• A farmhand inspects the ground as water is being pumped from a bore well to flood a rice field at a farm in Karnal district, Haryana, India, on June 26. A scarcity of workers this year because of the coronavirus is forcing Indian farmers to turn away from traditional methods of farming. | BLOOMBERG
    A farmhand inspects the ground as water is being pumped from a bore well to flood a rice field at a farm in Karnal district, Haryana, India, on June 26. A scarcity of workers this year because of the coronavirus is forcing Indian farmers to turn away from traditional methods of farming. | BLOOMBERG
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SINGAPORE/RAIPUR JATTAN, India – For more than two decades, Indian farmer Ravindra Kajal cultivated rice the way his forefathers had — every June he flooded his fields with water before hiring an army of farmhands to plant paddy seedlings.

But a scarcity of workers this year because of the coronavirus forced Kajal to change. He irrigated the field just enough to moisten the soil and leased a drilling machine to directly sow seeds on his 9-acre (3.6-hectare) plot.

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