On a muggy June afternoon in the remote village of Pohumora in northeastern India, Anjana Taye haunches on the mud floor of her home and carefully pours into two bowls the cloudy fermented rice drink known as apong, a staple of the indigenous Mising community.
The rice in the apong was once abundant in the lush green Lakhimpur district of the Indian state of Assam, where indigenous communities have relied for centuries on the Brahmaputra River for their way of life. With damming and construction upstream, climate change and the domino effect of human responses, rice is now fast receding as a staple crop in this part of the world's largest exporter of the grain.
