While examining the livelihood practices of indigenous communities rooted in the Eastern Himalayan Region comprising Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Northeast India, the editors of this volume inform readers about the symbiotic relationships people nurture with their surrounding food systems. Many authors provide instances of disruption, long vulnerabilities, and loss of traditional food-growing practices. But they also bring a sharp focus on developing new skills and policies towards food autonomy along with the measures and ethics of care that are taken to sustain them. Seed and Food Sovereignty: Eastern Himalayan Experiences, published by North Eastern Social Science Centrescopes out the timely interventions that are being made to ensure food security. They explain how food sovereignty practices translate into ‘local control over agriculture’ and “peoples’ rights to nutritious, ecologically sound and culturally-appropriate food” (p.4), which are in turn connected to the breeding and exchange of locally grown seeds. As one of the interlocutors from Assam mentions – seeds need to be alive – “as a museum that lives” (p.34), or which Karlsson poignantly describes as “alive, yet in a state of waiting” (p.68). Seed Libraries spearheaded by Chizami Women Society of Phek, Nagaland, Mahan Chandra Borah from Jorhat, Assam, Krishi Vigyan Kendra in Gangtok, Sikkim are few of the custodians who in Deka’s words, are “sowing the seeds of a sustainable future” (p.121).

Seed-saving initiatives have become crucial to mitigate the vulnerability of farmers in unpredictable climates (p.98). A large-scale focus on yield has jeopardised the status of heirloom seeds which many of the farmers are trying to rectify. In urban spaces, Rodrigues notes, how living around seeds or growing own food allows a decreased pace of life amidst challenging times such as mental health swings or the pandemic (p.57) in contrast to living amidst a proliferation of food delivery apps. This observation is as valuable as the conversation between a seed scientist and a social scientist (pp.104-110) around commercial value, expenses, and methods to maintain community seed banks in Assam. Many discussants also outline how women as farmers have conserved the genetic purity of seeds while ensuring that some of the old varieties do not die out emphasising their experience in subsistence agriculture.

Many varieties of indigenous crops such as rice, beans and millet (p.97) have become extinct or are endangered, and some like buckwheat and Job’s tears are being revived (p.70). It is noted with concern in valley areas of Bhutan, attics once overflowed with old crops; whereas in the farm-to-market journeys, newer crops fetch more income, and the attics remain empty (p.91). Poor transport infrastructure in the hilly terrains of north Bengal hinders the growth of export commodities (p.135), which otherwise could have boosted the local economy.

The chapters convey locally rooted ideas and ideologies about relations with others, which also find resonance in the interlinkages of human, animal and ecological histories as forms of knowledge as argued by Joy L. K. Pachuau and Willem van Schendel in Entangled Lives: Human-Animal-Plant Histories of the Eastern Himalayan Triangle (Cambridge University Press, 2022). The everyday lives of small things or stories as narrated through short interstate journeys of strawberries by Kikon and Deka are important accounts amidst big possibilities for the region (pp.156-157). While Karlsson focuses on cooperation and interspecies relatedness where “(a)ll flourishing is mutual” (p.70), Barbora notes plants and pests are intrinsically linked (p.78-79). Deka finds indigenous seeds have better adaptability to climate change (p.124).

In the early pages, a more nuanced and recurrent theme is introduced – how food sovereignty itself is a grassroots movement to empower and organise societies by “those who stay back and work on the land’ and seen in ‘their struggles to connect the past and their future” (p.7). This means the editors want the readers to recognise that production, distribution and access to food is also political. The six co-authors have written fourteen short chapters, while the students of the workshop penned the fifteenth on their fieldwork experiences. Equally commendable is the scholars’ efforts in dedicating space (pp.188-197) to the Bangladesh Resource Centre for Indigenous Knowledge (BARCIK). The organisation’s multiple centres are in different agroecological zones through which there are attempts to understand the lifestyle and knowledge structures of different communities because Indigenous knowledge, experience, and local practices are different from one region to another including encouraging storytelling/narratives/folktales in its campaign.

The last chapter titled Indigenous Foodways: The Future of Seeds, Food, and Community in the Eastern Himalayas is a summary of a panel discussion organised in collaboration with the Centre for Ecology, Environment, and Sustainable Development (ESSD) at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Guwahati Campus in 2022. The chapter derives its structure from audience questions on indigenous seeds with resource persons on foodways and farming systems responding to them. It can be surmised that although the seed stories here unfold within a specific geographical context, manmade and environmental threats to food systems have been a mounting, global concern.

The book is written astutely, and simply, posing no challenge to readers to understand the complex seed and food systems of the Eastern Himalayan Region. The challenge for the readers is to recognise the region’s biodiversity that is inching towards small and large climate crises, and local and indigenous peoples’ efforts in stalling and reversing it. The book is a diary of those challenges that are won and yet to be won. An excellent accompanying reading to Seed and Food Sovereignty is Food Journeys: Stories from the Heart (Zubaan Books, 2023) offering a gritty, more personal approach to writing about food cultures in this region.

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Debanjali Biswas (PhD) is a research scholar of social anthropology and theatre, performance and dance studies.