High cotton prices spun out enough problems for India’s $62 billion textiles industry, but weaved gains for growers and traders in 2010. Amid pulls and pressures from the conflicting interests, a ministers’ group under the guidance of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee kept reviewing the price and crop situation, with excessive winter rains playing spoilsport. The textiles industry pulled out all stops to lobby with the textiles, commerce and finance ministries seeking a...

Traversing 20 states of India the Yatra had a three point agenda: Food, Farmers, Freedom. On December 11, while the bulk of yatris were at Raj Ghat, their representatives went to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The list of demands they submitted provides a bird's eye view to the war that is now taking shape. Proponents of Kisan Swaraj want both the government and private sector to, among other things: 1. Stop treating...

There is a shortage of non-Bt seeds, and traditional seeds are contaminated Tests on cotton seeds available in the market show that they are contaminated Agriculture officials confirm the near absence of traditional variety of cotton seeds Karnataka may soon fall off the organic cotton map owing to shortage of non-Bt cotton seeds and contamination of traditional seeds. As a result, a major organic cotton belt such as H.D. Kote in Mysore district may...

Our right to know includes the right to know what we eat. We live in a transgenic age, one in which it is no longer sufficient for food labelling to stop with listing such things as nutritional values, chemical additives, and possible allergens. Although there is no evidence that approved genetically modified food is unsafe for human consumption, people have the right to choose not to eat it for ideological,...

On the eve of the World Food Day, hundreds of farmers belonging to the Kisan Swaraj Yatra made a bonfire of genetically modified seeds at Jalna on Friday to symbolically oppose the corporatisation of seeds and to encourage farmers to retain seed diversity. “We want to put out a message to fellow Indian farmers to acknowledge, appreciate and understand our own breeding abilities and improve on it, to avoid getting trapped...