Paper short abstract:

Indigenous communities are known to utilize complex ecological relationships to establish rich agro-ecosystems wherein local crop diversity serves a multi-functional role. Community values attached to these crops are integral to arriving at comprehensive evaluations and promotion strategies.

Paper long abstract:

In less than half a century since the widespread implementation of ‘Green revolution’ production practices regarding rice, the Indian agricultural sector is experiencing a major sustainability crisis with diminishing returns, widespread environmental pollution and emergent nutritional gaps. In contrast Pokkali (a scarce grown indigenous rice variety) farmers have grown rice sustainably in ecologically fragile intertidal wetlands for generations. This landrace has garnered renewed interest as a climate resilient future smart food owing to its salinity-tolerance and morphological traits that allow it to withstand periods of water logging; warranting top-down policy interventions to establish a value chain and incentivise farmers to increase production with limited success. Pokkali production is placed within a larger traditional agricultural practice that integrates paddy with trees and aquaculture wherein it serves as a multi-functional component of a larger system that provides a range of services to the local community (as well as providing food and nutritional security). The plants selected to constitute this system also plays a facilitating role i.e. the rice breed is part of a mixture of beneficial biodiversity that functions as an integrated whole that provides to meet the community’s needs. In this context the adverse impact on community held traditional pokkali seed collections and production output resulting from disruptions to the larger human-managed environment it is harboured within because of policy intervention and policy-induced changes in production practices are explored.