The Hindu Business Line : Rice against odds

Dekheta village, in Nimapara block of Puri district, literally hugs the Dhanua river — the entire village lives within 100 metres of it. For years the river has either provided a rich harvest to the farmers or flooded and damaged their entire crop. When they tried growing cash crops they discovered it did not provide the food security that paddy does. Then, in 2006 and 2007, the river swelled very late into the monsoon, just when the paddy was flowering. Unplanned co nstructions had choked the natural rainwater drainage systems and the paddy remained under water for almost three weeks.

That year, grownup sons in almost every family left the village in search of work. According to local estimates, 200 men from this village of 100-odd households have migrated over the past few years. Some went to flour mills in Hyderabad, others to soap and oil factories in Kerala and still others to the motor units in Tamil Nadu.

Take the case of Padmabati Parida, 55, whose son Satyanarayan, 30, gave up farming and moved to live permanently with his wife’s family in Bhuan, a neighbouring village, thereby leaving his widowed mother to fend for herself.

With not enough food grains to feed six-member families, women in this village formed self-help groups to generate inter-personal loans. But this too failed. “Prospective grooms demanded gold ornaments, household furniture, Rs 50,000 in cash. With crops failing and my two daughters of marriageable age, I was at my wit’s end,” recalls Golap Parida, 52. She sold some of the ancestral land and cattle, took loans, and managed to get her daughters married. Golap has a unique take on climate change. “When people have to buy grooms, this change in climate is how God punishes us,” she says. Rambhabati Swain, owner of six acres, agrees, “Dharma is fast vanishing, hence the erratic rains, killing heat and warm winters.”

The men offered different reasons, ranging from the loss of green cover to the missile tests at Baliapal, in Balasore district. However, everyone agreed that the climate has changed for the worse.

Last year, ahead of the monsoons, when Dekheta was selected as a field research base for submergence-resistant rice varieties, the men were hesitant to use the untried seed varieties. Bishnupriya Parida, 39, whose husband, Trilochan, 45, is one of the larger landholders with 10 acres and a modest rice mill, says, “Over the past few years, the traditional sowing timetable, the government rain forecast… nothing has worked for us. We women have borne the brunt of crop failure year after year. We have had to put something on the plate for each meal. Our grownup sons left home for work as daily-wage labour despite the fact that we owned land. So I persuaded my husband to try the new seed. After all, what more could we lose?”

The floods came as late as September 18 last year and water remained knee-high for 10 to 14 days. The five bigger landholders who had sowed the two flood-resistant varieties — Swarna Sub 1 and IR.64 Sub-1 — on sections of their land waited with bated breath. So did the Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI) and the Association for Integrated Development, the NGO that interfaces with farmers. As the water receded, the villagers saw that the new paddy crop had not buckled under the flooding while elsewhere the fields lay wasted. However, the muddy silt coating the leaves had to be washed away quickly. After waiting for rains for two days, Trilochan finally pumped water out to clean the crop. In November, he reaped 300 kg of good quality rice from just over half-an-acre, which was nearly twice what he usually got from the regular Swarna seed. A Swarna harvest at best yields two tonnes per hectare. Swarna Sub 1 gives 3.5-4.5 tonnes, says Dr Jafran Keshari Roy, former Joint Director, CRRI.

Bishnupriya and her sister-in-law, Pratima, proudly show the 50 bags (75 kg each) stacked up to the storeroom ceiling — enough to keep their 12-member family going for six months.

After this spectacular development, Lata Parida persuaded her husband, Laxmidhar, to sow Swarna Sub 1 in a section of their one-acre holding. So have the wives of 30 other farmers in Dekheta and 21 farmers in the nearby Garapada village. But that’s not all. Padmabati, a marginal farmer with half-an-acre, has with other women farmers decided to revive their defunct Jadumali Mahila group to start a flood-resistant paddy seed bank; the CRRI is working towards providing special seed storage bags, as these seeds lose their feasibility within six to 12 months if they are exposed to atmospheric moisture.

As word spreads, many like Golap join the queue to buy the seeds now selling at Rs 10 a kg. That is how women in a small Oriya village have helped to break the jinx of bad weather and bad harvests.

Storm in a rice bowl

Orissa has long been held hostage to extreme weather. A State Government document, ‘Status of Agriculture in Orissa’ (July 2008), records that over 48 years — from 1961 to 2008 — this eastern coastal State has had to grapple with floods 21 times, drought 15 times, and five cyclones. Moreover, in 2001 and again in 2006, the traditionally drought-prone hilly districts saw severe floods that left families in 25 out of 30 districts in dire straits.

While the frequency of floods has doubled, their intensity too has spiked. In 2008, Orissa experienced 18 cyclonic depressions in the Bay of Bengal and heavy rain towards the fag end of the monsoon, which severely flooded 19 districts. Monsoons have become patchy and erratic. During the 1980s and 1990s, rainfall was normally around 1,502 mm. During 2001-2004, however, it declined to 1,482 mm; in 2005 it fell further to 1,451 mm.

Too much or too little rain has catastrophic consequences for a population in which 65 per cent derive a livelihood from agriculture, 83 per cent of cultivated hand is held by marginal and small farmers, and 67 per cent of farmland depends on the monsoons as the main source of irrigation. This translates into mass poverty, food insecurity, mass migrations and loss of primary education and healthcare. Of the 61 lakh hectares of cultivated land in Orissa, 44 lakh hectares are under paddy. Of this, 10 lakh hectares are chronically flood-prone, according to the Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI) in Cuttack district. Over the last decade, barring two years (2002 and 2008), the State has seen a rice deficit.

Above water

The CRRI and several agricultural universities, in collaboration with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Manila developed a stress-resistance gene called ‘Sub 1’ (Submergence-1), which can withstand water submergence for 10 to 15 days. Submergence of plants inhibits aerobic respiration and photosynthesis.

“The Sub 1 gene, through an ethylene response, regulates the metabolism and development acclimatisation response,” explains Dr Jafran Keshari Roy, former Joint Director, CRRI. “It was as though the rice plants are able to hold their breath until the water is gone,” explains another scientist.

Derived from a traditionally submergence-resistant rice variety called FR13A, originating from Orissa, Sub 1 gene was ingressed to the high-yielding Swarna variety. The Swarna Sub 1 appears to be the answer for the flood-hit rice farmers of Dekheta and could prove a boon in most Asian countries. The other new submergence-resistant variety called IR.64 Sub-1, too, can be grown for both the Rabi (paddy grown in winter) and Kharif (paddy grown in monsoon) seasons.

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