Forward Only Looks Like Backwards

via Wikipedia

From the Hindu Business Line:

Climate change is inspiring farmers in the Sundarbans to go back in history to a time when their forefathers grew indigenous varieties of rice using green manure.

Giving the modern high-yield varieties of rice a miss, farmers are going back to the pre-Green Revolution days and opting for traditional seeds which have unique properties such as ability to tolerate salinity and floods.

“The switch over was difficult but slowly we realised that our traditional rice varieties like ‘Dudheswari’ has low input costs and tolerates salinity more easily than the modern ones,” farmer Uttam Maity who lives in one of the islands under Pathar Pratima block says.

Rising sea levels, increasing instances of floods and salinity of water due to various factors including climate change is threatening to convert fertile agricultural land into barren wasteland in the Sundarbans.

 Again, the way forward in world food production starts with a retreat from the blind alley of industrial food production.