Odisha is not the only state caught up in the maize mania. This year another 40,000 ha are coming under the wonder cereal. In collaboration with Monsanto, Mahyco, Charoen Pokphand and four other companies, the state managed to cover 30,000 hectares (ha) with hybrid seeds last year by offering marginal and small cultivators, mostly tribal folk, seed kits that are adequate for an acre (0.4 ha). It has deployed part of the Second Green Revolution funds announced by the Centre in 2010 to put together a public private partnership (PPP) to promote hybrid maize. Odisha has used a special stratagem to kick off this scheme. “We don’t eat this yellow stuff but I know it fetches a good price in the market. But the promise of windfall profits from yellow maize tickles her fancy. Matpadia grows traditional varieties of white maize which, with rice, is one of the staple foods of her community. The seeds that she cradles in her palm with wonder are the key to a plan that Odisha has drawn up to get its farmers to give up their traditional rice cultivation in the uplands and take to hybrid maize instead to boost income.

A representative of Charoen Pokphand, a Thai agribusiness multinational, is telling her how to grow its hybrid maize seeds that the state government has given her free along with a kit of fertiliser and pesticide.

In the lush forested uplands of Koraput, Domu Matpadia, a Paraja tribeswoman, is coming face to face with modern farm technology.

Corruption of champions golden seed