Prāṇāyu is creating a seed bank in India. The seeds are selectively collected based on their high nutrition density, and significant therapeutic potential. These seeds then are distributed to ādivāsīs, small farmers, and to the most vulnerable communities suffering from injustice and malnutrition.
“Beeja” is the Sankrit word for a seed. The Jīvabīva project aims to protect, share, and spread such species of plants that carry nutraceutical properties so that the food prepared from them and consumed will be the very medicine our body needs, thus eliminating the needs of any external medicines.
Mission
The project’s mission is to maintain a free seed bank exchange for Ādivāsīs and other farmers to promote agro-diversity and phyto-therapeutic diversity specifically for human and environmental health. A specification was developed to help choose the best seeds with the help of a Ayurvedic physician and members of the ādivāsī community to whom we are immensely grateful. We diligently procure and then share the seeds that meet the following requirements:
- High in macro and micro-nutritional values
- Contain nutritherapeutic and pharmacologic properties
- Endangered types that help increase agrodiveristy
- Strains of variety used in ancient traditional cultures (svadeshi and paramparik seeds)
- Provide a spectrum of varieties able to constitute the entirety of a healthy diet
- High in qualitative and quantitative agricultural yield
- Contain fertilizing capacity that captures and restores the mineral elements to enrich soil and bring favourable micro biodata
- Capability of decontamination and purification of soil and water resources
- Efficiency in recapture of carbon dioxide from atmosphere
- Adaptability and resilience to climate change
- Responsive in natural disaster
- Agroforestry compatible (combining trees and crops to preserve wild ecosystems)
- Wild agriculture friendly
- Compatible with local biotope and ecosystem of fauna and flora
- Low-water resilience
