Pokkali rice is a saline-tolerant, indigenous rice variety grown in the Alappuzha, Thrissur and Ernakulam districts of Kerala. In Malayalam, Pokkam means height and Aali means plant. This lesser-known rice variety…
Prabhakar B. is a traditional farmer from Nangali village in Karnataka’s Kolar district. Along with P. Srinivas, popularly known as ‘Soil Vasu’, he leases degraded rainfed plots and converts them…
When the super cyclone Amphan made landfall in Bangladesh in May 2020, 55,000 houses were destroyed in the country. Wasim Ali, 45, lived in one of them. The tidal surge…
The sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change substantiates the adverse impact of human-induced climate change on ecosystems and human systems with high confidence. The unprecedented heatwaves…
The summer of 2022 was unkind for the 30-odd farmers of Tandi village in Himachal Pradesh’s cold desert. Over 50% of their crops in the village in Lahaul and Spiti…
The fertile plains in southern Nepal is known as the country’s rice bowl. Thousands of farmers here are currently facing a double whammy of a fertiliser shortage and inadequate monsoon…
As bird populations across the globe steadily decline, the woolly-necked stork is thriving in India, particularly in the northern state of Haryana. According to a recent study, large breeding populations…
Kalpana Sethi, 30, exuberantly shows around her two-acre land, which was once a wasteland but now aids in her children’s education. Situated on a moderate slope, in the Bisoi village…
About a four-hour drive southwest of Bengaluru, nestled in a verdant valley near B.R. Hills in Karnataka, Amrita Bhoomi is an agroecology learning centre that offers farmer-to-farmer training focused on…
In the village of Brah, in South Kashmir’s Anantnag district, Mudasir Ahmad, a 32-year-old farmer is considering giving up farming since he has been incurring losses for many years now.…
Rahul Singh Tomar is a farmer at Raisalpur village in Narmadapuram district of Madhya Pradesh. The village is part of the Narmada valley and famous for the fertile black soil…
What tastes better – his mother's recipe for a chicken gravy dish cooked on a liquid petroleum gas (LPG) cylinder or on an open wood fire? "Of course, the slow-cooked…
A 2020 block-wise groundwater resources assessment by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) found that most of the districts in Punjab had over-exploited the groundwater levels. In some districts, the…
The past few months have been peaceful for Vitthal Reddy, a sugarcane farmer from Karaknalli village of the Bidar district of Karnataka. After a long time, he managed to save…
Hardeep Kaur, 36, and her husband Chamkaur Singh, 39, owned two acres of agricultural land in the Bathinda district of Punjab, a northern Indian state. With a fierce heatwave in…
Over the past seven years, Takali Tamuk, a farmer and agro-entrepreneur from Pasighat in the East Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh, has attended several outreach programmes on oil palm cultivation.…
Janardhan Reddy, a mango farmer with eight acres of land, is worried about the fall in the yield of his crops. The 50-year-old farmer, from the Madithativaripalli village of Nerabilu…
The Spiti Valley of Himachal is a trans-Himalayan desert where people survive on only one farming season. The Spiti river is the lifeline for agricultural communities in this region. But…
Sukhpal Singh Tomar, 53, a resident of Lohari village in Uttarakhand and a teacher by profession, narrates the incident that led to the the loss of his home. “It will…
Drawing attention to the restriction of elephant movement due to development and infrastructure barriers, scientists studying genetic differences between elephant populations in the country have expressed concern over genetic differences…