Month-long biodiversity festival begins in Telangana's Sangareddy district

HYDERABAD: A month-long biodiversity festival which focuses on educating people about the importance of seeds, organic farming and benefits of millets, began on Friday in Sangareddy district. The festival will travel to 23 villages over the course of one month.
The 21st Mobile Biodiversity Festival of Deccan Development Society, kick started from Shamshallapur village, Nyalkal Mandal, Sangareddy.The festival’ with a new hope and path amidst this pandemic situation, will conclude on February 15 at Machnoor.
Jayasri Cherukuri, co-director, DDS, said that the women of the region were celebrating the festival by engaging in organic farming. “The women driving this are the real catalysts and examples of redefining agriculture and climate change. The festival marks the value and importance of seeds,” he said.
Satheesh, director, DDS, said that over the years the organisation had conveyed to communities that millets were independent of climate change. “Whatever back then was not welcomed, today it is being looked out and is demanded for, the reason being the Millet Movement,” he said recalling the initiative DDS had taken 20 years ago.
“Amidst the pandemic, the movement continued by sangham women who did not lose hope and faith in their beliefs and practices and took it forward. The fact that all of us pulled off millet farming even when the mobility was halted shows the value it is giving and the continuous positive impact on climate change,” he said.
Chinna Narsamma, media coordinator, Community Media Trust of DDS, announced the upcoming biannual event of 3rd Jaichandiram Memorial Film Festival to be held on February 13th and invited the rural film makers to send their film entries. She said the festival was an enabling platform for the rural and community video practitioners from across the country.
During the festival, a farmer, Gurlakshmi, of Shamshalllapur said she grows 15-20 varieties of millets. “All of them were grown with the help of organic and traditional methods and no pesticides were used in my farm. We believe that organic farming leads to healthy life and the chemical induced farming results in diseases,” she said.
Glory Swaroopa, director general, National Institute for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (NI-MSME), while lauding the DDS women said the festival seemed like a ‘revolution’ to her brought about by women committed to traditional farming practices. Emphasizing on the importance of biodiverse agriculture which these women were preserving and also their people’s document Zaheerabad Agenda, need to be an ideal document at the nation level. She suggested that there is a need to be a micro enterprise, so that these products would go to a larger audience. To formalize this, she said she would extend all her support from NIMSME towards DDS sangham women.