-Down to Earth The food most associated with biodiversity loss also tends to also be connected to unhealthy diets across the globe As the global population has doubled to 7.8 billion in about 50 years, industrial agriculture has increased the output from fields and farms to feed humanity. One of the negative outcomes of this transformation has been the extreme simplification of ecological systems, with complex multi-functional landscapes converted to vast swaths...

-Down to Earth Highest rice acreage in six years, more farmers in farms, a bounty monsoon and an expected bumper harvest don't enthuse farmers as their earning dips   It is a piece of news that everybody would love to cheer about, except those who made this possible. The current kharif season is exceptional. In comparison to last year, over eight million more hectares of farms are under cultivation this season. There are more...

-Business Standard Union agriculture minister is of the view that 300,000 hectares of rugged land is not cultivable, which if improved will help in the integrated development of the Bihad area Kamprakash Kansana from Nayakpura village in Morena district of Madhya Pradesh is apprehensive about the latest government move to flatten the Chambal ravines that lie close to his village to make them suitable for farming. The ravines, locally called, 'Bihad', which were...

-The Indian Express Current economic contraction is different from previous ones. Governments should borrow and spend India has never experienced negative economic growth since 1979-80, and before that in 1972-73, 1965-66 and 1957-58. All these were drought years with 1957-58 also registering a significant balance of payments (BOP) deterioration and 1979-80 witnessing the second global oil shock following the Iranian Revolution. The real GDP decline of 5-10 per cent that various agencies are...

Huge sums of money are allocated for the rural and agrarian sectors by the Union Government in its annual budget every year, and rightly so. But in the absence of an adequate number of officials in rural areas, can the various schemes and programmes of the government be implemented properly? We will find the answer if we think about this issue deeply and the answer that would emerge should bother...