Dixita Deka

In this book, we bring together resource persons, students, and researchers working across the region, and, in doing so, we hope to facilitate new ways of learning together. The Eastern Himalayas are commonly characterised as a biodiversity hotspot, and this also applies to agrobiodiversity. In one village, it is not uncommon to find a large number of landraces cultivated over centuries.
Like many ethnographic researchers, our ongoing work on food sovereignty
is grounded in our respective engagement with scholarship,
initiatives, and community-centred dialogues in the Eastern Himalayas. It
is a challenging task to comprehend the rapid transformation both in terms
of scale and operation across the region. This is where conversations with
scholars, farmers, policy makers, activists, and community knowledge
keepers in Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Northeast India encouraged us
to focus on the depth and texture of everyday lives, practices, and activities.
There were seeds and crops we saw in the weekly markets, across
households, and also in the farms. And then, there were seeds and crops we
witnessed in museums, offices, seed banks, family kitchens, and storehouses.
Considered significant and ordinary simultaneously, the seed collectors were
state officials, scientists, farmers, students, and community leaders. The story of seeds for the future were associated with agriculture, crops, and community history. Some of our interlocutors referred to seeds as community heritage, others defined it as the value and container of our future. Prioritising local and regional land use and food production across the Eastern Himalayas, our research asks how and to what extent do traditional food crops and knowledge systems shape present subsistence strategies among upland communities. Across the Eastern Himalayan region, seed initiatives undertaken by Indigenous communities are greeted with interest and enthusiasm. This book spotlights these initiatives and activism.