-Livemint.com While higher crop acreage should ensure positive growth, much depends on how September rains pan out and the kind of platform it lays out for the next crop season Caution is finally setting in for agriculture inputs stocks. As the weather office released two rain deficit reports (on a cumulative basis), shares of Rallis India Ltd, Dhanuka Agritech Ltd and Gujarat State Fertilizers & Chemicals Ltd lost a bit of...

-The Hindu New Delhi: Parliament’s Standing Committee on Agriculture may have expressed concern at the unscientific and excessive use of pesticides in agriculture that pose a threat both to the environment and human health. But experts say their judicious use, combined with safe agricultural practices, is the only way out as the country’s growing demand for food cannot be met through organic farming. In its recently presented report in Parliament for 2015-16,...

-Earth Island Journal It’s too early to hail Sikkim’s transition to chemicals-free agriculture an outright success, say observers Sikkim, the picturesque northeastern Indian state in the eastern Himalayas, announced in January that it had transitioned completely to organic agriculture — the first state in the South Asian nation to do so. The process of shifting to organic agriculture was initiated by the state government 13 years ago when it launched the Sikkim Organic...

-Down to Earth A parliamentary standing committee blamed Agriculture Ministry’s skewed policy for the inequality in fertiliser usage The parliamentary standing committee on agriculture has recommended formation of a “Pesticide Development Authority” to ensure balanced use of chemical fertilisers in the wake of declining agricultural productivity. The 29th report, called “Impact of Chemical fertilizers and Pesticides on agriculture and allied sectors in the country”, was tabled in Parliament by the committee. The...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Various drug price regulatory measures by the government helped consumers save Rs 4,988 crore over the last two years, Rajya Sabha was told on Thursday. Following approval of the pharmaceutical pricing policy in 2012, the government has capped prices of essential medicines at least three times since 2013, when the policy was first implemented by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority through the Drugs Price Control Order...