HAMPI: B.A. Vivek Rai, Vice-Chancellor of Kannada University, on Friday offered to extend support to Green Foundation, a Bangalore-based non-government organisation engaged in preserving, protecting and propagating traditional seeds, if a seed bank was opened on the university campus.

Presiding over the inauguration of a two-day seed fair being organised by the university's Department of Folklore Studies and Green Foundation, Dr. Rai said the indigenous system of storage and preservation of local seed varieties had been almost forgotten. The university could take up documentation of seeds and also the steps and methods for their storage and protection.

Dr. Rai expressed concern over the tendency among farmers to opt for high-yielding varieties developed through genetic engineering and to use more chemical fertilizers and pesticides to ensure excess production at the cost of traditional variety seeds and farm techniques.

Hombalamma, a farmwoman who has set up a traditional variety seed bank, inaugurated the fair.

B.M. Kumaraswamy, an environmentalist from Shimoga, explained how the policies of the Union and State Governments were detrimental to indigenous farming techniques and seeds.

Prof. Kumaraswamy, quoting a report, said farmers, who committed suicide between 1993 and 2003, had done so because of the wrong economic policies of the Union Government which were anti-agriculture.

Vanaja Ramprasad, director of the foundation, Moogalli Ganesh, head of the Department of Folklore Studies, and Shankar, Registrar, spoke.

Cheluvaraju proposed a vote of thanks.

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