Impact of farmers' ownership of seeds on well-being of farmers: study of a village in Odisha

Abstract

After India's green revolution, the use of seed bio-technologies in agriculture, in which the ownership of seeds lies with organised private parties, have been in question. But prior to that, Indian farmers were going by using their harvested corps as seeds in future. As time passed, farmers in front-line got acclimatised to the seed bio-technology. Small and marginal farmers had also to follow the foot-print of the front-line farmers for two reasons: 1) seeing the prosperity of the latter, the former got motivated to follow suit; 2) good harvest with HYVs seeds by front-line farmers, leading to reduced average cost, drove the traditional seed users away from the market on pricing ground. It is pertinent to unfold whether this paradigm shift has affected the well-being of the small farmers in rural Odisha. Thus, this paper highlights the impact of ownership of seeds on small farmers' well-being.