Navdanya International was founded in Italy in 2011 to strengthen Navdanya’s global outreach in its mission to protect Nature, Earth’s biodiversity and people’s rights to seed and food and protect farmers’ rights to save, exchange and evolve seeds, as well as to protect indigenous knowledge and culture. As the challenges and the crises we face today are increasingly intertwined and are becoming deeper as we face an ecological, economic and social collapse, a co-ordinated approach and a scale up of the multiple local responses is imperative.
Navdanya International’s work has combined cutting edge research as well as creative activism to respond to the brutal and undemocratic corporate control threatening our planet, our lives, our wealth, our freedom. By exploring the context of our food systems and its connections with soil, climate resilience, biodiversity, equity and social justice, we aim at creating create change at a systems level.
Navdanya International catalysed the Seed and Food Freedom movement to unite the diversity of groups and organisations saving seeds, resisting the criminalisation of seed saving, and promoting ecological agriculture.
To achieve our goals in support of our mobilization activities, our work entails:
Biodiversity Conservation
Navdanya has set up over 124 community seed banks in 22 states of India in the last 30 years. In 2012 Navdanya International launched the Seed Freedom Movement, which has grown into a very strong and vibrant global community, and continues to expand through the mushrooming of hundreds of local seed groups and networks throughout the world.
Capacity Building
Through workshops and conferences, we work at multiple levels to promote and strengthen seed and agroecology networks, local food economy projects, and promote active participation in resisting unjust laws and the corporate takeover of food and health.
Movement Building
In close collaboration with our partners, we work to strengthen alliances and coalitions among movements, including through mobilization tours, creating convergences and opportunities for a wide and inclusive participation.
Policy Advocacy, Communication and Campaigns
Communication is a major focus in our awareness building efforts through press conferences, dissemination of our articles and videos through our websites, newsletters and social media platforms, including calls to action, aimed at promoting dialogue for change among government, private sector and civil society stakeholders.
Research and Publications
Through our research and publications we aim at building awareness on the interconnectedness of the numerous crises we face, that of climate change, hunger, industrial agriculture and food production, and economic democracy, and the link to our food systems: from seed, to soil, to biodiversity and climate resilience, based on equity and social justice, and importantly, to seed freedom for food sovereignty. We aim to highlight and make clear the stark delineation between, on the one side, the imperative of safeguarding these basic precepts that ensure a vibrant future, and on the other side, dogged corporate determination to take control of our food, health and democracy by undermining and weakening these keystones for economic and ecological democracy.
Our key themes are:
Economic Democracy and Corporate Control