H ajra Begum rolls a potato in her hands, checking its skin for cuts, soft spots and signs of rot. After a day harvesting in her family’s field in Chorwan, a remote mountain village in Gurez, Indian-administered Kashmir , she is sorting the crop for winter storage. Some of the potatoes will feed her family through the cold months; others will be saved for planting in spring.

“It should be perfect for planting,” she says. “If you keep a bad potato, you will waste the whole next year.”

Begum, 40, is preparing to lower the potatoes into a khraw , a traditional underground storage pit lined with straw and sealed against the cold.…