Sambhaav Trust is building community-contributed seed banks in Rajasthan, starting in Jaisalmer and Dungarpur, with Barmer underway. Our central aim is to ensure local communities can access and sustain diverse native seeds, strengthening resilient local food systems.
Our seed banks currently house around 195 traditional varieties contributed by local communities, spanning cereals, pulses, oilseeds, vegetables, spices, fibre crops, fruits, and trees. The collection is especially rich in staple grains—primarily maize, millets, wheat and rice—alongside a wide range of pulses, oilseeds, and vegetables. Built through collection drives with farmers and partner organisations, these banks facilitate the sharing and multiplication of locally adapted seeds where they are most needed.
The Green Revolution improved food sufficiency but sharply reduced crop diversity, soil health, and nutrition. Today, hybrid crops and chemical farming diminish traditional crops and degrade food quality, creating “food-less food.”
At Sambhaav, we focus on reviving the use of native varieties, or landraces, which are nutritious, climate-resilient, and suitable to the local ecologies. We conduct surveys to collect seeds and document passport data, and encourage farmers to dedicate land to these varieties without chemicals. Seed diversity blocks with select farmers maintain varietal purity and support community seed sharing. The seeds are shared with the farmers pre-sowing, without any monetary exchange, with the understanding that the amount given must be contributed back to the seed-bank.
This documentation is part of our ongoing work to create a community-based seed bank that preserves local crop varieties and landraces from the region. To see more of our documentation on the seed library, click here.
The crops sown during the rabi and kharif seasons of 2025 can be viewed here.
We document traditional knowledge—uses, recipes, storage, processing, and fermentation methods—preserving culinary and cultural practices tied to these crops.
Sambhaav’s seed banks are living resources designed to restore agro-biodiversity and food sovereignty. By promoting native varieties, these banks strengthen nutrition, resilience, and local knowledge for generations to come.
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