Dr Debal Deb and the Last Harvest
Working with the Gaia Foundation we were comissioned to make a film on Dr Debal Deb, a scientist and farmer working on the conservation of Indian seed. I travelled out to West Bengal and Odisha with
Dan Saladino from the BBC’s Food Programme to make this 20 minute film and the photography for the We Feed The UK event and a series of talks around his work in India.
Over thirty years, Debal has built a collection of 1,460 varieties of rice, each meticulously monitored in an ever-growing patchwork of diversity. Every one of the varieties saved here holds unique properties.
“We have identified sixty-eight varieties of rice which contain twenty times higher iron than the genetically modified iron fortified rice…Nature’s iron tablets.”
These iron-rich grains grow alongside those that can survive droughts, flooding, and high winds, those that can grow in seawater, as well as those which contain medicinal silver.
Debal emphasises that this work is not as simple as planting seeds and watching them grow. “Cultivation is maintaining the exact genetic genotype of that seed every year on end.”
With the delicacy of this practice in mind, he refers time and again to those who nurtured these varieties for millennia, before genetically modified strains took over the fields.
“This story of farmer science is erased from our memory. Now we are inculcated into believing that this kind of science is only done in laboratories by scientists wearing lab coats.”
Photography
Gaia Foundation Event
Regenerative Conversation | Dr Debal Deb and Dan Saladino on Resilient Rice Varieties