-The Financial Express In a bid to promote optimum water usage and increase farmers' income, a new cropping method is being tested across northern India In a bid to promote optimum water usage and increase farmers' income, a new cropping method is being tested across northern India through sowing of moong bean in the same field prior to harvest of wheat crop. The short duration - 60 to 65 days - moong is...

-Deccan Herald In accordance with a new agroecology initiative within the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, by using the agroecological methods, small farmers are key to feeding the world, Nafeez Ahmed notes. Modern industrial agricultural methods can no longer feed the world, due to the impacts of overlapping environmental and ecological crises linked to land, water and resource availability. The stark warning comes from the new United Nations Special Rapporteur on the...

-The Hindu Chennai: Wondering which spot to dig for groundwater or what is the quality of water in the land you own? Are you still thinking of folks walking around with those peculiar ‘Y'-shaped twigs? It's not quite that way any more. We've become more scientific, we're using special tools to figure out where the water lies. The ‘we' in this case refers to the State Ground and Surface Water Resources Data...

-The Business Standard   NC Saxena, a former member of the National Advisory Council believes that the regulatory regime in the states continues to be oppressive. In an e-mailed interview with Aditi Phadnis, Saxena says that the fundamental problem in India is the low tax-GDP ratio and neither the last government nor the current one seems interested in increasing revenues. Edited excerpts: * The new government appears to be watering down a lot...

-The Indian Express This July, I spoke with a farmer in Angul district, Odisha. During the kharif season, most of his 45-acre farm is devoted to paddy, but during the rabi season, he grows a variety of pulses, oilseeds and vegetables. He is currently president of the village watershed committee, working to implement an impressive programme to halt soil erosion and water runoff. He pointed out newly constructed contour and farm...