-The Telegraph Bhubaneswar: An Assembly committee will seek a fresh appointment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to consider Odisha's demand to increase the minimum support price for paddy. The decision to meet Modi was taken on Friday at a House committee meeting presided over by Speaker Pradeep Amat. The committee had approached the Prime Minister's Office twice this year, but without any success. Leader of the Opposition Narasingh Mishra said: "The Speaker will write...

-The Times of India NAGPUR: Multiple cropping (growing many crops simultaneously), and intercropping (growing different crops between rows of a single crop) can completely do away with the problem of Pest attacks, and help minimize or eliminate use of pesticides. Ignoring this well known fact, agriculture department as well as farmers have resorted to extreme and unscientific use of pesticides, raising costs for farmers, and even leading to farm labour deaths...

-Scroll.in A severe shortage of government-distributed pesticides aggravated the crop loss from attacks by brown planthoppers. A twin calamity has struck farmers in Odisha in recent weeks. A moderate to severe drought has affected paddy crops on more than 3.1 lakh hectares of land in over 6,000 villages across 15 districts. In addition, an attack by brown planthoppers – insects that feed on rice plants – has destroyed paddy fields on...

-The Financial Express For most consumers, ‘organic’ is probably a code for ‘safe’ or ‘residue-free’, not necessarily produce grown without chemical fertilisers and pesticides. But marketers use the tag to tap into a seam of fear in some urban parents who are so anxious about health that they are willing to pay for advertising that spells ‘well-being’. A brand of ‘organic’ jaggery, for example, on the shelves of Reliance Fresh stores...

-Down to Earth As allegedly fake pesticides prove ineffective in controlling pests, farmers resort to indiscriminate spraying After a series of farmer suicides in Odisha’s Bargarh district over Pest attack, the state government finally acknowledged that there are nearly 200,000 hectares of area, on which paddy is grown, has been damaged across nine districts. According to farmers, spurious pesticides were in use which proved ineffective to control Brown Plant Hopper, which first...