The disclosure by the Centre for Science and Environment that 11 of the 12 leading brands of honey sold in India contain high levels of harmful antibiotics should make us acknowledge our failure to evolve and enforce environmental and health standards. Similar disclosures were made about pesticides in soft drinks and coliform bacteria in 'safe' bottled water. More distressing is the documentation since the 1980s of high content of pesticides...

A decline in pollinating insects in India is resulting in reduced vegetable yields and could limit people's access to a nutritional diet, a study warns. Indian researchers said there was a "clear indication" that pollinator abundance was linked to productivity. They added that the loss of the natural service could have a long-term impact on the farming sector, which accounts for almost a fifth of the nation's GDP. Globally, pollination is estimated to...

KFRI study finds serious health and environmental hazards in some districts Overuse of pesticides in pineapple farming is feared to have caused serious health and environmental hazards in some districts in the State. Overuse of pesticides, herbicides and weedicides has been reported from Kuttikanam in Idukki and the Mundakkayam and Erumeli areas in Kottayam, where pineapple is grown in rubber estates as an intercrop. A field verification study by the Kerala Forest...

Apni kheti, apna khaad / Apna beej, apna swaad (Our own farm, our own fertiliser / Our own seeds, our own taste) -- Prakash Singh Raghuvanshi. A farmer from Tandia village in Varanasi has a solution to India's burgeoning food crisis. In a land where poverty, hunger, malnutrition and farmer suicides are rampant, Prakash Singh Raghuvanshi's innovation could work wonders. He has single-handedly developed a number of high yielding, nutritious...

Interlinking of rivers has the potential to increase India's arable land by 35 million hectares (mha), Minister of State for Water Resources Vincent H. Pala said Tuesday. Harvesting flood waters to recharge of ground water would increase the availability by about 36 million cubic metres, he added. Speaking at the conference on water organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here, Pala said: 'India has to create an irrigation potential of more...