-The Hindu     Shonali Muthalaly and Anusha Parthasarathy join the queue at an Amma Unavagam in the city and sample the fare as early as seven in the morning We are in the queue at 6.30 a.m. That's if you can call this a queue. Three people stand around sleepily. So much for our mental image of waiting in a hungry Oliver Twist-like queue for idlis! Two more people saunter into the Alwarpet...

-The Hindu Kochi: The Kerala Agricultural University has found "dangerous levels" of pesticide residue in key vegetables like cabbage, cauliflower, vegetable cowpea (achinga), amaranthus red, small red onions, tomatoes, green chillies and curry leaves, among others. The residue includes that of the banned Profenofos, which falls into the yellow category (second level of pesticides in the toxicity classification) and which has translaminar action (the toxin entering the plant system primarily by roots,...

-The Guardian Farms processing insects for animal feed might soon become global reality as demand grows for sustainable feed sources   The best way to feed the 9 billion people expected to be alive by 2050 could be to rear billions of common houseflies on a diet of human faeces and abattoir blood and grind them up to use as animal feed, a UN report published on Monday suggests. Doing so would...

-The Guardian In a village in India's poorest state, Bihar, farmers are growing world record amounts of rice – with no GM, and no herbicide. Is this one solution to world food shortages? Sumant Kumar was overjoyed when he harvested his rice last year. There had been good rains in his village of Darveshpura in north-east India and he knew he could improve on the four or five tonnes per hectare that he usually...

-AFP NURJAHANPALLY: When Mahatma Gandhi took up the baton for home-grown cotton a century ago, he may not have realised the devastating impact its cultivation would have on the land he so loved. Cotton is a thirsty plant and parts of the country are drought-prone. But the intensive farming process for cotton leaches the soil and requires high pesticide and fertiliser use that pollutes further downstream. Now in Warangal, dotted with statues to...