The recent spike in vegetable prices, due partly to erratic supplies, could well have been averted if the novel concept of “relay cropping” in vegetable farming had become popular. This system allows growing three to seven crops of different vegetables on the same patch of land over a period to ensure a steady and regular flow of vegetables to markets. This innovative approach, significantly, has been conceived and successfully put into practice...

Four public-funded national universities have entered into a "confidential" pact with Nestle, one of the biggest baby food and commercial food companies, for nutrition awareness programmes for adolescent school-going girls in government-run village schools. Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India (BPNI) has written a letter to the secretary for school education and literacy, Anshu Vaish, protesting against "brand promotion using the public education system" and saying that the MoU (memorandum of understanding)...

Despite its slackening industry, the common perception of West Bengal as a backward state has little substance when one looks at the facts. Most of us are conditioned to view economic development in terms of industrialisation. While industrialisation is essential for economic transformation, it is not as if economic growth is not possible without it. The sectoral structure of India's gross domestic product (GDP) and its slow transformation makes a good...

A small farmer in Maharashtra, whose high-yielding rice variety is popular in five States, is denied the benefits of his research. TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, Dadaji Khobragade of Nanded Fakir village in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra noticed yellow seeds in three spikes of a paddy stalk in his field. Intrigued by the freak harvest, he preserved the grains. He subsequently planted them in a six-foot square plot, which he covered with thorny...

There is a suggestion circulating in the corridors of our apex monetary regulatory authority, the Reserve Bank of India, that food inflation is beginning to look more ‘structural’ than ‘seasonal’, and it can only be tackled by addressing the supply side. We need to address both demand and supply sides simultaneously to tackle food inflation. While we must be happy that more and more poor eat fruits and cook vegetables...