Ever wondered how a regular city dweller's passion for health and sustainability led her to advocate for millets on a national scale?

 

Lahari Bai, from Dindori district, is deeply committed to agriculture, particularly fond of cultivating and preserving traditional farming practices. She passionately encourages diverse types of cultivation and is knowledgeable about the importance of grains. Inspired by her grandmother, Lahari Bai began collecting and preserving various types of grains from the age of 18. She continues to spend her time visiting villages and forests to collect and safeguard different types of grains.

 

Lahari is particularly enthusiastic about preserving the diverse types of small millet seeds she has collected. She stores around 150 varieties in her seed bank and distributes them to local farmers, aiming to promote agricultural biodiversity and revive traditional farming practices. Beyond her immediate surroundings, Lahari's efforts extend to gathering produce from the forest, which she sells in markets to earn a living.

 

 

Lahari Bai has collected various types of small millet seeds that are unfamiliar to many. These include Kodu, Kutki, Sikiya, Silhar, Sava, and Chen, among others. These lesser-known types of small millets are also stored in seed banks under her care. She has gathered around 150 different varieties of these seeds, aiming primarily to retrieve and distribute them among farmers to encourage the revival of traditional farming practices and agricultural biodiversity preservation.

 

Despite her age of just 27 years, Lahari was honored as the chief guest during the Republic Day celebrations in Dimdori on January 26, 2023. Her knowledge about her seed bank was widely discussed during the event. Initially, many people laughed at her as she gathered seeds. But when they saw Lahari producing food from her kitchen, they felt envious. Many journalists interviewed her about her understanding of the world