It is a self-regenerative system which preserves biodiversity while meeting human needs and needs of farm animals. One of the rice varieties we conserve and grow is basmati, the aromatic rice for which Dehra Dun is famous. We have challenged Grace's patent with the Greens in European Parliament in the European Patent Office. This phenomena of biopiracy through which western corporations are stealing centuries of collective knowledge and innovation carried out by Third World women is now reaching epidemic proportions. For us, theft cannot be the basis of partnership.
Partnership implies equality and mutual respect.
It also requires changes in the U.S. Patent Act which allows rampant piracy of our biodiversity related knowledge. Women farmers have been the seed keepers and seed breeders over millenia. The basmati is just one among 100,000 varieties of rice evolved by Indian farmers. Diversity and perenniality is our culture of the seed. In Central India, which is the Vavilov Centre of rice diversity, at the beginning of the agricultural season, farmers gather at the village deity, offer their rice varieties and then share the seeds.