farming and engagement with natural resources not be intruded by short sighted agricultural policies that are causing severe stress to their diverse food crops, protection of seeds, self-reliance in food security and the wide knowledge over the interconnections between health, food security and traditional knowledge of land and forests.
That their children’s right to food and nutrition not be destroyed by externally driven food and nutrition programmes but to respect traditional and local food. They expressed their anger at their children’s alienation from traditional food in residential schools, where they no longer have respect or taste for local food traditionally and seasonally consumed. They demanded for ashram and residential schools, anganwadis and primary schools to serve meals cooked with local millets and wild food rather than external and pre-mix foods.
They also demanded for millets and traditional pulses and oilseeds to be made available in the public distribution system in adivasi areas.
The women expressed that state programmes should understand the needs of adivasi women farmers where the excessive physical labour in weeding, guarding crops from birds and other animals, and the burden of pounding and grinding are dissuading them from growing their traditional millets. They wanted to bring to the government’s attention that simple technologies that bring relief to their physical labour can lead to regeneration of traditional food crops and thereby food security.
Many young adivasi women and adolescent girls showed a keen interest in learning new skills that will strengthen their traditional farming and diversify their livelihood and incomes if given vocational training in low cost food processing and value addition based on their traditional crops.
A major concern was the non-implementation of the Forest Rights Act and the non-settlement of community and individual rights in both forest and revenue lands.
Adivasi women from national park areas expressed their anxiety at being alienated from their traditional farming and threatened with displacement which is leading to severe malnutrition and loss of livelihood. Women from these areas were distressed about the inaccessibility to their wild food which had traditionally supplemented their food crops that provided them with nutrition. Yet such a resource rich area of Madhya Pradesh has been converted into the most drought prone regions in the country making infant mortality a very serious problem among adivasi communities.
The women expressed a deep connection with each other’s knowledge and systems of engagement with land. They felt the need for a continued exchange and solidarity to strengthen the voices and dignity of adivasi women farmers.