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Koraput, Odisha: “The sky now lies to us,” Farmer Tikima Pangi (56) from Semilguda village in Odisha’s Koraput district told 101Reporters. “My mother used to say that by looking at the clouds in May, we knew exactly when to start sowing. But now, the sky lies to us. The rains come whenever they want, and our seeds no longer know what season it is.”
Pangi grows Dangarbaji, a traditional paddy variety, on her one-acre farm. Once common across Koraput, Dangarbaji is a medium-duration rice that matures in about 110 to 115 days.
It has slender, light green stalks, withstands mild droughts, and thrives in poor soils without fertilisers. Older farmers recall that it was once preferred on upland slopes for its soft, fragrant rice that stayed fresh for days.
Pangi is among the few farmers in Koraput who still grow the crops their grandmothers once did.
But across Odisha’s tribal belt, ancient seed varieties are vanishing as erratic rainfall upends growing cycles, taking with them not just food security, but also cultural identity and collective memory.
Over the past six to seven years, Koraput has lost more than eight varieties of mandia (finger millet) and over 30 traditional crops.
The varieties now disappearing were perfectly matched to Koraput's old monsoon patterns. Earlier, traditional farming calendars worked because the rain could be trusted. Historical records show that Koraput receives about 1,950 mm of rainfall a year, spread evenly over roughly 90 days between June and late October.
Farmers followed the sky as faithfully as a clock. May showers signalled it was time to sow early mandia (finger millet). The first June rains meant rice planting. By August, the uplands turned green with crops ready to flower, and by October, the harvest began.
Mandia varieties like Kuya Gandhia took just 60 days to mature. Farmers planted them in May after the first rains and harvested them by July, ensuring food before the main rice season. Upland rice varieties such as Dangar Dhan and Paradhan took 100-110 days, timed to the steady June-to-October monsoon, explained Pangi.
That rhythm is now broken. Rainfall data from 2021 to 2025 shows wild swings that have made farming unpredictable. In 2021, June brought just 216.8 mm of rain while July saw 523 mm: a sudden imbalance that forced farmers to delay planting and miss the optimal window.
In 2024, June received 263.9 mm, July 238.9 mm, and August 318 mm. But in October, normally the harvest month, Koraput was deluged with 740.9 mm of rain, nearly five times its usual average of 165–305 mm. Floods swept through the fields just as the crops were ready to be cut.
“By late August or early September, our mandia plants flower and form grain,” said Parima Muduli, 39, a Paraja tribal farmer from Kurmakote village. “By October, they should be ready to harvest. But now October brings floods. The grain rots in the field. Fungus takes everything.”
Extreme rainfall events have also become more concentrated. On July 2, 2025, Koraput recorded 1,062.5 mm of rainfall in a single day, with Jeypore block receiving 141.8 mm and Kotpad 152 mm. Such downpours, once rare, now routinely exceed entire monthly averages within hours.
According to Jyotirmayee Lenka, a scientist at the Indian Institute of Soil and Water Conservation in Koraput, the district has seen both more frequent and more intense rainfall events between 2018 and 2025. “These changes,” she said, “are fundamentally altering upland farming conditions.”
The increasing unpredictability of rainfall has made it difficult for farmers to rely on traditional seed varieties, pushing many to abandon traditional crop cycles.