Cheruvayal Raman, the Padma Shri-winning tribal farmer from Wayanad who preserved indigenous rice varieties, died on October 14 at the age of 74.
Known affectionately as Ramettan, he maintained 50 traditional rice varieties native to Wayanad and 14 collected from elsewhere in Kerala.
Raman’s fields became a living gene bank, where seeds were preserved through repeated cultivation and freely shared with other farmers, especially tribal households.
His death raises urgent questions about how Wayanad’s indigenous rice collection, tribal farming knowledge and community-led biodiversity conservation will be protected after him.
Cheruvayal Raman, the Padma Shri-winning tribal farmer who devoted his life to preserving Wayanad’s indigenous rice varieties, died late on Wednesday afternoon, October 14, after a brief illness. He was 74.
Affectionately known as Ramettan, he leaves behind a remarkable legacy of community-led biodiversity conservation, built through decades of planting, harvesting and freely sharing seeds that might otherwise have disappeared.
In his ancestral mud house at Kammana, near Mananthavady in Kerala’s Wayanad district, sacks of rice seeds hold the memory of a landscape, its people and an agricultural civilisation steadily disappearing. Each sack has a name and a history.
For Raman, seeds were not merely agricultural commodities. They were living links between generations, carrying the knowledge of the soil, rainfall, seasons and communities that had nurtured them.
His achievement was recognised with the Padma Shri in 2023, the Genome Saviour Award instituted by the Union agriculture ministry and Kerala’s Green Award. Yet the true measure of his work lay not in the honours he received, but in the survival of traditional rice varieties that had sustained Wayanad’s communities for centuries.
A responsibility inherited at 17
Raman began safeguarding his community’s agricultural heritage when he was just 17. After the death of his maternal uncle, he assumed responsibility for preserving the traditional seeds entrusted to him.
What began as an inheritance became a lifelong commitment, sustained despite financial hardship, declining health and inadequate institutional support.
Raman belonged to the Kurichya community, a Scheduled Tribe historically known for its knowledge of paddy cultivation across the Malabar region. Rice was once central to Wayanad’s agrarian economy, food culture and social life. The diversity of a household’s granary reflected its agricultural wealth, while cultivation followed the rhythms of the monsoon and knowledge passed down through generations.
Raman transformed his ancestral holding into a refuge for this disappearing heritage. His collection included 50 traditional rice varieties native to Wayanad and another 14 collected from elsewhere in Kerala. He cultivated them in separate plots, harvested the grain, dried the seeds and stored them for the next season.
He also distributed seeds among fellow farmers, particularly tribal households, without charging money.
“Seeds are my children. I keep them alive for the next generation,” he said.
In the dim light of his ancestral house, sacks bearing names such as Chennelu, Thondi, Chembakam, Veliyan, Gandhakasala and Kayama represented an extraordinary diversity of rice adapted to different soils, water regimes and climatic conditions.
Gandhakasala and Kayama are prized for their distinctive fragrances and their association with Malabar’s culinary traditions. Chennelu, a deep-red grain, remains part of the food heritage of tribal communities, while Veliyan is valued for preparations such as kanji, or rice porridge. Njavara, another traditional Kerala variety, has a distinctive place in medicinal and ritual practices.
These varieties represented more than differences in taste. They recorded generations of agricultural experimentation and the relationship between farming communities and their landscape.
A living gene bank in a changing landscape
Wayanad once supported an estimated 160 indigenous rice varieties. Paddy fields covered its valleys, framed by forested hills and nourished by the monsoon. Over time, much of this diversity disappeared as cultivation gave way to coffee, pepper, ginger, arecanut, construction and other land uses.
The transformation was driven partly by economics. Paddy cultivation became increasingly difficult to sustain as input costs rose and returns remained inadequate. For farmers struggling to support their families, commercial crops offered stronger financial incentives, despite their own exposure to fluctuating markets and unpredictable weather.
The consequences extended beyond the loss of farmland. Every abandoned field threatened varieties adapted to particular soils, water conditions or seasons. Traditional knowledge of sowing, harvesting, storage and food preparation also risked disappearing.
Raman resisted this transformation by continuing to cultivate the varieties himself. His fields became a living gene bank, where seeds were preserved through repeated cultivation rather than merely stored for posterity.
He believed that traditional landraces could offer valuable traits for agriculture facing increasingly unpredictable weather. Depending on the variety and growing conditions, these crops may possess characteristics associated with drought tolerance, flood survival, pest resistance and adaptation to low-input farming.
His knowledge came from years of observing plants in the field. He could explain how one variety endured flooding while another survived dry conditions, and how particular grains released distinctive fragrances when cooked.
His work complemented that of agricultural researchers and institutions, including the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation’s Community Agrobiodiversity Centre in Kalpetta and Kerala Agricultural University.
But Raman’s contribution was distinctive. He did not merely document biodiversity. He maintained it through the demanding, repetitive labour of cultivating each variety season after season.
He also questioned chemical-intensive farming. Raman said he stopped using chemical fertilisers in 1978 after noticing the deterioration of soil life. When he returned to natural farming, he recalled, earthworms and other organisms began to reappear.
“Farming must feed the soil, not kill it,” was the lesson he drew from the experience.
His fields connected seeds to soil, harvests to kitchens, and agricultural practices to community memory. That knowledge cannot be preserved entirely through seed banks, catalogues or laboratory records.
The cost of keeping memory alive
Despite national recognition, Raman struggled to make a livelihood from his work. He estimated that maintaining his seed collection cost him around Rs 70,000 annually. His traditional storage practices depended on the cool conditions of his ancestral mud house, rather than the permanent conservation infrastructure he believed was necessary.
“Seeds cannot wait for speeches,” he said, frustrated by the gap between official appreciation and practical assistance.
The irony was painful. A farmer celebrated for conserving agricultural biodiversity sometimes depended on ration rice to feed his family, even as his fields were devoted to preserving varieties he considered indispensable to Wayanad’s future.
Rice cultivation offered limited returns compared with commercial crops such as pepper. For many farming households, abandoning paddy was an economic necessity rather than a rejection of tradition. Raman understood these pressures but insisted that conservation could not depend on the personal sacrifice of a few farmers.
“Farmers are not enemies of the environment,” he said. “Only with farmers can you protect it.”
His argument exposed a larger weakness in agricultural policy. Governments and institutions increasingly recognise the importance of genetic diversity, but the farmers who preserve it bear the costs, labour and risks. Unless conservation becomes economically viable, the pressure to abandon traditional varieties will continue.
Raman’s life demonstrated that protecting indigenous seeds is inseparable from protecting the livelihoods and knowledge systems of the communities that have nurtured them.
Beyond the Padma Shri
Universities invited Raman to speak, Kerala Agricultural University appointed him Professor of Practice, and political leaders, including Rahul Gandhi and then chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, visited his fields.
Yet public recognition did not resolve his central concern: what would happen to the seeds after he was gone?
He worried that his ancestral land could pass to relatives who might not continue the demanding work of traditional rice cultivation. Without secure land, institutional support and a succession plan, the collection he had assembled over decades remained vulnerable.
“Don’t call me a hero,” he said. “Make sure the seeds survive. That is enough.”
His death makes that appeal urgent. The collection must continue to be cultivated, its characteristics documented and its seeds distributed to farmers. A durable conservation programme would require financial support, secure access to land, appropriate storage facilities and collaboration between researchers and local farming communities.
It must also respect the knowledge and rights of the people who maintained these varieties long before biodiversity became a prominent policy concern. Raman’s ancestral house should not become merely a static museum commemorating an exceptional individual.
His work will survive only if the seeds continue to grow in fields, enter kitchens and reach future generations of farmers.
What survives after Raman
Raman’s achievement was not simply that he saved rare rice varieties. He kept alive an alternative understanding of agriculture, in which seeds were inherited responsibilities rather than disposable inputs, soil was a living system, and tribal farmers’ knowledge was recognised as an essential resource.
His death leaves Wayanad poorer. It also leaves a responsibility for the state, agricultural institutions and farming communities. The recognition he received must be translated into sustained support for the collection and the agricultural knowledge associated with it.
In a landscape where paddy fields have steadily surrendered to more lucrative crops, Raman preserved varieties that connected the present to an agricultural past while offering possibilities for an uncertain future. He did so without the security or resources such a responsibility deserved.
The measure of his legacy will be whether his seeds are planted again, whether farmers can afford to grow them, and whether Wayanad’s agricultural heritage remains part of a living landscape.
The man who asked not to be called a hero has left behind a task larger than remembrance.
His seeds must survive.