BHARATI PAWASKAR
The villages in Goa are waking to green revolution with more and more farmers opting for organic methods of cultivating their local varieties of crops. Celebrating the Earth day on April 22 and sending out a message to ‘Save Earth’ and eventually soil, water, air and environment, a group of farmers gathered at Curtorim to announce the successful harvesting of ‘Cuddtari - The Granary of Salcete’ brand of 100 per cent locally grown brown rice. This is an initiative to preserve and conserve the traditional variety of ‘ukdo’ rice from Curtorim, a traditional rice growing village in Goa that produces around 200 tonnes of rice annually on approximately 150 hectare of land.
“We managed to bring 18 farmers together under the Curtorim Biodiversity Management Committee (BMC) to harvest 24 tons of Jyoti variety of brown rice, which we now wish to sell directly to interested consumers at market price of Rs 45 a kilo. If purchased in bulk (say 50 kilos) the price will be Rs 400. We are willing to do home delivery too if the quantity is sizable,” announces chairperson of Curtorim Biodiversity Management Committee and a farmer, Santana Rodrigues, lauding the support of Goa Biodiversity Board, Farmers of Curtorim and Goa Panchayat Raj Institution Union for this initiative.
“The brand ‘Cuddtari’ is 100 per cent locally grown rice by the farmers of Curtorim - a joint initiative of Curtorim BMC and local farmers. We, the Goa State Biodiversity Board supported this initiative under UNEP-GEF-MoEFCC- ABS Project,” states Dr Pradip Sarmokadam, member secretary, Goa State Biodiversity Board which undertakes the study, conservation and preservation of the forest ecosystem, agricultural ecosystem and wetland ecosystem in Goa.
Due to haphazard development, the villages are losing their genetic ecosystem and the biodiversity is getting disturbed and eventually lost. To stop this from happening, it was decided on a national scale to maintain a ‘People’s Biodiversity Register’ in each village in India by registering its village resources, traditional knowledge, medicinal and herbal plants, sacred groves, natural streams, lakes and ponds.
The process of validating village biodiversity was initiated in Goa by Goa State Biodiversity Board in 2016 and Curtorim was the first village to complete People’s Biodiversity Register. “Realising among other things that Curtorim is the granary of Salcete where locals still sow rice in their fields on their own, without hiring labour, we prepared a pilot project and advised them to do brand developing of their rice in order to revive the local variety, brand it and market it themselves, without involving brokers. Those who agreed sowed on 10 per cent of their area,” shares Sarmokadam.
There were reasons why farmers were unwilling to sow organic, brown rice instead of the regular variety - lack of storehouses, absence of marketing infrastructure, compulsion of selling to traders at very low price, total dependence on support price offered by the government, and no guarantee of direct sales in the market. The Board assured the farmers that these worries would be taken care of. “Keeping our promise we helped the farmers to weigh and transport the paddy to Kudal for milling and get the ready grains back to Goa. The rice was packed in bags of 50 kilos and readied for sale. However, the farmers are still anxious whether their stock would be sold out, though the Board is optimistic,” says Sarmokadam.
This was the positive outcome of final stage of people’s Biodiversity Register made by local Biodiversity Management Committee of Curtorim. Goa State Biodiversity Board will be initiating similar biodiversity protective endeavours in village specific sectors like fishing, animal husbandry, watershed, forest, agricultural, medicinal plants, mussel culture/ mariculture, agriculture, conservation of sacred grove or specific species.
(For price inquiries call Michael - 98224 87716 or Arvind - 79 7205 8601)
