Review of Seed Stories (2024) directed by Chitrangada Choudhury
by Dolly Kikon (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Still from Seed Stories.
Seeds Stories is a powerful documentary that takes us to the foothills of Niyamgiri along the Eastern Ghats in Odisha (India). The film opens with lush green mountains and follows the efforts of barefoot ecologist Dr. Debal Deb and his three member-team in conserving over a thousand endangered heirloom varieties of rice. One of the few remaining biodiversity hotspots in the Indian subcontinent, the film follows the ongoing transformation in farming with the entry of genetically modified cotton seeds and a thriving market selling agrochemicals. What happens when communities turn lush edible landscapes where millet, beans, and corn grow into a monocropping farm to grow cotton? The film allows the viewer to experience an intimate account of seeds and the meaning of food sovereignty. “Who created the seeds? These are the seeds that we have always grown,” an Adivasi farmer reflects as she cares for her farm and displays her collection of seeds.
The first half of Seed Stories tells the story of the Basudha Farm in the district of Rayagada (Odisha). As the most prominent folk gene bank in the world, Debal Deb, ecologist and founder of Basudha Farm, sets the film's theme. One of the last bastions of traditional crop genetic diversity where Adivasi (Indigenous) communities practice agroforestry, we learn that the Eastern Ghats is an ecological niche where crops have been, according to Debal Deb, finetuned to the environmental conditions. In that sense, seeds are descendants of the land, people, and the forest. Referring to the Green Revolution in India as a “seed genocide” where 110,000 rice varieties were reduced to 6,000, the film offers a sharp and poignant story about sustainability in the era of genetically modified crops and toxic herbicides.
Still from Seed Stories.
In the film's second half, Chitrangada centers on Indigenous voices and the arrival of GMO cotton seeds. The camera follows the decisions of Ramdas Kudraka, an Indigenous farmer and a first-time cotton grower. Who gets to decide what Kudraka should grow to make ends meet? Moving away from dominant accounts of Indigenous peoples as custodians of forests and seeds, the film offers a refreshing take on what poor farmers struggling to make ends meet decide to do with their land. Often, the burden of caring for the land, forest, and agroecology rests on the shoulders of Indigenous communities who are marginalized and struggling to make ends meet. Seed Stories masterfully weaves the story of monocropping – cotton farming – and the lure of profit and a good life through a layered account of uncertainty and precarity. It is a profound story of false promises by greedy corporations selling genetically modified seeds and herbicides. I watched with dread and helplessness as Adivasi (Indigenous) farmers set fire to the forest and their traditional cropping farms and cleared the land to plant cotton. Unlike the rich food biodiversity, cotton is a newcomer and a demanding crop with uncertain yields. Chitrangada masterfully connects the global scale of greedy corporations and brings in personal stories of dispossession and violence that subsistence Indigenous farmers face worldwide. We learn about the poverty, racism, and discrimination Adivasi (Indigenous) communities face every day in the Eastern Ghats. We also learn about the vicious cycles of debt, crop failures, and the colonial stereotypes of Adivasi (Indigenous) peoples as idle, ignorant, and stupid, being perpetuated in India.
Along with the names of peoples and places, seeds and their Indigenous names also appear on the screen. The choice to move away from the scientific names of plants and seeds and instead focus on Adivasi names shows how the director chooses to tell the stories of seeds and biodiversity by adopting an Indigenous lens. The camera lingers on the seeds' color, texture, size, and characters. As we learn about the seeds, the sounds and images of birds, ants, insects, and rain remind us that as the land is poisoned, the world in the Eastern Ghats comes together to protest the destruction and loss.
What is exceptional about this film is the director’s decision to avoid romanticizing the connection between Indigenous peoples and their relationship with food and land. By lingering on the structural violence, tensions, and precarity of the Adivasi farmers who choose to grow genetically modified cotton and spray herbicide, poisoning the land and killing all other food crops, the film exposes the nexus of pesticide and herbicide companies and the role of the Indian state to promote genetically modified crops. The film highlights that Glyphosate, a herbicide that is widely sold to Adivasi cotton growers along the Eastern Ghats, is currently at the center of a multi-million dollar lawsuit brought by cancer patients in the USA. In India, this herbicide is banned in the states of Punjab and Kerala and restricted nationwide, but is being sold to farmers in the Niyamgiri region. Refusing to portray the Adivasi (Indigenous) peoples as dancing and singing exotic specimens, Seed Stories does a commendable job of highlighting the tensions and decisions of Indigenous communities. While some decide to turn their lands into cotton farms and adopt monocropping, others continue to embrace a traditional agroecology system as a sign of resistance. "We cannot do its work. We will not eat its money," an Adivasi (Indigenous) farmer asserts.
Poster of Seed Stories.
As an anthropologist who also makes films, I have often wondered what we offer the academy and the world. The images of empty herbicide packets and bottles discarded across the land depressed me. Really. What do anthropologists who make documentary films offer during a time of genocide, war, and planetary crisis? Seed Stories is a brilliant film that answers my question. We reach out to an audience beyond the academy and adopt an Adivasi (Indigenous) epistemology to meditate, advocate, teach, and work on sustainability.
Seed Stories (2024). Documentary Film. 42 min, Odiya, Kui, English
Director & Cinematography: Chitrangada Choudhury; Associate Director: Aniket Aga; Editor: Ajay TG; Sound: Asheesh Pandya; Colourist: Srikanth Kabothu