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    Livelihood· Recipe

    Protect Seeds with Ash and Neem

    Our ancestors taught us to protect our traditional crop seeds using natural methods, ensuring food for the next year.

    By Ram Kumari, Farmer · Sonbhadra

    Responds to — Seed preservation

    Protect Seeds with Ash and Neem
    For generations, our community has relied on the wisdom of our elders to sustain ourselves. We cultivate traditional crops like sawa, medon, and mijhri, just as our ancestors did, using ploughs and bullocks. These crops, along with pulses like pigeon pea and black gram, are not just food; they are our heritage. Each year, we carefully save the seeds from our harvest for the next planting season. To protect these precious seeds from insects, we use a simple, age-old method: we mix them with ash or powdered dry neem leaves. This natural treatment keeps the seeds safe, ensuring they remain viable until we sow them again in the fields. This practice allows us to maintain our traditional farming and secure our food supply year after year, keeping our bodies healthy and our community strong, just as it did for our ancestors.

    The recipe

    Mix traditional crop seeds with ash or powdered dry neem leaves to preserve them naturally for the next planting season.

    Traditional farmingSeed savingNatural preservationFood securityAncestral wisdomCrop resilience

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    Voice Reports

    By Socratus

    Voice Reports turns spoken civic voices — in any language, from anywhere — into a living, searchable chorus of collective wisdom.

    Speak — Share your voice

    From the Socratus Lab

    • LOKA
    • wystem.ai
    • Voice Reports · you are here

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    Today

    Part of Socratus

    Socratus Collective Wisdom Corporation

    “Midwives for collective wisdom — surfacing the latent capacity within communities to survive and flourish.”
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    🌳

    Earlier, we used to eat mahua from the sarai in the jungle and sustain our lives. No fertilizer was used at all. Our bodies also remained healthy. Everyone used to be strong and robust, and lived for a long time.

    — Ram Kumari

    🫛

    Pigeon pea lentils

    — अमर जीत

    🫛

    Pigeon pea is a pulse crop that does not require irrigation and matures in about a year. We sow it in July and harvest it in April. This is our pulse cultivation.

    — Ram Kumari

    🦆

    If we had received 20000 rupees, we would raise ducks, and take their eggs and sell them in the market. This is how we would run our business and also take care of our home and family.

    — Ram Kumari

    🐔

    We will do poultry farming

    — अमर जीत

    🫛

    If I am given 20000 rupees, I will cultivate chickpeas and peas and use them for selling and eating, which will provide nutrition and also generate income.

    — Ram Kumari

    🌾

    Yes, absolutely, we want to grow paddy by irrigating.

    — Sonmati

    🍄

    If our group had received 20000 rupees, we all would have cultivated mushrooms together and sold them in the market, which would have created our business, strengthened our financial situation, and also provided us with employment.

    — Ram Kumari

    🌾

    Sawa, Medo, Mijhri are our traditional crops, which our ancestors used to cultivate by plowing with bullocks and a plough. They consumed these crops throughout the year and saved seeds in their homes for the next year's sowing. We still practice farming today.

    — Ram Kumari

    🌾

    Here, we cultivate paddy, sawa, medon, and mijhri. We store sawa, medon, and mijhri at home for sowing in the next year. Additionally, among pulses, we have kurthi and baturi, which we also store and sow the following year.

    — Ram Kumari

    🫘

    Here, we preserve pulse seeds like black gram (urad) and pigeon pea (arhar) for planting in the next season. We mix them with ash or powdered dry neem leaves, which prevents insects. Then, in the next year, we sow those same seeds in the field. This is how we preserve them.

    — Ram Kumari

    🐐

    We will do margin rearing and goat rearing.

    — Manjusha Marko

    🌾

    Pigeon pea and barley are crops that require less water. Pigeon pea is sown in the rainy season, the crop is fully ready in April, and harvested in May. Barley is used for making bread and sattu. The barley crop also gets ready with less water. Its bread is very beneficial.

    — Ram Kumari

    🌱

    Want to do farming

    — अमर जीत

    🌾

    We are a tribal community, we farm using ploughs and bullocks, and we sustain our lives. We clear forests and bushes to make fields, and we cultivate sawa, medo, mijhri, and maize, which were grown by our ancestors, and we also preserve their seeds.

    — Ram Kumari

    Save Your Seeds for the Next Season's Harvest

    Save Your Seeds for the Next Season's Harvest

    Save Your Own Seeds, Farm Traditionally

    Save Your Own Seeds, Farm Traditionally

    Save the Seeds That Know the Rain

    Save the Seeds That Know the Rain

    Nurture Traditional Farming and Indigenous Seeds

    Nurture Traditional Farming and Indigenous Seeds