Climate change is inspiring farmers in Sundarbans to dig into their 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 like 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 Sundarbans.
A report prepared by Jadavpur University and WWF has estimated that out of five million people living in the Sundarbans delta, one million will become climate change refugees by 2050.
Introduction of high-yield varieties of paddy during the Green Revolution had gradually pushed the traditional saline-tolerant varieties to extinction as islanders were lured away by higher yields.
With the help of NGOs, farming communities in various parts are preparing seed banks storing such lost varieties of seeds.
"Many such varieties are already lost and it's difficult to find them now. We are sourcing the seeds from various parts of West Bengal and even outside and preparing a bank," Robin Deb, a villager in Mathurapur block, says.
Officials of the West Bengal Biodiversity Board (WBBB) say while preparing the People's Biodiversity Registrar recently they have come across a number of indigenous varieties of rice which is now being documented.
"We are trying to convince farmers to adopt these varieties for their food security in the long-term. Some traditional varieties are now getting popular there but for others we need to market them properly," WBBB scientist Soumyendra Nath Ghosh points out.
