“People had not seen rice grow here in more than 40 years,” Bashonti said. “The salt killed everything.”
In Majgurkhali, a village in Bangladesh’s southwestern Satkhira district, on the edge of the Bay of Bengal, most people have given up traditional farming. Rising salinity, compounded by manmade embankments and shrimp farms, has left the once-fertile land barren and inhospitable.
The pancake-flat terrain is a mosaic of shrimp ponds stretching as far as the eye can see, the brackish water glistening in the sunlight. During the winter months, when water levels drop, the salt is visible as a white layer on the soil. Locals call it the white curse.
Maksud Ali, a 55-year-old villager, said he was forced to give up rice farming and become a day labourer many years ago. “Nothing grows,” he said. “There’s just too much salt in the water and in the ground.”