Farmer Dilip Chandra Tarafdar was tired of fighting to keep his rice crop alive in the Bangladeshi coastal village of Chandipur.
If the plants managed to grow in soil made salty by decades of cyclones and floods, then strong winds would snap their stalks or pests would wipe them out.
So, 10 years ago, Tarafdar, 45, looked to his ancestors and started cross-breeding seed varieties that used to thrive in the southwestern Shyamnagar region but are now on the edge of extinction after farmers moved onto higher-yielding varieties.
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