gela tetrauli is worried. it hasn't rained here in weeks. his seeds are top quality, but that won't mean much if growing conditions are poor. >> they're red, see. they've been specially treated against pests and disease. but that didn't help last year, either. half of my fields were useless. it was the wind -- it blew away the soil. >> winds are strong here in the valley, at the foot of the lesser caucasus mountains. wind speeds of 50 to 60 kilometers an hour are commonplace here. overgrazing was a problem already in the soviet era. and even back then, the local farmers were trying to slow soil erosion. >> there were collective farms here, who had a few trained agriculturalists. the rest of us, we were farmers who just followed the instructions they gave us. not people with agricultural degrees, but simple farmers. nowadays we have to start learning from scratch. for example, that we need windbreaks. we have a few already, back over there. >> the dark soil in the valley is very fertile. but when the wind blows it away, the mineral-rich upper