In the early 1980s, India was still reeling from the Bhopal gas tragedy when a young agriculture officer in Palakkad, Kerala, found her compass in a slim book from Japan.
The One-Straw Revolution, Masanobu Fukuoka’s manifesto against chemical farming, was more than a book for Usha Soolapani. It was a turning point.
“It became a guiding light,” she recalls. “It encouraged me to begin farming without chemicals and to root agriculture in philosophy rather than mere production.”
That philosophy would shape her life’s work: conserving India’s folk rice varieties and building a movement that has helped revive paddy traditions across six states.
Today, in Thiruvananthapuram, Usha’s life and work are closely intertwined with her friend and partner Jayakumar. Both are associated with Thanal, a collective that feels less like an organisation and more like a sprawling family.
Within its circle of friends and supporters is a shared commitment to environmental health and justice.
From Palakkad’s wetlands to India’s rice heartlands
For nearly two decades, Usha worked quietly, witnessing the slow unravelling of Kerala’s paddy ecosystem.
Farmers who once earned more than government employees were now struggling with rising cultivation costs and stagnant grain prices.
Rice growing on demonstration plots in the Sunederbans.
Wetlands disappeared under real estate development. Paddy fields changed hands, and with them, centuries of ecological balance began to disappear.
Her campaign against chemical pesticides, particularly Endosulfan, became a decisive turning point in her life.
What is Endosulfan?
Endosulfan had been aerially sprayed on cashew plantations in Kerala’s Kasaragod district between 1978 and 2000. Communities living near the plantations reported birth defects, disabilities and a range of health problems, eventually making Kasaragod one of India’s most prominent pesticide-contamination cases.
The campaign against Endosulfan grew into a long-running fight for recognition and compensation. The pesticide was eventually banned in Kerala, while the Supreme Court later intervened over the welfare of those affected. In January 2017, the court directed the Kerala government to disburse Rs 500 crore in compensation to more than 5,000 victims.
The issue also gained international significance. In 2011, the Stockholm Convention listed technical Endosulfan and its related isomers under Annex A as a persistent organic pollutant, with specific exemptions and provisions for phasing out its production and use.
For Usha, witnessing the consequences of chemical-intensive agriculture brought home the connection between farming, public health and the environment.
“What I witnessed in Palakkad was no isolated instance,” says Usha, who has since become a leading voice in India’s food sovereignty and agroecology movements.
“The same story echoed across India’s rice heartlands.”
That realisation took Usha and her colleagues at Thanal, one of Kerala’s oldest environmental NGOs, across the country between 2005 and 2018.
They travelled from Tamil Nadu’s lush deltas to Karnataka’s rust-red interiors, West Bengal’s floodplains and the tribal highlands of Chhattisgarh.
Tiny plots used for conservation and propogation of folk rice varieties in the Sundrerbans.
In each place, they sought out farmers who were still safeguarding ancestral seeds, often storing them in clay pots or tucking them away in the rafters of their kitchens.
What they found was more than grain. It was memory.
At seed festivals, the air carried the fragrance of freshly cooked rice while elders shared stories of varieties that had nearly disappeared.
Each gathering became an opportunity to revive that heritage — one seed and one story at a time.
From a campaign to a regional movement
The work was part of a much greater effort.
The Save Our Rice Campaign (SOR) was launched regionally by Pesticide Action Network Asia Pacific (PANAP) in 2003 to counter threats to Asia’s rice heritage, food sovereignty and traditional farming knowledge. In India, Thanal became one of the key organisations associated with the campaign, helping build a grassroots movement around indigenous rice varieties and ecological farming.
Over the years, the campaign grew beyond seed conservation. It brought together farmers, environmental groups and community organisations around questions of food security, control over seeds and the future of farming.
More than two decades on, the wider Save Our Rice network continues to work across Asia, with campaigns and partner organisations spanning countries including India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam.
Usha in a field in Chattisgarh
In India, one of its most visible contributions has been the creation of Rice Diversity Blocks (RDBs) and community seed banks, where traditional varieties can be grown, multiplied and shared rather than simply stored away.
For Usha and her colleagues, the idea was never to preserve rice as a museum piece.
It was to keep it alive in farmers’ fields.
‘Paddy is not just a crop’
“Paddy is not just a crop,” Usha says.
“It is an ecosystem that sustains people, communities and biodiversity. When such ecosystems are converted for infrastructure, the balance is disrupted, and lives and livelihoods are put at risk.”
This belief became the foundation of the Save Our Rice Campaign in India, which brought farmers, seed savers, researchers and communities together to revive traditional rice varieties.
Farmers who once arrived hesitantly at seed fairs now participate as resource persons, sharing their knowledge with others.
Seed savers have become experts. Some have established community seed banks and farmer-producer companies. In WhatsApp groups, farmers exchange notes on pest resistance and cooking qualities. At annual melas, women share recipes that showcase forgotten grains.
In panchayat-level seed banks, jars of red, golden and black rice line the shelves.
Varieties once held by a single farmer
Some of the campaign’s most significant discoveries came from varieties that were on the verge of disappearing.
In some cases, a variety was known to just one or two farmers and was being grown in a tiny corner of a field.
The campaign helped find, document and share these seeds.
In 2008, Kerala enacted the Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act to restrict the conversion and reclamation of paddy fields and wetlands and protect their agricultural and ecological value.
Today, farmers across different regions are growing varieties that were once nearly lost. Among them are:
The scale of the challenge becomes clearer when looking at Kerala’s paddy fields.
The state’s rice-growing area has fallen dramatically from its historical peak. Kerala government data shows that wetland rice cultivation stood at about 1.8 lakh hectares in 2023–24, a sharp decline from the roughly 7.6–8 lakh hectares recorded in the decades after Independence.
Behind that decline are several factors, including rising cultivation costs compared with returns, labour shortages and pressure from real estate development.
In 2008, Kerala enacted the Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act to restrict the conversion and reclamation of paddy fields and wetlands and protect their agricultural and ecological value.
“It brought back the value of paddy ecosystems in the state,” Usha says.
But the pressure to dilute the law and create exceptions for infrastructure projects has continued.
Climate change has added another layer of uncertainty for farmers.
Floods can arrive without warning, while droughts may follow. Pest and disease patterns are also becoming less predictable.
At the same time, the systems meant to support farmers — from local weather monitoring and advisory services to reliable seed systems — remain fragile.
“There is no real effort to build resilience by making farmers partners in the process,” Usha says.
Her professional life reflects this conviction.
In Kerala, she works with organisations rooted in agroecology and consults on strategies for building climate-resilient agriculture. She also contributes to national advocacy as a Steering Committee member of ASHA — the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture, Kisan Swaraj.
For Usha, resilience cannot simply be a policy imposed on farmers. Farmers themselves have to be part of building it.
Six states, one shared approach
The campaign now spans six states, each with its own rice traditions, climate and farming history.
Rather than imposing a single model, SOR works with local partner organisations, allowing each to develop strategies suited to its region.
What connects them is a shared approach to climate resilience, seed sovereignty and nutrition security.
Usha says this was not always the campaign’s focus.
“Climate resilience wasn’t the guiding framework at first. The focus lay on seed sovereignty, reviving rice culture and honouring farmers’ wisdom. Over time, however, the movement has begun to evolve into a climate resilience paradigm.”
Allauddin Ahmed, state coordinator for the campaign in West Bengal, remembers meeting Usha in 2004.
“Thanal invited me to Kumbalangi for the International Year of Rice, where I first met Usha during discussions on the alarming decline of indigenous rice and traditional agricultural heritage,” he recalls.
Over the years, farmers in the Sundarbans have conserved and promoted around 192 folk rice varieties, he says.
Women, seeds and sovereignty
Gender justice is another important part of Usha’s work.
She believes modern agriculture has often reduced women to labourers rather than recognising them as decision-makers.
Women rarely own land or seeds, while market prices are often determined without their participation.
“Interestingly, women play a major role in the transition to organic and natural farming, which can lead to food sovereignty,” she says.
Annual events such as Tamil Nadu’s Nel Thiruvizha, or rice festival, reflect this approach.
These gatherings are not only about agriculture. They are spaces where farmers exchange seeds, share their experiences and celebrate a food heritage that industrial agriculture has often pushed aside.
Bringing the young into the movement
Getting younger generations interested in paddy ecosystem restoration has required new ideas.
Seed festivals and food fairs, fellowships and exposure visits, cultural programmes and social media have all helped take the message beyond traditional activist circles.
In South India, the campaign also reached out to food vloggers, organic retail entrepreneurs, film stars, nutritionists and doctors to spread awareness about traditional rice varieties.
“That was a campaign strategy also,” Usha says with a quiet smile.
In Kerala, the Aluva State Seed Farm describes itself as a museum of traditional rice varieties, while preserving and propagating rare varieties that had been displaced by higher-yielding hybrids.
The idea was simple: if young people could discover these forgotten varieties through food, culture and popular media, they might also become interested in the farmers and ecosystems that preserve them.
When a farmer’s home becomes a rice museum
The revival has also created unusual spaces for preserving this diversity.
In Karnataka’s Mandya district, farmer and seed conservator Syed Ghani Khan turned part of his home in Kirigavalu into the Rice Diversity Centre. It now houses more than 1,300 traditional rice varieties, making it one of India’s largest private paddy collections. His work is also closely associated with the wider farmer-led rice revival movement.
The idea of taking rice conservation beyond fields has appeared elsewhere too.
In West Bengal, a proposed rice museum at the Agricultural Training Centre in Fulia was designed to showcase hundreds of varieties, including traditional and region-specific rice.
In Kerala, the Aluva State Seed Farm describes itself as a museum of traditional rice varieties, while preserving and propagating rare varieties that had been displaced by higher-yielding hybrids.
Assam’s Kaziranga National Orchid and Biodiversity Park has also featured a heritage rice collection.
Together, these spaces reflect a wider shift: traditional rice is being treated not simply as something from the past, but as living agricultural knowledge that still has a place in today’s farms and kitchens.
Seeds, science and community wisdom
At the heart of the Save Our Rice Campaign are Rice Diversity Blocks (RDBs) — community-managed plots where traditional paddy varieties are grown, multiplied and conserved.
Alongside these, the campaign has established seed banks managed by farmers’ groups at the panchayat level.
The idea is straightforward: seeds should remain in the hands of the communities that depend on them, rather than being confined to institutional vaults or corporate catalogues.
Trained as a horticulturist, Usha brought scientific knowledge to a movement rooted in farmers’ traditional wisdom.
Her campaign team organised regional skill-sharing workshops, participated in national consultations on pesticides and agricultural policy, and co-edited the campaign’s anthology, Paddy Through the Years.
Her approach is to see farmers not as beneficiaries of expert knowledge, but as experts themselves.
“Farmers are breeders and innovators,” the campaign’s framework states — a principle Usha advocated long before participatory agriculture became a widely discussed approach in development work.
A spectrum older than history
Traditional rice is far from just white.
It comes in a remarkable range of colours, with each variety carrying its own nutritional profile, history and connection to a particular landscape.
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Black rice, such as Karuppu Kavuni, contains anthocyanins and a range of vitamins and minerals.
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Red varieties, including Mappillai Samba, are known for their iron and zinc content.
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Golden Thanga Samba is known for its delicate aroma and slightly sweet taste.
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And aromatic Jeeraga Samba releases a distinctive fragrance as it cooks.
For generations, farmers developed and preserved these varieties to suit the needs of their communities and environments.
The diversity is not simply about colour or taste. Traditional varieties were selected over generations for traits suited to particular landscapes — from saline conditions and deep water to drought, pests and local culinary traditions.
Today, more than 30,000 farmers across Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and West Bengal maintain Rice Diversity Blocks, conserving more than 1,000 indigenous varieties.
Recognition and resonance
The campaign’s work has also attracted attention from food policy experts and advocates.
Columnist and food policy analyst Devinder Sharma calls Usha’s work “truly pioneering”.
“At a time when the dominant narrative favoured high-yielding hybrid rice — unsustainable and ill-suited to climate resilience — Usha dared to stand apart,” he says.
Seed bank and musuem in a village in the Sunderbans.
He believes the traditional rice varieties she has worked to protect deserve wider recognition, noting that some are now being preserved in global seed vaults.
Looking ahead
For Usha, the future of the Save Our Rice Campaign depends on making rice diversity part of mainstream agricultural policy.
She envisions a system where governments value rice diversity and culture alongside productivity.
A seed-to-plate system, she believes, could improve access to diverse traditional rice varieties for children, pregnant women and vulnerable communities. Community-based production — from seed banks to local food products — could grow alongside multi-cropping and crop rotation.
But perhaps most importantly, she wants young people to see paddy ecosystems not simply as remnants of the past, but as places where meaningful livelihoods can still be built.
That will require financial and institutional support, along with a stronger role for farmers in shaping agricultural policy.
Because for Usha, saving a seed has never been only about saving a crop.
It is about protecting the knowledge, food, livelihoods and ecosystems that have grown around it for generations.
And sometimes, as she discovered while reading a small book from Japan decades ago, one idea — or one seed — can be enough to begin a revolution.
