Climate Change and You: The return of a forgotten rice named after Lord Buddha

Climate Change and You is a fortnightly newsletter written by Bibek Bhattacharya and Sayantan Bera. Subscribe to the newsletter to get it directly in your inbox.Dear reader,Recently, while working on a story on farmer-owned companies, I came across an ancient variety of rice. The heirloom rice variety, known as Kala Namak, comes from eastern Uttar Pradesh.

It's also known as Buddha rice: The legend goes that Lord Buddha distributed seeds of this rice to his devotees as a blessing, after attaining Nirvana. It's an aromatic, short-grain variety with a low glycaemic index, making it suitable for people with diabetes. Another positive of this rice is that it contains three-times the protein content of regular varieties (about 17%).India has lost many traditional rice cultivars following the green revolution launched in the mid-1960s, which focused on increasing cereal production by adopting high-yielding varieties that respond well to chemical inputs.

Thankfully, Kala Namak was revived by a retired agriculture scientist, and farmer groups are now actively growing it, lured by higher prices.India is the world's largest producer and exporter of rice. But rice is also a water-guzzling crop. So, in a way, India is virtually exporting its depleting groundwater reserves.

Rice is also a leading contributor to methane emissions—a greenhouse gas more potent than CO2. Farmers growing high-yielding rice varieties also tend to overuse heavily subsidized (and dirt cheap) fertilizers such as urea, which deteriorates soil health and contributes to higher emissions.So, it makes sense to promote and revive heirloom varieties such as Kala Namak, which use fewer chemical inputs and are more nutritious. Consumers also have an outsized role