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Climate change puts Bangladeshi farmers’ reliance on rice varieties to the test

news.mongabay.com · 1,226 words · saved by 1 readers

Fifty-two-year-old Dhonjoy Mondol grows rice on his plot in the district of Sunamganj in northeastern Bangladesh. This year, he harvested 12 metric tons of rice from the 4-hectare (10-acre) plot; a few years previously, the same piece of land would have yielded double that amount. “I have been experiencing pest attacks for the last few […]

Bangladeshi farmers overwhelmingly cultivate rice using the BRRI-28 and BRRI-29 varieties developed by the government, despite the availability of more than 100 alternative varieties, some of them better suited to changing climatic patterns. Yields are declining for these two popular varieties as arable land becomes more saline, dry, or submerged due to extreme weather phenomena. Scientists behind the range of varieties blame the low popularity of the climate-resistant varieties on the failure by government agencies to produce and promote them to farmers. But officials refute this, saying they

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