In arid fields, bumper crop

It’s been seven years since 35-year-old Sitaram Majhi had such a bumper harvest — or any harvest at all. “Instead, we would migrate to Hyderabad to work in brick kilns.” As he talks, Majhi looks wonderingly around his 3-acre farm in Kharamal village in arid, drought-prone northwestern Orissa. “That not only helps them in lean seasons, it also increases moisture content and soil quality,” says Adikanda Biswal, the organisation’s eco-agriculture trainer. “We have gone from working as migrant labourers in brick kilns to being self-reliant once more,” says Madan Bariha of Adibasicolony Pada village, who has adopted on his 2-acre farm an eco-friendly system of rice-growing that uses much less water. “Learning to conserve water at the micro level is the key to drought-proofing,” says water activist Ranjan Panda, convenor of Water Orissa Initiative.