-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...

-Mainstream Weekly Intense and motivated propaganda, powerful national and international diplomatic pressure, verging on pure and simple arms-twisting of the kind the Third World has been facing for decades by means of the active role of the econo-mic hit-men in the policy establishments, huge cash-back lobbying, both in India and abroad, blunt attempts to bamboozle the persons holding key positions in India’s policy establishment through a combination of hissing and kissing...

-Al Jazeera  Organic farming is the "only way to produce food" without harming the planet and people's health. Reports trying to create doubts about organic agriculture are suddenly flooding the media. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, people are fed up of the corporate assault of toxics and GMOs. Secondly, people are turning to organic agriculture and organic food as a way to end the toxic war against the earth and...

-Deccan Herald Farmers in Haryana villages have maintained insect equilibrium by pitting beneficial insects against the harmful. In the great Indian epic, Mahabharata, there is a telling story of the valiant Abhimanyu who died fighting while trying to pierce through a Chakravyuah (seven rings). Mahabharata tells us that Abhimanyu had learnt the art of smashing through the seven layers of the human chain of the Chakravyuah. In lot many ways, I find the...

Industrialisation of agriculture creates hunger and malnutrition, destroying the food web to which we all belong. Hunger and malnutrition is manmade. It is in the design of the industrial chemical model of agriculture. And just as hunger has been created by design, producing healthy and nutritious food for all can be designed through food democracy. That is what we do in Navdanya. That is what the diverse movements for food sovereignty...