-The Times of India   Speaking at a seminar organized for honouring farmers here on Saturday, Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar announced that awards should be instituted by all states for honouring innovative work done by farmers in the country. "Rajasthan has already started honouring farmers for their innovative work. The other states should also follow it. I will write to chief ministers of other states to start honouring farmers and give away...

In report submitted to the Supreme Court The Joint Expert Committee on ‘endosulfan,' in its report submitted to the Supreme Court, has said that the manufacturers have export orders for 1,734 mt of ‘endosulfan technical' and 292.5 kl of ‘formulation,' which can be allowed for export. The court, in its order on August 8, had asked the committee, under the Indian Council of Medical Research, to address the court on four issues...

Degraded soils, depleting groundwater, and chemical Pesticides are playing havoc, placing agriculture in terrible distress. I haven’t forgotten that night. Sitting with a group of farmers in a village in Ludhiana district in Punjab, at the height of the Green Revolution, a farmer showed me a bag of fertiliser that he brought from the market. “Why are you showing me this bag”, I asked. “Wait”, he said, and began to open the...

The global 'farmland grab' in Ethiopia and the rest of Africa has become competitive, with companies from Asia, including India and China, joining it. AN extraordinary new process has been at work in the past few years: the aggressive entry of Indian corporations into the markets for agricultural land in Africa. At one level, this process is simply following the hoary old tradition in global capitalism of firms (often supported...

Who can forget Munshi Premchand's short story 'Do Bailon Ki Katha' that immortalizes the incredible bond an Indian farmer has with his bullocks? The economics of Indian farming and animal husbandry, however, are ensuring that this bond might live only in such fables. As will the sense of gratitude and pride with which rural India worships its bullocks on the day of Pithori Amavasya, also known as Bail Pola in...