Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

Domesticated rice cultivation in the Bengal region began about 4,000 years ago. Over a long period, ancient farmers created thousands of rice landraces, each adapted to local land and climatic conditions – a process which Charles Darwin called “artificial selection” by early cultivators. The exact number of rice varieties grown in West Bengal and Bangladesh before the advent of the Green Revolution is not definitely known. However, scientists estimate that around 15,000 folk landraces were cultivated in undivided Bengal in the 1940s. Unpublished records of the West Bengal State Research Station suggest farmers used to grow around 5,500 landraces up until the late 1960s. With the advent of India’s Green Revolution in 1965, a handful of high-yielding varieties replaced, and continue to replace, thousands of traditional landraces.

In short, most of the old landraces of Bengal, from both sides of the international border, are now available only in a few gene banks, not in the hands of farmers. My own collection of folk rice varieties at the Vrihi rice seed bank totals 576, which is perhaps the final number of extant rice landraces that were in cultivation in Bengal up until 2012 . Many of these have disappeared from farms, and several of them are critically endangered, surviving only in single farms.

This loss of thousands of rice varieties means the erosion of a vast body of folk knowledge pertaining to the distinctive properties of different varieties. It also means food insecurity for poor and marginal farmers, who no longer have access to a stock of different rice landraces fine-tuned to local soil and climatic conditions. What I want to emphasise here, however, is the loss of unique characteristics in these forgotten rice varieties that shape local food cultures and celebrated Bengali delicacies.

The drastic erosion of traditional rice diversity even tarnishes the visual aesthetics of Bengali landscapes. Increasingly, the roofs of its beautiful “bungalow” huts are no longer found to be thatched with paddy straw. A major reason is because the straw from new rice varieties is too short and not durable for thatching, unlike that from heirloom varieties. The altered material culture of Bengal is thus another unnoticed consequence of the loss of rice diversity of modern Bengal.

When economists and geographers talk about land use change, they refer to a process by which human activities transform the natural landscape. The emphasis is on the functional role of land for economic activities. What we see in Bengal, however, is that the loss of genetic diversity of indigenous crops has additional consequences that are rarely discussed – namely, the alteration of local cultures associated to this diversity.

Source: Every time Bengal loses a traditional rice variety, it loses a little bit of its culture

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

Domesticated rice cultivation in the Bengal region began about 4,000 years ago. Over a long period, ancient farmers created thousands of rice landraces, each adapted to local land and climatic conditions – a process which Charles Darwin called “artificial selection” by early cultivators. The exact number of rice varieties grown in West Bengal and Bangladesh before the advent of the Green Revolution is not definitely known. However, scientists estimate that around 15,000 folk landraces were cultivated in undivided Bengal in the 1940s. Unpublished records of the West Bengal State Research Station suggest farmers used to grow around 5,500 landraces up until the late 1960s. With the advent of India’s Green Revolution in 1965, a handful of high-yielding varieties replaced, and continue to replace, thousands of traditional landraces.

In short, most of the old landraces of Bengal, from both sides of the international border, are now available only in a few gene banks, not in the hands of farmers. My own collection of folk rice varieties at the Vrihi rice seed bank totals 576, which is perhaps the final number of extant rice landraces that were in cultivation in Bengal up until 2012 . Many of these have disappeared from farms, and several of them are critically endangered, surviving only in single farms.

This loss of thousands of rice varieties means the erosion of a vast body of folk knowledge pertaining to the distinctive properties of different varieties. It also means food insecurity for poor and marginal farmers, who no longer have access to a stock of different rice landraces fine-tuned to local soil and climatic conditions. What I want to emphasise here, however, is the loss of unique characteristics in these forgotten rice varieties that shape local food cultures and celebrated Bengali delicacies.

The drastic erosion of traditional rice diversity even tarnishes the visual aesthetics of Bengali landscapes. Increasingly, the roofs of its beautiful “bungalow” huts are no longer found to be thatched with paddy straw. A major reason is because the straw from new rice varieties is too short and not durable for thatching, unlike that from heirloom varieties. The altered material culture of Bengal is thus another unnoticed consequence of the loss of rice diversity of modern Bengal.

When economists and geographers talk about land use change, they refer to a process by which human activities transform the natural landscape. The emphasis is on the functional role of land for economic activities. What we see in Bengal, however, is that the loss of genetic diversity of indigenous crops has additional consequences that are rarely discussed – namely, the alteration of local cultures associated to this diversity.

Source: Every time Bengal loses a traditional rice variety, it loses a little bit of its culture

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

Domesticated rice cultivation in the Bengal region began about 4,000 years ago. Over a long period, ancient farmers created thousands of rice landraces, each adapted to local land and climatic conditions – a process which Charles Darwin called “artificial selection” by early cultivators. The exact number of rice varieties grown in West Bengal and Bangladesh before the advent of the Green Revolution is not definitely known. However, scientists estimate that around 15,000 folk landraces were cultivated in undivided Bengal in the 1940s. Unpublished records of the West Bengal State Research Station suggest farmers used to grow around 5,500 landraces up until the late 1960s. With the advent of India’s Green Revolution in 1965, a handful of high-yielding varieties replaced, and continue to replace, thousands of traditional landraces.

In short, most of the old landraces of Bengal, from both sides of the international border, are now available only in a few gene banks, not in the hands of farmers. My own collection of folk rice varieties at the Vrihi rice seed bank totals 576, which is perhaps the final number of extant rice landraces that were in cultivation in Bengal up until 2012 . Many of these have disappeared from farms, and several of them are critically endangered, surviving only in single farms.

This loss of thousands of rice varieties means the erosion of a vast body of folk knowledge pertaining to the distinctive properties of different varieties. It also means food insecurity for poor and marginal farmers, who no longer have access to a stock of different rice landraces fine-tuned to local soil and climatic conditions. What I want to emphasise here, however, is the loss of unique characteristics in these forgotten rice varieties that shape local food cultures and celebrated Bengali delicacies.

The drastic erosion of traditional rice diversity even tarnishes the visual aesthetics of Bengali landscapes. Increasingly, the roofs of its beautiful “bungalow” huts are no longer found to be thatched with paddy straw. A major reason is because the straw from new rice varieties is too short and not durable for thatching, unlike that from heirloom varieties. The altered material culture of Bengal is thus another unnoticed consequence of the loss of rice diversity of modern Bengal.

When economists and geographers talk about land use change, they refer to a process by which human activities transform the natural landscape. The emphasis is on the functional role of land for economic activities. What we see in Bengal, however, is that the loss of genetic diversity of indigenous crops has additional consequences that are rarely discussed – namely, the alteration of local cultures associated to this diversity.

Source: Every time Bengal loses a traditional rice variety, it loses a little bit of its culture

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

Domesticated rice cultivation in the Bengal region began about 4,000 years ago. Over a long period, ancient farmers created thousands of rice landraces, each adapted to local land and climatic conditions – a process which Charles Darwin called “artificial selection” by early cultivators. The exact number of rice varieties grown in West Bengal and Bangladesh before the advent of the Green Revolution is not definitely known. However, scientists estimate that around 15,000 folk landraces were cultivated in undivided Bengal in the 1940s. Unpublished records of the West Bengal State Research Station suggest farmers used to grow around 5,500 landraces up until the late 1960s. With the advent of India’s Green Revolution in 1965, a handful of high-yielding varieties replaced, and continue to replace, thousands of traditional landraces.

In short, most of the old landraces of Bengal, from both sides of the international border, are now available only in a few gene banks, not in the hands of farmers. My own collection of folk rice varieties at the Vrihi rice seed bank totals 576, which is perhaps the final number of extant rice landraces that were in cultivation in Bengal up until 2012 . Many of these have disappeared from farms, and several of them are critically endangered, surviving only in single farms.

This loss of thousands of rice varieties means the erosion of a vast body of folk knowledge pertaining to the distinctive properties of different varieties. It also means food insecurity for poor and marginal farmers, who no longer have access to a stock of different rice landraces fine-tuned to local soil and climatic conditions. What I want to emphasise here, however, is the loss of unique characteristics in these forgotten rice varieties that shape local food cultures and celebrated Bengali delicacies.

The drastic erosion of traditional rice diversity even tarnishes the visual aesthetics of Bengali landscapes. Increasingly, the roofs of its beautiful “bungalow” huts are no longer found to be thatched with paddy straw. A major reason is because the straw from new rice varieties is too short and not durable for thatching, unlike that from heirloom varieties. The altered material culture of Bengal is thus another unnoticed consequence of the loss of rice diversity of modern Bengal.

When economists and geographers talk about land use change, they refer to a process by which human activities transform the natural landscape. The emphasis is on the functional role of land for economic activities. What we see in Bengal, however, is that the loss of genetic diversity of indigenous crops has additional consequences that are rarely discussed – namely, the alteration of local cultures associated to this diversity.

Source: Every time Bengal loses a traditional rice variety, it loses a little bit of its culture