Navdanya is a nonprofit organization based in India that works to protect plant and animal life, promote organic farming, support farmers' rights, and teach people how to save seeds for future use. Vandana Shiva, an environmental activist, scientist, and writer, is one of Navdanya's founders. Navdanya started in 1984 as part of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology (RFSTE), which was created by Vandana Shiva to help guide environmental efforts. The name "Navdanya" means "nine crops," which symbolize India's shared food resources.

Navdanya is part of the Terra Madre slow food movement. It connects seed keepers and organic farmers in 16 Indian states. Over the past 20 years, Navdanya has helped create 54 community seed banks, trained more than 500,000 farmers in sustainable farming and food sovereignty, and built the largest fair trade organic network in India. It also operates a learning center called Bija Vidyapeeth (School of the Seed) in Doon Valley, Uttarakhand, northern India, where people study biodiversity and organic farming.

Navdanya has spoken out against genetic engineering. It describes itself as a movement focused on protecting both biological diversity and cultural traditions, with a strong emphasis on the roles of women in these efforts.

Save a Seed

In the 20th century, farming changed traditional ways of producing food by using inexpensive but non-renewable fuels made from oil and gas, along with chemical products used in agriculture. These methods contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, which are linked to climate change. The use of these new methods, combined with cheap transportation and fuel, helped make food production more efficient and large-scale.

Navdanya's Seeds of Freedom campaign aims to create a place where people can share a variety of naturally occurring crop seeds.

GMO free campaign

Since 1991, they have worked to stop the use of genetically modified (GM) crops and food in India. They have partnered with local groups, non-profit organizations, and government leaders to help the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Biosafety Protocol.

At the WTO Hong Kong Ministerial meeting, Navdanya joined 740 other organizations to share their disagreement with the WTO’s position on genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Biopiracy

RFSTE/Navdanya began a campaign against biopiracy in 1994 with the Neem Campaign. They gathered 100,000 signatures opposing patents on neem and filed a legal challenge against the USDA and WR Grace patent on the fungicidal properties of neem (number 436257 B1) at the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich, Germany.

RFSTE worked with the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) in Germany and Magda Alvoet, a former Green Member of the European Parliament, to challenge the patent. In May 2000, the EPO revoked the neem patent. This decision was confirmed again on March 8, 2005, when the EPO ruled that the patent lacked an "inventive step" and recognized the "prior art" of using neem for its fungicidal properties.

In October 2004, Navdanya achieved another victory by having the European Patent Office in Munich revoke Monsanto’s patent on the Indian wheat variety "Nap Hal." This was the third success in protecting intellectual property rights after the neem and basmati cases. Monsanto had been granted a patent (EP 0445929 B1) on wheat in 2003 under the title "plants." On January 27, 2004, RFSTE, along with Greenpeace and Bharat Krishak Samaj (BKS), submitted a petition to the EPO in Munich, challenging the patent on the Indian wheat variety. The patent was revoked in October 2004.