Journey So Far

Our work to empower the small scale and marginal farmers of India first began in 1994 with a simple effort to distribute indigenous seed varieties in and around the village of Thalli, Tamil Nadu. This soon turned into a growing biodiversity conservation programme which is central to our work ever since.

Side by side with farmers, a lot of research was conducted in the initial years to understand the various characteristics of indigenous seed varieties. Close to a 100 different varieties of minor millets, dry land paddy and oil seeds were tracked down and brought back to the farm at Thalli for further experimentation. Within a period of 3 years, the number of farmers we reached out to had increased from 5 to 105.