As extreme weather threatens food security, Indians race to to get new seed varieties in the ground

When all else fails, Satveer Singh knows his family will manage if they have a sack of wheat flour in the kitchen to make rotis. Served hot and stuffed with sliced raw onion, the simple meal of Indian flatbreads keeps hunger at bay.

For now, the family can just about cover their needs – thanks in part to the ration they receive from a government programme that distributes food to 800 million people across India.

“It is not enough, but... on a bad day when money is tight, this wheat helps,” Singh said, gesturing towards the sack of grains lying in a corner of his ramshackle house in a slum area known as Gheja village outside the capital, New Delhi.

Ruminating over when to take the grains to be milled, he said supplies from the government programme were not always regular. A year or two ago, the family’s wheat ration was partly replaced by rice – for their taste, a poor replacement.

In 2022, hot weather arrived early in India’s major wheat growing regions, shrivelling crops and leading the government to ban wheat exports and reduce rations of the grain under the food distribution programme to protect domestic stocks.

A year later, history repeated itself. Even this year’s crop will be 6.25%...

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