-The Hindu A farmer’s house in the nondescript Kirugavalu village is the country’s largest private rice museum A serpentine road from Mysuru cuts through lush green fields and leads to an obscure village dotted with run-down houses and petty shops with thatched roofs. Sidestepping a passing herd of sheep, I enter a narrow lane and reach a 75-year-old house with a row of pillars. It is this house, in the nondescript Kirugavalu village in...

-The Indian Express Forcing machinery on farmers without giving a thought to the economics of their utilisation can prove counter-productive. There are three main impediments to farm mechanisation in India. The first is cost, which, for a standard 50-horsepower tractor, today averages around Rs 6.5-6.8 lakh. But a tractor is just a source of power and traction, and only as good as the farm implements it can pull. The most basic tractor-drawn tiller/cultivator...

-The Hindu ‘Water hasn’t even receded from my yard yet. How can we start farming in October?’ On either side of the Alappuzha-Changanassery road is a vast expanse of water with an odd canoe bobbing about, or a precariously leaning electrical pole. But these are not the backwaters. I am in Kuttanad, the rice bowl of Kerala, but there is not a paddy crop in sight. Farmers in this area have for generations...

-Firstpost.com Ludhiana: Free meals, payment in advance, free liquor to ease aching limbs after a hard day’s work. Migrant labour in Punjab, mainly from Bihar, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, the mainstay of the state’s agriculture sector, has never had it so good. The problem, however, is the decreasing availability of this labour. Ask Baljinder Singh, a farmer with a 10-acre holding in Dakha village. Come sowing season in mid-June, Baljinder...

-PTI “The full climate impact of rice farming has been significantly underestimated,” says lead author Rice farming across the world could be responsible for up to twice the level of climate impact relative to what was previously estimated, according to a study conducted in India. The study, published in PNAS, found that intermittently flooded rice farms can emit 45 times more nitrous oxide as compared to the maximum from continuously flooded farms...