Vandana Shiva describes ‘Navdanya’ as a movement for biodiversity conservation and organic farming which she started in 1987. Later, when she realized that they needed a farm for demonstration and training, she set up the Navdanya Farm in 1994 in the Doon Valley in the lower elevation Himalayan region of Uttarakhand province. She states that they have conserved and grown 630 varieties of rice, 150 varieties of wheat and hundreds of other species. She also says that they have set up more than 100 community seed banks across India. She also claims to help farmers make a transition from fossil-fuel and chemical-based mono cultures to bio-diverse ecological systems nourished by the sun and the soil.
