Pushed to a corner by Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh’s peremptory freeze on Bt brinjal, the UPA government took the first step of finding a way out. And it needed the authority of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to do that. In a clear enunciation of the government’s policy on GM crops — a policy that got clouded by Ramesh’s rhetoric — the Prime Minister underlined the importance of biotechnology in productivity...

Union ministers may be squabbling heatedly over whether the moratorium on Bt Brinjal was right or wrong, but trade associations related to soya, a commodity which has been virtually swamped by the GM variety worldwide, are clear that the growing agri-biotech bandwagon has opened up immense new opportunities for safer, traditional, non-GM soya varieties. The Soy Food Promotion and Welfare Association announced the launch of a two day International Soy...

PUNE: Bandya Pashte, 28, has been cultivating paddy on his family’s five-acre plot in village Veravli in the Konkan, Maharashtra’s coastal strip for about a decade. Last year, though, he threw in the towel because farming is not remunerative and lacks social status. Bandya has since migrated to the city to work as a driver, earning more than he did as a farmer. While Bandya is unaware of the National...

The MoU is also intended to give a push to private investment in agriculture  The government last week quietly secured Cabinet approval for a new agreement with the United States that aims, inter alia, at promoting the privatisation of agricultural extension services and facilitating collaborations between American agribusiness and the Indian farm sector. The proposed Memorandum of Understanding with the U.S. on ‘Agriculture Cooperation and Food Security’ was approved on...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has convened a meeting of the Ministers concerned with genetically modified (GM) crops on Wednesday. Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Minister of State for Environment and Forests (Independent Charge) Jairam Ramesh and Minister of State for Science and Technology Prithviraj Chavan are expected to attend. The meeting has been called in response to a letter written by Mr. Pawar earlier this month to Dr. Singh, in which...