The government today said it has adequate regulatory provisions to check the quality of genetically modified (GM) seeds such as Bt Cotton introduced by companies in the country. “The government has adequate regulatory provisions under the Seed Act, 1966, Seed Rules, 1968 and Seed Control Order, 1983 to check the quality of seeds introduced by companies in India,” Minister of State for Agriculture Harish Rawat said in a written reply to...

On a day the Bokaro district administration went on an overdrive to tighten the noose around unscrupulous MGNREGS contractors, the state government claimed in the Assembly that the death of worker Subal Mahto wasn’t remotely connected to rampant corruption in the Centre’s flagship rural job scheme. Reprimanded by Union rural development secretary B.K. Sinha over the recent killings of the Bokaro labourer and MGNREGS crusader Niyamat Ansari, the government today made...

A section of Congress is set to back the demand of chief ministers of BJP and other Opposition-ruled states to reject the Seeds Bill, 2010, in its present form. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, spearheading the campaign against the bill, has told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar that the bill, whose avowed purpose is to facilitate production and supply of seeds of quality, will put the peasantry...

Heavy damages estimated for in cotton, chana, castor crop. Unseasonal rains in the state of Gujarat during September - November, 2010 has cost the state agriculture sector Rs 3,312 crore with key cash crops including groundnut, cotton, castor seed and pulses taking a major blow among other agriculture commodities. The state minister for agriculture, Dilip Sanghani on Thursday informed that as of December 31, 2010 the total damage to the state agriculture...

The oldest and most common dig against organic agriculture is that it cannot feed the world’s citizens; this, however, is a supposition, not a fact. And industrial agriculture isn’t working perfectly, either: the global food price index is at a record high, and our agricultural system is wreaking havoc with the health not only of humans but of the earth. There are around a billion undernourished people; we can also...