Vegetable seeds for an indigenous family in India

Traditionally, and until a few decades ago, most Adivasi in the Nilgiris mountains of southern India did not eat much rice, but rather millet, mushrooms, leaves, fruits and roots from the forest, honey and protein-rich bee larvae, fish and small animals. But this was hardly enough to feed them, especially as more and more plants were disappearing, hunting was forbidden to the Adivasi and until a few years ago even collecting forest products was punishable. Many Adivasi went to bed hungry or ate the only meal of the day at night. Today, rice, the main food of India, is also the staple food of the Adivasi. Subsidized rice is very cheap and even among the poor Adivasi, everyone can eat their fill. But rice is by no means the same as rice, as the Adivasi Kumaran, a patient at the Adivasi Hospital in Gudalur, also thought: He asked for his usual rice and was told to wait two days. On the third day, the patient was gone - the nurse ran after him to his village with the medicine. Changing their diet to something new so easily is not typical for the Adivasi. The good deed will break new ground with the Adivasi - because their diet is one-sided today and many are undernourished and malnourished. But even if growing vegetables is largely new for the Adivasi as traditional gatherers - it can also build on traditions: When the well-known Indian environmentalist Madhav Gadgil visited an Adivasi forest settlement in the Nilgiris Mountains a few years ago, he discovered a small garden with an astonishing variety of wild plants and tubers and was very impressed. He asked the Adivasi why he had planted all the plants. "Why? Because I need them," he replied.