Rahibai Soma Popere, popularly known as the ‘Seed Mother’, was awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award of the country, by the President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, in November 2021, at the age of 57. She received the Padma Shri Award in the field of agriculture for the year 2020. Out of the 102 Padma Shri awardees, 29 of the awardees were women, including Rahibai. She was recognised for her work that helped to save hundreds of landraces at village level. Landraces are naturally occurring variants of commonly cultivated crops.
About Rahibai and Her Works
Rahibai is a tribal farmer and conservationist who did not have any formal education, but has gained ample knowledge on seeds and biodiversity, working on farms all through her life. She has an extraordinary understanding of crop diversity.
Rahibai was born in the Mahadeo Koli tribal community, in 1964, at Kombhalne village of Ahmednagar district in the state of Maharashtra. She is known for the conservation of indigenous plant varieties which are contrary to the commercially grown hybrid crops. Amidst the threat of climate change, the challenge before scientists and policymakers is to develop varieties that could withstand both abiotic and biotic stresses. Naturally occurring landraces have a large pool of still untapped genetic material, which could provide solutions to the stresses.
Crop improvement, through selection and breeding over several decades, has narrowed the genetic base of most crops. Biodiversity allows a natural mechanism for crops to develop traits to face challenging situations. Since 2008, the Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation (BAIF), Pune, has initiated a community-led programme to preserve landraces. Traditional knowledge of preserving naturally occurring crop landraces is gradually vanishing with the development of scientific agricultural methods.
Rahibai Popere grows 17 different indigenous crops in her farmland and has saved landraces. She has been helping farmers to return to native varieties of crops. The Bhartiya Agro Industries Foundation (BAIF) had visited her farms in 2017 and found that the crops she supported had enough produce to meet the dietary requirements of a family for a whole year.
Rahibai has developed a series of hyacinth beans which is cultivated throughout the tropical region for food. She is an active member of the self-help group Kalsubai Parisar Biyanee Savardhan Samiti (seed conservation committee in the Kalsubai region). She has created her own methods to harvest water on farms. Also, she has turned wastelands into crop producing lands. She has been training farmers and students on ways of selecting seeds, keeping the soil fertile, and managing pests. She is skilled in four-step paddy cultivation. Rahibai has also learned rearing of poultry in her yard with the support of the Maharashtra Institute of Technology Transfer for Rural Areas (MITTRA).
Awards and Honours
Rahibai is one among the three Indians on the BBC list of ‘100 Women 2018’. She is also the recipient of the ‘Best Seed Saver Award’ by Krishi Vidgyan Kendra. The BAIF Development Research Foundation in 2018 conferred the ‘Best Farmer Award’. The Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India, awarded her the ‘Nari Shakti Puraskar’ in 2018. Besides, in January 2015, Rahibai had received appreciation from Prem Mathur, Honorary Research Fellow at Biodiversity International and from Professor R.R. Hanichinal, chairperson of a government body for the protection of plant varieties and farmers’ rights in India.
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