Seeds of doubt: how the UK’s ongoing trade negotiations could threaten community seed banks in India.

Members of the Pahariya community in Jharkhand prepare seeds for storage. Ajaya Behera/ Transform Trade

Around 86% of India’s farmers are smallholders (with under 2 hectares of land). Given that most Indian smallholder farmers rely on the food they grow as their primary source of income, and their primary source of food, it is vital that they have access to affordable, good quality seeds every season.

This has not always been the case for the indigenous Pahariya tribes of the Santhal Pargana region of Jharkhand, Eastern India. For years, during times of financial hardship, Pahariya farmers would have to sell their seeds to commercial traders, who would later resell the seeds back to the communities at inflated prices.

Many of these traders also act as money lenders and take advantage of the vulnerability of the community to charge exploitative interest rates, forcing them into a vicious debt cycle. This pattern of exploitation has historically caused financial losses for the most disadvantaged households in the area and has weakened the control of the seeds from the people who hold traditional knowledge of agriculture practices, threatening food security. 

While the Pahariya community still continue to use local seeds that they save for the next season, market forces are making inroads steadily into the community, heavily promoting hybrid seeds for cash crops like cowpea.

Increasing dependence on hybrid seed will mean more vulnerability for the tribe given the fragile ecosystem on which they cultivate their crops.

But in recent years, all of this has started to change as Pahariya communities have begun to set up community seed banks. Transform Trade has been working with communities in Jharkhand to create their own solutions to the seed problems they face.

While Transform Trade and partners are providing financing and technical support, the Pahariya communities have led the charge on creating their own, long-term and sustainable solutions, a central pillar of which is the setting up of community owned, community-run seed banks.

Growing mostly maize, millets and pulses, Pahariya women are the custodians of preserving the seeds at a household level. Carefully selected and sorted seeds are stored to be used in the next sowing season.

Seed banks provide an additional source of income for farmers and help to maintain healthy seed supplies for the next sowing season - reducing both the need to sell to traders in times of hardship and the cost of buying seeds for the next season. This enables local farmers to reduce their dependence on buying seeds from traders, whilst helping them to preserve indigenous seeds that are climatically adapted to local conditions.

Transform Trade supports five seed banks across the Santhal Pargana region of Jharkhand, North-East India.  Ajaya Behera/ Transform Trade

Meanwhile, far away from the hills of Santhal Pargana, the UK and Indian Governments have been preparing to resume negotiating a Free Trade Agreement between the two countries. On a visit to India in August, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said “It is hugely important that we deepen and grow our ties.”

This trade deal could have implications for smallholder community seed banks in all corners of the Indian countryside, if the deal contains a commitment for India to sign up to The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants 1991 (UPOV91), under which farmers’ rights to save, store and exchange seeds is significantly hindered.

UPOV91 is designed to benefit the commercial seed industry, by protecting their intellectual property over patented and certified seed varieties. It fails to recognise the vital role that smallholder farmers play in the emergence of new varieties and encourages a system in which the only ‘legitimate’ seeds are ones that have been developed by commercial breeders.

To-date, India has not signed up to UPOV91, but over the years, it has been subject to considerable external pressure to do so, mainly from industrialised economies such as the EU, Japan and South Korea. For instance, in 2019 civil society groups in India discovered that the draft Seed Bill opened the possibility of India aligning its laws with UPOV91. In 2022, it was reported that the EU had been pushing for the inclusion of UPOV91 in free trade negotiations with the country.

When asked recently about whether the UK Government would be pushing for the inclusion of these restrictive seed provisions in the UK-India trade deal, the new Minister for Business and Trade, Douglas Alexander refused to deny it.

Earlier this year, our report showed that 19 UK deals covering 68 countries globally include a requirement for all signatory countries to comply with UPOV91. If the UK Government’s track record is anything to go by, this issue will be on the negotiating table when Indian and UK officials meet this autumn.

This is why we need to tell the Government in no uncertain terms to #StopUPOV in free trade agreements, and support farmer-managed, indigenous seed systems instead. As Namita Paharin, a member of the Pahariya community says, “Seeds are our lifeline; we cannot think of farming if we do not save our seeds”.