Hyderabad: The Iconic Mobile Biodiversity Festival of the Deccan Development Society rolled out from Tuesday January 14th and will conclude by February 14, 2020. For the 20th consecutive year, this festival has created a record of being the longest cultural campaign in the voluntary sector of India.
Intended to liberate the concept of biodiversity from the confines of textbooks, academic/scientific circles, universities and colleges, the Biodiversity festival of Deccan Development Society have located biodiversity exactly where it belong in the farms and fields of very small women farmers of rain fed regions and the unlettered, who have consistently lived the concept for generations but have not been recognized for that.
The Mobile festivals of Deccan Development Society is a moving exhibition of the agro biodiversity of hundreds of local seeds mounted on bullock carts set in a caravan and accompanied by folk singers, dancers and thousands of farmers as it travels through the villages and towns of Zaheerebad region of Sangareddy district of Telangana.
The Caravan is set to visit 28 villages of Zaheerabad region dialoguing over hundreds of thousand farmers, reminding them of their rich agriculture tradition of biodiversity, irrigation free and chemical free farming crowned by extraordinary agro biodiversity.
This year will mark a special feather in the history of the festival in the background of the prestigious Equator Award received by the Sangham women of Deccan Development Society for their “Local, Nature Based, Sustainable solutions for Climate Change”. The biodiversity festival will live every element of this concept.
This year festival will be flagged off by the Chief Secretary to the Government of Telangana, Mr. Somesh Kumar, IAS and DR.W.R.Reddy, Director General, NIRD. It will have a galaxy of national and international biodiversity and organic agriculture experts. Leading them will be Ms.Alimata Traore, an African representative of FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) in Rome and also the president of a 5000 strong women farmers organization in Mali, Ms.Fransisca, a food and agriculture scientist and a farmer in Senegal, in West Africa, Ms.Anne Berson from BEDE, a French International NGO devoted to the spread of agro biodiversity and seed sovereignty in Africa, Ms.Seetha Ananthasivan, Director at Bhoomi Network for Sustainable Living & Editor in chief, Bhoomi magazine, Bangalore.
The Opening ceremony of the festival will be an occasion to release Zaheerabad Agenda, a historic document signed by 156 sarpanches across all over political parties and other affiliations.
Endorsing a new agricultural action plan for Zaheerabad region that will be able to contain the climate crisis…. the reason why the Equator prize was accorded to Deccan Development Society last year. This document will be sent to the President of India, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural development of Government of India and Government of Telangana, Chairman of NITI Aayog and Planning Commission of government of Telangana to study and take follow up action on the recommendations of the agenda.
After travelling over 28 villages over a period of 30 days, the Mobile Bio diversity festival will conclude on February 15th at the Pachasaale campus of Deccan Development Society in the village Machunur.
SIASAT NEWS