Growing fox nuts — also known as lotus seeds or makhana — on low-lying wastelands could be a sustainable way of helping farmers in Bihar offset conventional crop loss. Extreme weather has been taking an increasing toll on rice and corn yields.
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00:00Lakhan Kisku proceeds cautiously.
00:05Once false step and he could get badly hurt.
00:08The water is full of prickly water lilies.
00:10He wants to get at their seeds at the bottom of the pond.
00:19If the water is clean, there's no issue.
00:22But in murky water, it hurts the body.
00:25I get blisters and wounds.
00:30The seeds are known as makhana, or fox nuts.
00:33Here in Pune, a village in northern Bihar, people like to eat the seeds fried or puffed.
00:38When the dried seeds are heated, they burst like popcorn.
00:43Lakhan used to grow chickpeas and makhana, was just a sideline.
00:47Five years ago, he switched to cultivating the prickly water lilies.
00:50He can earn up to 1000 rupees a day from the seeds.
00:54That's about 11 euros.
01:03It's good because I'm able to maintain my household, send my children to school.
01:10And I'm able to run my household well now.
01:17Thousands of farmers in Bihar now grow makhana.
01:20People here used to make a living from corn, cereals and rice.
01:23But with increased flooding, linked to climate change, yields have been hard hit.
01:29In this year alone, 240,000 hectares of rice fields were destroyed.
01:35Dr. Iyer Singh works at the research centre for makhana in Darbhanga in Bihar.
01:43He says water plants like prickly water lilies are more climate resilient and can better
01:48cope with the new conditions.
01:50One, the water doesn't change temperature rapidly.
02:01Its latent heat capacity is higher.
02:03That means that water is more resilient than other liquids.
02:09And the other is that if water bodies are filled with water, they have more organic
02:13matter.
02:17And if the amount of organic matter is higher, the land resiliency also is higher and it
02:22can retain a higher carbon content.
02:29Fox nuts are also grown in countries like Korea, Russia and Japan.
02:33But the Indian state of Bihar accounts for some 85% of global production.
02:38And demand is growing because makhana is currently hyped as a superfood by health-conscious city
02:43dwellers.
02:45Startups like Shambhu Prasad's are benefiting.
02:49It's very lightweight but it makes you feel that you don't have to eat too much.
02:55You know, just munch on some makhana and you'll feel filled right.
03:00Things are going well for the starter.
03:02A truckload leaves the company headquarters each day.
03:05And with order books full, the volume is due to rise significantly.
03:09One kilo now fetches eight times what it did ten years ago.
03:13For farmers, it has become more lucrative to cultivate the prickly water lilies in fields
03:18rather than harvesting them from ponds.
03:20The amount of land devoted to the crop has almost doubled in the last decade.
03:26Anil Kumar from Purnia's agricultural college explains the advantages.
03:34In the pond system, if the water is four feet deep, the plant's vegetative energy will be
03:38needed for it to grow up four feet at least.
03:41And that exhausts its energy.
03:43But in the field system, this is preserved.
03:45When its vegetative energy is converted into reproductive energy, that increases the number
03:50of flowers and the amount of fruit.
03:54In Bihar, there are more than 20,000 wetlands, so there is still room for expansion.
04:00Experts say that many are suited for the cultivation of makhana, and it could help offset the loss
04:05of rice fields.
04:11We need a central government project for the makhana mission to holistically develop the
04:16waterlogged areas.
04:18In Bihar, about 900,000 hectares of land is not being utilised.
04:25Funds should be allocated to make that area suitable for fox nut or fish farming.
04:36Prickly water lilies can cope with the increasingly serious flooding and increase soil fertility
04:40too.
04:42Fox nuts have become a valuable source of income for farmers who were being forced to
04:46leave their homes and go in search of a livelihood.